The Lycian Way: Day 7 and a half

My cat snoozes on my bad as I watch the light fade fast under another day of grey cloud in Istanbul. It's hard to believe that a week previous Damon and I had just completed between eighty to ninety kilometres across, over, under, around, through, past, in between, out of and beyond the most glorious stretch of coastline aged with scattered ruins, replete with rambling forests, oozing fields bursting with spring colour and offering to us a sights that had finally, after two years in Turkey, supplied the nec plus ultra of Mediterranean landscape.

The trip had ended in Üçağız and we were completely out of cash. We used our last 6 YTL to board a dolmuş to Demre. Nothing could have been more unsightly to us than this town brimming with the ugliest grey concrete tower blocks of which Turkey is so fond. I slipped my sunglasses on hoping to guard myself from so much hideousness. After seven days among nature it felt wrong to come back to this so suddenly.

And that was it. By ten o'clock that evening Damon's head was squishing a Toblerone bar into the table in the waiting lounge at Dalaman as he gave up the fight to remain awake. We'd dozed in and out of slumber for most of the afternoon on the boardwalk in Fethiye and all I wanted now was a) to see my cat, and b) to uncake the grime from my body. I did both somewhere around midnight, though not at the same time.

Although I've learned that my store of adjectives remains well below that needed to describe the people and places we visited, I have wonderful memories and images that I hope shall bring me back here once again. The whole week simply reinforced the fact that quite possibly, I'm never coming home.

Damn, ten more weeks of school until the summer vacation starts.