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First, I’m posting from an iPhone so if anything comes out funky blame Apple. For today’s post I thought it would be fun to post one of the many hilarious tales from our travels. Being that tomorrow is turkey day, it made me think of one of our favorite trips to… Turkey!!!
We had so much fun in Turkey. From the beautiful surroundings to the many wonderful smells of the markets Istanbul was a great place to spend New Years. Now everyone knows that one of Turkey’s most famous attractions are the Turkish baths. Our good friends Robin and Bill met us in Istanbul for the holiday and we spent the week egging each other on to go to one of the baths. Josh was a total wimp and refused. Bill considered it for about two seconds and then chickened out too. So, in the end, it was just me and Robin left to represent. Robin asked the front desk about a good place to go and we were nervously on our way.
When we got there my heart was beating fast with anticipation. Women and men are separated into different sections of the bath so Robin and I split up. I headed to the womens section completely unsure of what to do. Lets just say Turkish baths don’t involve a lot of clothing. I came to the horrible realization that perhaps I should have brought a swimsuit. Since I didn’t I had no choice but to go all in. Yeah, that kind of all in. I was totally mortified and tiptoed into to spa convinced that every eye was on me. I soon realized we were all in the same boat and after about 20 minutes of sitting around on a boiling hot stone platform my mind calmed down. Probably from the heat. And, just in time for the next horribly embarassing event to take place.
See when I went in, I was given a key for a locker and a token for a massage. Now when I think massage I think calm room, intimate lighting, privacy. Not so at a turkish bath. What you do is lay down on the edge of the stone platform in a room filled to the brim with women chit chatting away and wait for one of the bath ladies to come around and give you your “massage.” It’s a total crapshoot as to who you will get. Will it be the friendly chick who knows some English or the older lady who speaks no English and looks like she’s had a bad day and needs to scrub out some aggression? Guess which one I got.
Now I will say, it wasn’t all bad. Old lady would dunk a pillowcase into warm soapy water and squeeze out tons of bubbles. It was actually fun to watch her work. However, this was immediately followed by a vigorous skin sloughing with a loofah mitt. This was the time when old lady would think about the jerk who shorted her $5 in tips the night before and would mentally act out the revenge altercation on my back with said loofah mitt. I’m pretty sure Iost the top two layers of my skin that night. But hey I was clean! After that they washed my hair and then left me to try to recover.
In the end, ignoring the loss of my dermis, it was actually not half bad. I was squeaky clean and had a rare few hours all to myself. When Robin and I met up again we shared war stories which culminated in Robin coming to the realization that there were no towels involved on the women’s side. I think he was simultaneously glad that they required towels throughout the process for the guys and jealous that I had spent the evening in a room full of women who, well, weren’t required. In fact, you looked pretty idiotic if you did.
We returned to the hotel to celebrate New Years Eve with the hotel staff up in the restaurant. None of the other guests were there. It was just me, Josh, Maya, Robin, Bill, the front desk lady, and the bar guy and his precious little daughter. At midnight we watched a few fireworks get set off over the Bosphorus and rejoiced in how awesome life was at that moment.
