(Mountains. Snow. Rad Grindage.)
This weekend we (Kate and I, Kate of the Islands) took a short trip up to the mountains around Bursa to do some snowboarding. Despite my horrible luck with rental cars in the past, we went for it, and ended up with a 2011 Ford Focus...
Automatic transmission. Power locks and windows. And it's own Albany-sweatshirted driver. The best thing about renting the car? Probably the fact that Hertz didn't really care when we brought the car back with a few extra scratches. The worst thing? The 150 TL 3/4 tank fill up. But, most importantly: What did I learn from the rental car experience? You can do whatever you want in a car in Turkey and nobody will care at all. People habitually drive the wrong way down one way streets, block other cars into their parking spots, jam their cars into improbably small gaps in traffic and generally drive like they're in a Pitbull video.
But the mountains! We went to Uludağ, a mountain near Bursa... about a 2 or 3 hour drive from Istanbul. We took the car-ferry across the Marmara to get there...
...but it cost a lot of money, so we took the long way back, which ended up being about 4 1/2 hours.
Not too bad! We stayed at a "boutique" hotel in Bursa... probably one of the poshest places I've ever stayed at. I'll spare you the details but we had this as a standard room accessory:
(There was also a chandelier in the bathroom.)
(The outside of the hotel... not a great shot, but certainly the most well maintained building for miles)
Okay. I'm getting to the mountains. We're there. It was great. The mountains were a lot bigger than I thought they'd be; certainly a lot bigger than the Czech mountains. The conditions weren't ideal... a lot of fog, wind, and ice on 90% of the trails. So much fog, in fact, that sometimes I wasn't really sure if I was actually moving down the hill, let along which direction I was headed in or how fast I was going. It was nice to know that I still got it though. No wipeouts, just muscle memory from what, 13-14 years ago? As lousy as the weather was, it was really nice to be out there. Again, you might find yourself asking, "but what did he learn?" This is what the mountain taught me. Kate is a quick learner on the snowboard (she reads this, clearly). Turks can't ski. A lot of people go to the mountain just to hang out. In fact, some of them go for weird club music and bowls full of vodka next to a roaring fire while sitting on some weird fake polar bear skin couch. I can still snowboard well, and I want to do more of it. A lot of dogs live on the mountain. Nothing is cheap. Everything rules, especially the restaurant with all you can eat* lamb** roasted on a spit by the side of the road.
(The road up the mountain. There were a lot of minibuses.)
(Real ski lifts.)
(Not pictured: roaring fire)
(She stands.)
(So does he.)
(Not so cheap roadside shack.)
(Roasting lamb** at the Not So Cheap Roadside Shack)
* We think it was all you can eat. We're pretty sure the guy said we could have more if we wanted.
** We're also pretty sure it was delicious lamb, but other options could include delicious goat and delicious mountain dog.
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