Vignettes

There is a surprising amount to notice even in a forty eight hour trip, even if an awful lot of it is spent travelling. Not all of the latter is good, of course......

I hadn't flown on an Airbus before. They are noticeably quieter. We had plenty of leg room, but were really squashed widthways. But because the plane was unfamiliar, I was sitting there quite calmly at touch down thinking - gosh, this plane handles differently from any other I have ever been on, the pilot has to lift the nose a bit when landing....when the DSM informs me that the pilot has aborted landing at 100 metres.

Oh bugger. Still, we made it safely the second time.

Antalya airport to Side is not what you might call picturesque, but it is interesting. Acres of citrus groves, not a common sight around Yorkshire, so that was nice. Very pretty goats. Mountains in the distance, looking intriguing. Houses and small communities....apparently, if you build a house in Turkey, you don't pay taxes until the roof is completed. Guerss what? Lots of unfinished houses, and who can blame people. But also, lots of solar panels on top of the buildings, how sensible.

I did see some nice carpets, hung over balconies to air and get the dust out during the day. I also think that I saw a whole load of yarn hanging up under a balcony, but we flashed by too quickly for me to be sure.

The hotel was modern and totally westernised. Shame. But there were a lot of palm trees around.



The stands that supported the awnings on the beach were an interesting shape that reminded me of eyes.





The eye was an is still important in Mediterranean and other cultures. The airport gift shops were full of objects decorated with blue eyes, and we were all given a similar large glass pendant with an eye, which is actually quite cool and I will make a beaded necklace for it somewhere down the line.

During the eclipse period, we had neighbours on the beach. To one side, we had a nice young German family, two smashing kids. But the little girl fell asleep, and her mother, who had been abandoned by her husband who went to join his techie friends, did not wake her up for totality. I just felt that was so sad. She was old enough to have kept a lot of the experience as a precious memory.

To our other side, we had an English pair, a youngish man and his elderly mum. He was so sweet to her. He wouldn't go and join his techie friends because they were in the full sun and he said that would be to strong for her ( I am sure he was right). He did go and talk to them from time to time, but was back with his mum for all the important bits. He just treated her beautifully, they had a great time.
I couldn't resist taking a sneaky photograph.



There was a very pretty hotel cat, who seemed fascinated with water. I therefore decided that it must have some ancestry from the famous Turkish Van swimming cats.



The trip home had a few incidents, too. At airport check in, the passenger manifests supplied by the tour company were arranged in alphabetical order - of forename. Idiots. Check in took ages.

An unfortunate passenger across the aisle from where we were sitting was taken ill on take off, but recovered, I am so glad to say. Turned out to be a diabetic hypoglycemic attack. But scary.

We landed a bit late, and the captain promptly announced that a fire alarm had just gone off in the airport so we could not disembark. Another half hour sitting on the dam' plane.

And guess what? Worth every single glitch and hiccup - mere bagatelles!