Another beautiful day for our first stop in Kusadasi.

We’ll be back again in a few days on the next Journey sailing when we have a car booked. But today we are continuing to use up those onboard credits by taking a ship’s tour to the Dilek Peninsula, home to the Menderes Delta National Park. The Park covers 277 square kilometers, stretching from this southern side of the peninsula, up through the mountains and around to the northern side where there is more wilderness, forests, semi-circular bays and beaches.

The tour description says “strenuous” so we are expecting to hike around the ancient village of Doganbey that was actually occupied by Greece until 1924. Watching the other folks on our tour group, we are a little apprehensive about some of them managing a “strenuous” walk/hike – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Outside we meet our tour guide, who is very sweet and informative and who escorts us to our small 16 passenger van (there are only 12 of us on the tour), complete with sweet little amenity boxes filled with a couple of hand sanitizer wipes and a disposable mask. Nice touch! Then we are off for our hour and a half drive to the Doganbey Information Center at the foot of the village.

A cute ranger there walks us through the displays of bird and animal life, explaining that there are 804 types of plants and 256 species of birds that live in the park. Our guide pipes in here and there – she is probably just as knowledgeable as the ranger, and far more “guide-like.” The ranger seems a little shy, although probably just around us English speaking folks – in his own language he would probably be much more loquacious. But regardless, between the two of them we get a thorough understanding of the park, the flora, fauna and animals that call this area home.

Directly out of the Information Center, we begin our “hike” which is actually a pleasant little walk through the ancient village. Along the way we are treated to explanations of all things flora and fauna, as well as commentary from our guide about the gorgeous stone cottages we are walking around.

Essentially, this has turned into a holiday town. Most of the people who own homes here do not live here, but live in Ankara or other Turkish cities. She teaches us how to tell where the cars are from by reading the letters on the license plate. Makes us feel right at home!

Nonetheless, the village is gorgeous, all cobblestone and narrow lanes with stone houses and tiled roofs. We could stay here all day taking pictures – we do enough digital damage as it is in just our hour or so here!

At the top of the village, perched on a lovely overlook that has views down to the water, we stop at one of the few cafes here for tea. We’re not normally tea drinkers, but this is actually pretty good – and our guide tells us how tea to them is just like water and they drink it constantly. It is a way to socialize, so they’ll sit and drink and drink just to keep talking! And true to form, we have 1 tea in the time she has 2!

Then it is downhill, back to the van. We’re not sure who rates these tours, but their idea of strenuous and ours aren’t exactly the same! It was a lovely visit, but by no means strenuous or could be considered a hike. Even the folks we were concerned about made it fine (ok, 1 older guy tripped and fell, but that was easy for anyone to do and he just had a couple of scrapes which a Band-Aid handled easily). Back in Kusadasi, we endured through the obligatory rug presentation – where the silk spinning explanation was actually sort of fascinating – watching how the silk cocoons were in water and the threads spun out from them. Hmmm. That was cool.

Then it was upstairs for the rug “reveal” and a glass of wine (icky wine, btw) and beer (good beer) and cheese pies (good cheese pies). Some of the rugs are absolutely gorgeous, and while they talk a good game about pricing, some of the numbers the rug guys are throwing out are, well, way out of our league. The family on the tour with us was really getting into the rugs – and after we were done with our snacks – as we were skedaddling out of there – we saw them all going off with the rug guys to look at more and it looked like buy some. Hey – they were gorgeous – but the pricing, well, it ain’t India. Maybe we’ll see them onboard and find out if they did buy any.

Hitting the town on our own, we found an ATM, stocked up on Turkish Lira we’ll need for here and Istanbul and Cesme, then found a restaurant on the road overlooking the harbor called The Bear. Oh, how could we resist? Even though we had just eaten, they had this great sounding fried cheese we had to order – to go along with our wine (good wine this time) and beer. How could we not? Sunny of course loved the place – and we loved the atmosphere – and the signage inside!

Continuing on, we finally made our way over to the castle on Guvercinada (Pigeon Island) that we have gazed upon innumerable times from innumerable ships – but have never managed to visit. Today is our day. It is a neat fortification from the 16th Century, and while we can’t get inside the buildings, we can walk around the walls and the main fortress and tower. The trees provide lovely shade, making it a pleasant walk around the little island castle.

Explorations over, we wander back to the ship, starting our evening routine. Tonight’s show, though, is the Azamazing evening where we have the Antakya choir of Civilization coming aboard. As it turns out, the show is one of the best we have seen. The choir was formed in 2017 with a mission to contribute to the promotion of Turkey and all its values, and to contribute to improving communication and dialogue between different cultures. They sing all sorts of different Turkish, Greek and even Jewish songs! it was an excellent recital and the woman who is in charge of the choir gave a little speech, relating that her father founded this group and today was the first anniversary of his death. Very poignant. And very sweet.

On that note – we retired for the evening. All in all – strenuous hike or not – a very successful day.