Our day started at a
table on the water’s edge in the camping ground’s open air restaurant using
their wi-fi to catch up on email and the goings on in Jane’s world of Facebook.
Rather than use the camping ground’s open showers I showered in Mabel.
 |
| Jane Catches Up With Facebook |
Mid-morning we set off in
Smarty and drove the 10km to Ayvalik to visit a supermarket for our first
shopping expedition in Turkey. Yesterday while passing through towns I had
noticed large Kipa supermarkets and had seen signs to one in Ayvalik.
 |
| Boat, Ayvalik |
The Kipa supermarket in
Ayvalik was enormous stocking everything from car tyres to fresh fish,
toiletries to fire extinguishers, more types of bread than you could shake a
stick at to clothes. A lot of the goods were Kipa own brand. Jane commented it
was rather like Tesco in the UK, except I don’t think I’ve seen car tyres, fire
extinguishers and spanners in Tesco. It seemed there was everything there you
could possibly need, and then some. However, you could spend days finding it as
shelves seemed to have been stocked at random with cereals placed somewhere
between children’s car seats and cling film while baked beans were in the midst
of an enormous selection of pasta. (There’s a bit of poetic licence there, but
it paints the picture of how difficult it was for us to find what we needed).
Everything was labeled in Turkish, of course, adding to the difficulties of
finding stuff. However, after walking most of the aisles we had ticked off
everything on our list although we weren’t 100% sure of some of the goods. In
particular, we took pot luck selecting cheese, relying on the goat’s head on the
label for a clue. We also found wine at less than 20 lira a bottle,
whereas others were 60 or even 70 lira.
We noticed that spirits are very expensive at well over 100 lira although Raki,
the Turkish equivalent of the Greek Ouzo was in the 20 lira range. There was no
problem paying by credit card and looking at the till receipt I saw that Kipa
is owned by Tesco!
Back at the camping
ground we had an hour on loungers at the beach before lunch. I started
re-reading Catch 22 that I first read in my twenties. It was just as good, if
not better, and had me laughing out loud at times.
 |
| Camping Ground Beach |
 |
| Day Trippers Stop By Late Afternoon |
After lunch of bread and cheese we spent the afternoon on the beach reading and dozing with Jane fitting in a few swims.
It was my turn to cook a
recipe Jane had made up. It comprised of potatoes, tomatoes, onion, garlic,
baked beans laced with chilli, chick peas and Greek sausage. While it sounded a
strange combination, it was very good.
Over a Camperdoodle a man
from one of the camper vans that arrived late last night struck up
conversation. He had very good English. He was born in Italy but now lives in
Istanbul and had rented a campervan for a week by the sea. He was very envious
of our planned month in Turkey. He asked what we were drinking, he had a G and
T but had Raki “if we needed it in an emergency”. We told him we had Ouzo, he
told us Ouzo was for women, men drink Raki. Jane checked the guidebook, Raki is
much stronger than Ouzo.
No comments:
Post a Comment