Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Trabzon with Laura

I managed to barter a cheap lift from the hotel porter to the airport and picked Laura up at half 1 in the morning. Think she was pretty much the only girl on the flight! Was so great to see her after 2 months.
We spent the next day chilling out and using the hotel pool and beach. The following day we moved to a cheaper hotel in central Trabzon and stayed there for the rest of Laura's stay.
There was enough touristy things to keep us occupied, we visited an amazing monastery in the mountains which was built into a cliff face. There was a lovely old church with frescos in Trabzon as well as a villa given to Ataturk, although he only stayed there for one night.


Other highlights included the culinary specialties, such as brain, tongue and grieved runover. God knows what the last one is! Our two favourite places were a great fish restaurant and a bakery where Laura became a bit of a celebrity! We went there twice and the first time we had a big meat pizza thing, which was tasty but very filling - Laura only managed a bit of it. The woman there loved Laura's fringe and kept hugging her, called her beautiful and made sure that she was looked after. When she went to the toilet the lady announced it to the whole (mainly male) restaurant and got someone to take her there. Pretty embarrassing! I didn't get the same treatment! The second time we went Laura was made a special small cheese bread thing cos of her small appetite from the first time!

Laura got her results and found out she's a doctor so we went to celebrate. Couldn't find any wine so went for a beer and someone shared their birthday cake with us.
It was a lovely week and very hard to see Laura go. Don't know how long it will be til I see her again. The rest of Turkey passed as quickly as I could and I felt pretty lonely and sad. It wasn't helped that the last part of the Black Sea coast is ugly with uninspiring towns and huge rubbish heaps. It also rained for two days which didn't help. I was very much looking forward to Georgia though, I've heard great things and had planned to meet up with a friend from uni, Henry, who is teaching English in Gori.

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