Vacation

Back in April, soon after Ava's 5th birthday, we lit out of the city and headed for southern climes. We took a 9-hr road trip to Kusadasi, an area close to the ruins of Ephesus, where we booked a reservation at an all-inclusive resort at the last minute with a low off-season price. We were desperate for a break from work and from the city itself. Life never seemed to slow down and I think we were coming off some busy, chaotic weeks before we went on vacation.

The road trip was nice as opposed to flying. It was a 9-hr trip but we were accustomed to long trips in the US anyway so 9 hours is similar to 11 or 12 going to Florida from North Carolina. It was a leisurely drive on a scenic route. It was all green hills and mountains with flocks of sheep, horse farms, and olive groves.

Sheep

There were even produce stands selling oranges on the side of the highway....just like Florida!

We stayed in an apartment that had everything. There were two bedrooms, two baths (one was a full bath and the other was a shower), a salon and dining area, a kitchen completely stocked with kitchenware and nice, modern appliances that put my ancient kitchen appliances to shame. Everything was tastefully done with current decorating fashion.

The resort (golf and spa) is perched on top of a mountain (read: windy) that overlooks a valley on one side and the sea in the distance on the other side. The views are breathtaking. All we did were look at the views and never went sightseeing. The two pictures below are from our balcony:

All that golden light was from the sunset, slightly to the right. I did no editing to the colors, only added a halo around the picture which is pretty indiscernible anyway. 

Same view during day - I edited this picture to sharpen the colors and added contrast to bring the clouds into definition 

I mentioned that the resort is a golf and spa resort. Nice arrangement for couples - the husband plays golf all day while the wife pampers herself in the spa. I didn't use the spa since I was pregnant and it was at additional cost. The golf course was beautiful and pretty difficult to play according to reviews. The resort was barely half full as it was off season but it is an enormous property with many pools throughout. It's a time-share resort, all condominiums, with an all-inclusive service that makes you feel like you're at a hotel at the same time. It caters mostly to Europeans and Europeans were all we saw. It's always interesting to vacation with a cosmopolitan body of guests.

The all-inclusive aspect is always nice but in this case, the food left a lot to be desired. We ate to sustain ourselves, not to enjoy the food. That's all I'll say about it. We stocked up on snacks when we went into town so we did enjoy some treats. The neat thing about this resort is that you can stay there without the all-inclusive option (it'd be a bit cheaper) but that meant you were going into town to eat (the town doesn't have much to speak of) or you were cooking in the condo (I'm not cooking on vacation, people!).

The weather was gorgeous, sunny with the temps in the high 60s -- warm enough for those northern Europeans to swim. Not warm enough for me, born and bred in Florida. There was a single "heated" outdoors pool that the guests swam in. I put that in quotation marks because it was still cold - it was simply warmer than the thousand other pools in the vicinity. Greg said it was bearable on sunny days when you stayed submerged but when you got out and were exposed to the winds (unavoidable when you're on a mountaintop), you froze. That was the case with Ava and it was hard to get her warmed up unless we got her into a hot bath inside. She really enjoyed swimming with the older kids, though. Darcy was content to sit with her feet dangling in the water and run around the area. Greg got in a couple of times. I was happy to lie in the sun with a book.

Other than that, all we did was a lot of nothing.  We did this:

The girls watched too much TV while we read books copiously 

We napped a lot

I forgot that we did play at a playground set onsite. There were basketball courts, tennis courts, and a outdoor chess board with pieces nearly as big as Darcy, which I've never seen before. Greg and I would've had fun playing chess like this if we didn't have two kids to chase after. He'd beat me because he was in the chess club in school -- nerd ;-) -- and I'm terribly rusty.

I think the queen and king were nearly as tall as Darcy.

I also forgot that we did manage a day of sightseeing on the way back to the city. We stopped off in Ephesus since it was on the way and it'd be a terrible oversight not to go there. We spent a few hours there and it was pretty hot. I don't think we managed to see the entire ruins before we got tired and headed back down to the car to continue on our way home. I was still in my first trimester, easy to wear out, and I carried Darcy in the Ergo on my back so that sapped my energy quickly. I won't post pictures because there are easily millions of pictures of the ruins on the internet, mostly better than mine, with a great deal of descriptions of the ruins in modern day, what it must've looked like historically, the culture of that day, the significance of it in the Bible, etc. Too much to put on this blog. I will leave you to browse pictures and read about Ephesus on the internet at your leisure but I will tell you that visiting a place like that in person is much better than reading about it. It's just really cool.

Well, that was our vacation. It was only 4 nights. We did feel much better afterward. We were energized enough to chug along in our work and complete it. So much happened after vacation (the scare with the bleeding, the up and down about whether we were going stateside this summer, etc) so that last-minute vacation before all that was a good timing.

Now, our next vacation will be stateside at the emerald waters of Destin. Can't wait!

PS: If you are still reading the girls' blog, I posted three different posts in a row. Take a look and get caught up. I still need one or two more posts there so keep an eye out.