Day 19: September 23. A small SNAFU.

We awoke bright and early (we're talking before 6 am) to make our ferry from Kusadasi to Samos in Greece. We took the shuttle bus from Selcuk to Kusadasi, then arrived (after a short unexpected walk) at the ferry kiosk, to find out that the Greek crew who sail the boats to Samos are on strike and therefore our ship is not sailing. Luckily, there was a 5 pm ship that was sailing despite the strike! This of course had a snowball effect on our plans; if we couldn't take the 830 am ferry to Samos, we missed the 430pm ferry from Samos to Mykanos, which is the only boat from Samos going to the islands and the next ferry to Mykanos wasn't until Saturday!

So we had to make a decision. After a quick breakfast by the sea, we went to a travel agency to figure out our options. We decided to take the 1030 pm ferry from Samos to Athens tonight (which gets in at 630 am), then try to turn right back around to go to Santorini at 730 am. It's a lot of backtracking, but its the only way to get to Santorini before the weekend. We also had the option of visiting Peloponnese (the southern portion of Greece's mainland that's also beautiful and full of history). In the end we chose to go back down to Santorini. We both wanted a break from daily touring of ruins and different cities. We could always decide to ship back up to athens again and train or bus to the south. I guess we'll see. As they say, when in Greece...

After deciding on tickets (although everything still depended on making the 730 ferry to Santorini), we went down to the beach. Soon our fatigue overwhelmed us, so we took catnaps next to some Europeans who thought they were in Hawaii (leopard print bathing suits and all).

Waking up hungry, we searched far and wide to find a small street cafe that served turkish food. Its weird that the turkish restaurant owners think that tourists only like to eat traditional tourist food (yuck!). Finally we found a little hole in the wall disguised as a pizza place. We sat down, ordered our pides and munched on tomatoes and cucumbers (the turkish only seem to serve these two vegetables). After our meal the woman who owned the place started talking to Alicia in depth about how discouraged she was by the the Turkish education system, and how worried she was for the future of the Turkish Repbulic. The system seems to valorize education abroad over its own system by granting huge scholarships to its most promising students to study abroad, while giving little aid to the less "clever" students who really need the funding. Granted, she was complaining about having to pay $500 a semester for college for her son while her extremely "clever" cousin had full scholarships abroad. We tried to explain that people in the US pay thousands and thousands a semester, but she didn't quite understand. I guess its all relative. Still, she was very kind and gave us some insight to the Turkish life.

After this we went to the supermarket to spend our last lira (YTL). We got some crackers and a peach and headed for the ferry. It was a fairly small boat, and it was crowded on the sun deck. As we sat there waiting to leave we both felt a little sad. We had really loved our time in Turkey. As the boat took off, we stood looking back listening to the call to prayer as it was mixed with the zesty Greek music playing on the loudspeaker. We listed all the little quirky things we'd miss, all the interesting people we'd met and all the things wed learned.

We arrived in samos around 730 as the sun was setting. Instead of hearing the call to prayer we heard music. We got money out (€)
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