Friday 23 June 2017

Ephesus


I just poked my head round the door to see if I had upset anyone last night before I went to bed. I don't remember much about the very end of last night, possibly because I had been celebrating the drop in temperature. A hangover in that heat would have been unthinkable.

We once went to Southern Turkey, where it was about 100 in the shade. A friend of mine had been in the same place the week before when it was even hotter. He took an egg from the hotel and went out into the street with it. He cracked it open and poured it onto the pavement. It fried.

I spent the whole two weeks drinking pints of hot water during the day, and in the evening I drank a maximum of one small bottle of weak beer, washed down with pints of - this time - cold water.

Our fellow Brits began drinking alcohol before breakfast and wandered around town shouting, swearing and generally causing acute embarrassment to us until about 3.00am the following morning. They turned a lobster red in the sun.

In our hotel, a few days before we arrived, a British husband and wife were celebrating their honeymoon. The marriage ended even sooner than they had expected, because he tried to drown his new bride in the swimming pool. The Turkish waiters had to drag her out of the water before he succeeded. She went back home to her mother and he was in prison awaiting his sentence by the time we got there.

The travel agent was a young friend of ours and she tried to warn us what sort of a place Bodrum was by saying, "A lot of young people go there", but the warning was too obscure for us. I think her commission was worth more to her than our holiday was to us.

All we wanted to see was Ephesus.

18 comments:

  1. I've never been on a holiday like that. It must be fairly recent because Brits abroad haven't always behaved like that have they?

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  2. My previous husband and I once had a holiday which went down the coast of Turkey beginning at the Dardanelles - taking in Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus and all places in between - wonderful and before the days of mass tourism.

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  3. I used to take the Newhaven Dieppe ferry quite often. Even on an early sailing people would gather around the bar as soon as possible. I've also seen English school children totally drunk having bought bottles of Whiskey at the duty free. What is it about Brits, holidays, and alcohol?

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    1. The Danes used to be worse than us. Not now though.

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  4. Funny i drink less on holiday.. I never drink at the airport or on the plane either.......
    Why did the guy try and kill his wife did you ever find out?

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  5. I always drink at airports. Even if it's 7 O'Clock in the morning. It's a tradition.

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    1. Have you ever been refused to board ?

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    2. I thought I was going to be banned by Air Berlin. I was travelling alone and paralytic.

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    3. It frightened me later. I cannot remember getting off the plane.

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    4. Or getting a taxi or anything in fact. I missed everything I was supposed to be doing the next day.

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    5. Bloody hell, ive forgotton perhaps 2 hours of my life not days

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    6. Have you two quite finished? Can we get on with my blog now please?

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  6. I do admire your resolve Tom, just having one beer in the evening, and of course a hangover in the heat is hideous, so it is wise to avoid over indulging....I hardly drink at all these days, and in fact very rarely ever got really really drunk but when I remember the odd time I did have an extra glass or two and then how awful I felt the morning after I honestly think that I couldn't drink now even if I wanted to....but sometimes the world and everything and everyone in it just seems better after a drink doesn't it?

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    1. My idea of social drinking is being enabled to converse with bores in the pub by having a couple of drinks.

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