It's been a busy few weeks despite the best efforts of the weather! It has been very windy for a few days at a time then glorious winter sunshine and no wind for a day or so and then…….We rode our bikes to the Temple/Sanctuary of Apollo about 4 klms away for the day. Very impressive ruins, apparently the biggest or best Apollo one in Turkey. it was partly wrecked by a series of earthquakes and a few wars. This is typical of most of the ruins here it seems.

On one of the nice sunny days we took a taxi to Miletus with Brian and Lyn from Aerial (Aussies) to look at the amphitheatre. It is the biggest in Asia Minor and quite impressive. We were able to eavesdrop on the tour operator who was talking to his tour when we were way up in the stands due to the very good acoustics. Miltus was the premier Greek city of the Empire in it's time but the silting up of the river estuary eventually killed it off as the boats were no longer able to access the port or town. (global something or another, at least they can't blame us baby boomers for this one!). The amphitheatre was actually sea front back in the day. We then went to the nearby museum and then to lunch (gozleme) and then to Priene, a ruined city that had had to relocate due to silting of waterways and subsequently died off. All very interesting. The river Meander meanders all through here - hence the word. Our taxi driver is good and quite safe so we have his card as our local driver, he also speaks excellent English. We, none of us, are doing very well with Turkish! When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk came to power one of the things he did apart from banning the Fez and Veils was to insist that the "English" alphabet be used. This had the effect of clearing up a lot of language problems but left very few people who now can understand the old Ottoman writings.

After a few days of not doing much, except for Kiki and Peter trying to find a persistent leak, the weather came out all nice so we invited Emma and Don with us for a trip. Teknesi is about 3 hours from Didim and is the town of Iassus (Iassos if your'e feeling more Greek). it's a very pretty little fishing town with a half sunken tower at the harbour entrance. We walked through a picturesque olive grove with ruins all though it and a few cows and goats. We also picked up about 4 stray dogs. Here any homeless dogs are taken in and de sexed, ear tagged and let go. It seems that the town sort of collectively looks after them after a fashion. Don speaks fluent Turkish and was able to get us lots of spanner crags from the harbour at the equivalent of AUD 50 c each. Even at touristy prices they still would have been cheap. One thing about his time of year - there are no crowds, so nice and safe from Covid but also having everything just about to ourselves where we go. Obviously lots of things are not open but enough are to be interesting.

Peter and I had a super anniversary dinner cooked for us on the 4th. Veal marsala and a baked cheese cake to follow. We drank a bottle of the very nice French Champs we bought in Bordeaux and a very good bottle of red. We keep them under the floor under the carpet so they are hard to get to!!

Today we are cowering inside while it blows 30 plus knots. Peter and Kiki have had to re tie a few neighbouring boats that were not doing so well and their owners away. Cora is making oxtail stew for dinner.