Episode 5 – Italy / Napoli / Sorrento

Naples is a seaport and a hub. Besides from all, it is famous for its Mafioso (this part looks like a synthetic truth though lots of people swear by it). Actually the most impressive thing is the lemon. These fruits are growing wild in this region. The soil is rich from the volcano nearby. They grow exceedingly beautiful grapes here and the wine is supposed to be first class. I did not stay long enough to taste the juice of Bachus.

We travel to Sorrento. This is a typical tourist heaven with all the brand names compacted into one street. Me and Danny just found a spot and sat on a bench at the town square watching all the girls walked by. People have a different understand of Italians. They always say Italian men are good looking and Italian women are good looking till they are 21. I think it depends on the region. In the south of Italy you can expect people with olive oil skin, dark complexion, heavily built bodies with a shorter statue. Whereas the people from the north inhabit blue eyes, fair hair, milky complexion and they have lanky built bodies. But one thing for sure, the Italian language sounds harsh and brassy compared with other Latin origin languages. This does not help in the scoring of the most beautiful people.

Episode 4 – the Greeks never left – Mykonos

The island of Mykonos is famous for its windmill and nice beaches. The houses are all painted in white as it is the only color allowed by law. There are not much vegetable on the island and the boat is the best vehicle to reach other ports and islands.

It was a quiet village and the whole island is supported by tourist trade. We walked around the town and visited the little boutiques. Upon one of them, a lady came out and spoke to us in English. As the conversation developed, we discovered she was a Western alumnus who graduated around the same year as me. She was born in London, Ontario. She visited the island of Mykonos and met her husband and they stayed on the island and opened a souvenir shop. It was a wonderful feeling and we enjoyed it thoroughly. While the conversation was carrying on, a customer closed by heard our conversation and she confessed she was also a Western alumnus a few years of our senior. That also called for more celebration and we walked out of that shop with a whole load of fragrance soap. There were extra pieces in the deal and yet we questioned did we need that much soap? It is still an unknown whether we go a good deal or we got taken.

Mykonos has wonderful sunshine and it would produce extremely useful solar power for its inhabitants. But there were very little use of solar panels.

We met an old lady who put a water dish by the wall. She gestured to me that was for the cats. Greek people believed in pets, especially cats and dogs. 

Episode 3 kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey

The Turkish people inherited the buildings built by the Greeks. The theatres, multi-usage forum, the library, all bore the Greek influence. There were a lot of copycats around in the old days. Who copied whom was unknown but everybody claimed their stuff was the best. Such were human nature.

At one gate there was a human head carved at the epic. Some archaeologist claimed it was the head of Medusa, the lady who could turn everything into stone if you dared to look at her face front. Then a few years later, another archaeologist claimed it was the boy friend of Emperor Hadrian. The image was left on the gate in memory of the boy friend. I totally agreed with the later. Anything scandalous will produce juicy stories that people love to hear. We should support this commercialism totally.

All the walking around created the problem of lack of washroom facilities. There are free facilities yet there are also ones which require a small cash donation before you can use them. This becomes a royal pain since you might not have the exact change and you felt blackmailed if you have to pay too much. The best thing is to buy a bottle of water or a cup of coffee and then use the washroom. Both coffee and water would induce you frequent visit to the washrooms more. So it is the chicken or the egg scenario.

Episode 3 (cont’d) – Istanbul, Turkey