ayvalik

breakfast bunny bread

We drove until Ayvalık, which happened to come upon us as the sun excused itself, weaving up and down narrow, crooked roads in search of a place to stay that we could afford. Eventually we found a bed in a restored cottage that I cannot remember the name of, and settled in.



As it was an old house, there were drafts which seemed hell-bent on interrupting our sleep, but we were soon revived by one of the best free breakfasts I have ever had in Turkey. What pushed this one past the warm feeling I still have from last year's Ayder breakfast, was a thyme omelette and a pool of Ayvalık's famous olive oil— perfect for drowning that ubiquitous, bland bunny bread in.



We set out for a little wander, content and warmed by several glasses of çay, squinting under the Aegean sun.

gallipoli

April 25th is Anzac Day, a day which honours all the Australians and New Zealanders who have fought and lost their lives in war, though the day specifically marks the landing of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) forces in Gallipoli. This cove, renamed ANZAC Cove in 1985, is where thousands of Australians and New Zealanders travel to each April for commemorative services on the 25th.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who became a national hero during the Gallipoli Campaign and eventually founded the Turkish Republic, offered these words to the ANZACs:

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

The first time I heard this song, I was nine. We were living in Istanbul then, and a teacher played it during a history class— I don't know which version it was, but the effect it had on me was powerful to say the least. It still brings tears to my eyes.

silhouettes on the dardanelles

When you have a long weekend handed to you, you must take advantage of that extra day and do something worthwhile like taking road trip. As soon as I got home from work, the car was packed with spare clothes, sketching materials, binoculars, a telescope and a tripod— I also threw in a copy of Letters of Vincent Van Gogh for good measure. We headed west towards the Dardanelles.

After spending the night in Eceabat, we drove along the coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula, curious about this narrow piece of land where more than 130,000 soldiers lost their lives during World War I. The bloody, eight-month Gallipoli Campaign began in 1915 as the British Empire attacked the peninsula with the hopes of capturing the strategic city of Constantinople, landing thousands of Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and French soldiers on Gallipoli's shores.



Remnants of bunkers and forts like Fort Namazgâh (pictured here), still dot the countryside. It's hard to imagine the violence in this serene landscape, under such a blue sky, but among the olive trees, thousands of gleaming white headstones stand to remind. This land is a graveyard.



The advancing Allied battleships entering the Dardanelles must have looked much like the silhouettes of benign cargo ships on the horizon today. What did the Turks feel upon seeing those dark shapes? And the men on the ships— what ran through their heads?

pumpkins and thyme honey

As this corner of the world at last greys and begins to chill, getting out of a warm snuggly bed in the morning feels like the least appealing thing to do in the world— especially on a Saturday. But naturally, someone somewhere outside my window had no problem getting out of bed to drill concrete at eight in the morning. Suspended between a foggy dream and awake, my mind wandered to the large pumpkin in my fridge, which I bought from a charming woman on the side of the road last week. I stood up on stiff legs and shuffled to the kitchen, the plan for pumpkin pancakes unfolding. This was a fine excuse to dip into the jar of thyme honey (bought from the side of another road)...



Is there anything that celebrates autumn more than a pumpkin? Pomegranates and persimmons perhaps, but there's nothing like a hearty pumpkin soup or the intoxicating flavour of its orange flesh blended with cinnamon and nutmeg.



As the dropping temperatures will soon keep me indoors, I suspect my posts will become even more sporadic than they have already been, since there won't be much to share. I hope I can use this time at home to get back to drawing and painting, as I have neglected my artwork for far too long. I'm not sure why I can't seem to create anything.

So while the sky looses its colour, I'm going to remind you of warmer times with a series of posts from a little adventure I took at the end of October. There will be blue seas and olive trees, a wooden horse, and thyme honey.

the bridge and the sky

Büyükçekmece has a beautiful little secret— well, secret to most foreigners. Undulating across a little neck of water between the Marmara Sea and Büyükçekmece lake is a 16th century stone bridge, built by the Michelangelo of the Ottoman Empire: Mimar Sinan. As the vast Empire stretched from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, the work of Mimar Sinan can be seen not only in Turkey, but in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Syria, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is said that his approach to architecture was an inspiration to the architects of the Taj Mahal.



Over the course of an hour the sky and light changed so many times, illuminating the stone into a gold, or fading it to grey.

pretty propaganda

One of the last things I did in Lisbon was visiting the end of the exhibit on Chinese Communist propaganda posters at the Museu do Oriente, which was absolutely incredible. I was surprised to see that some of the posters had a soft, Rockwellesque idealized realism, since in my mind Communist posters were more stylized and bold. Other posters had the most elegant, sweeping black lines filled with brilliant, flat colour— quite like a comic. Whether or not they were inspired by Eastern or Western styles of art and illustration, they were all beautifully rendered.



Just look at all the smiles— aren't propaganda posters fascinating?

Unfortunately my camera's battery died before the Asian Shadows exhibit, a stunning collection of shadow puppets from Turkey to Malaysia. 

já estou melhor, obrigada

art on the street

Lisbon has some of the most incredible street art I have ever seen— some pieces are anonymous subtle surprises, while others are massive, in-your-face works of art. The Crono Project is an ongoing urban art project which commissions artists to use derelict buildings as their canvases. I was over the moon to see my very first Blu and Ericailcane, and my second Os Gêmeos (the first sighting was in Boston last year).




I think there's something healthy in having respect for street art.