Disappointment - Hamam part deux, Kars, Ani
My bout with food poisoning has proven to be fairly debilitating. I've been able to go through the motions but have felt under a permanent wave of fatigue. After a few days I was finally able to keep solids down, but even now I'm having a tough time having large meals.
After my night at Salle's, Richard and I made it to Kars pretty easily (only had to hitch twice! although the first was in the back of a truck, which didn't make my stomach feel too good bouncing around in the back) and settled in at a hotel. I think we were both just feeling really exhausted, him from not being used to being on the move, me from the aforementioned lack of fuel, so we spent the rest of the day just relaxing. I checked out the local hamam--a bad idea. The hamam was fine, bigger and better equipped than the one in Syria, but the heat of the sauna and steam room really took it out of me and I felt extremely faint. In retrospect this was probably dehydration from the food poisoning, so the entire thing was more nauseating rather than relaxing. I got the same cursory washing, and have concluded that maybe i just keep hoping for a proper massage rather than a scrub down.
The next day we checked out Ani. The guidebook makes Ani, a former Armenian capital, sound amazing, but it was little more than a large grassy knoll with some unimpressive ruins. I was crestfallen that I had gone so far out of my way to see it! the only good thing was the novelty of being able to take a picture of the armenian-turkish border. The whole thing just seemed like a huge waste of time, and it was made al the worse after finding out our driver ripped us off dramatically, which put me in a really bad mood.
You win some and you lose some, i guess.
After my night at Salle's, Richard and I made it to Kars pretty easily (only had to hitch twice! although the first was in the back of a truck, which didn't make my stomach feel too good bouncing around in the back) and settled in at a hotel. I think we were both just feeling really exhausted, him from not being used to being on the move, me from the aforementioned lack of fuel, so we spent the rest of the day just relaxing. I checked out the local hamam--a bad idea. The hamam was fine, bigger and better equipped than the one in Syria, but the heat of the sauna and steam room really took it out of me and I felt extremely faint. In retrospect this was probably dehydration from the food poisoning, so the entire thing was more nauseating rather than relaxing. I got the same cursory washing, and have concluded that maybe i just keep hoping for a proper massage rather than a scrub down.
The next day we checked out Ani. The guidebook makes Ani, a former Armenian capital, sound amazing, but it was little more than a large grassy knoll with some unimpressive ruins. I was crestfallen that I had gone so far out of my way to see it! the only good thing was the novelty of being able to take a picture of the armenian-turkish border. The whole thing just seemed like a huge waste of time, and it was made al the worse after finding out our driver ripped us off dramatically, which put me in a really bad mood.
You win some and you lose some, i guess.
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