Back on the road today - Katy

We head off to our next city, Neveshir, today. We have no idea what type of internet access we may have until we get there. Actually, we aren't exactly what our travel schedule is today either. So far the information that we've been able to piece together is that we'll leave Kastamonu today around 1pm. Then we have to drive to Ankara, where we'll pick up another bus to Neveshir. There is no direct route from Kastamonu to Neveshir. We are all able to pick up bits and pieces from our families and then we try to string them together to come up with a more complete story.

A couple of the families took us on a trip out to the Black Sea over the weekend. We first stopped in Safranbolu, which was the town that has been named a World Heritage site. We toured a couple of the traditional houses and strolled the shop-lined streets. The traditional houses are really interested and we all have enough pictures of them to bore you for years. (Don't worry, we won't.) The houses were divided into a mens' section and a womens' section, so that when other men came to visit they were able to do so without seeing any of the women. Since, however, any special visit is always accompanied by food and drink (as we well know), they built these revolving cupboards so that the women could place food and tea in the cupboard for the men to serve to their guests.

The Black Sea was beautiful, of course. Does anyone know why it is called the Black Sea? We arrived fairly late, strolled the shop-lined streets, ate a delicious seafood dinner, stopped in at a bar next to the restaurant for some drinks and dancing. At one point that had all of us girls head down to join the musicians in an Eric Clapton song. At 2:30am, we made our way to the hotel where we fell asleep with our balcony doors open so that we could listen to the waves. On Sunday we toured Amasra a little more, hiking to the top of one portion of the city so that we could take in the views of the cityscape.

Time to pack and get ready to leave. I will be sorry to leave Ozkan and Nurgen's house, they been so welcoming, and their little 3 year old, Bilge, is quite entertaining.

More stories from our next stop...