I take it back about the small village. We love big cities. They’re not always friendly but Dublin has been kind to us, most generously putting on a Fringe festival for us, and we happen to be staying in Temple Bar, the heart of all the theatrical happenings.

We’ve seen two plays: “I’m sorry & I’m sorry”, at the Samuel Beckett theatre in Trinity College and “Poet No. 7” (after getting very lost) at Smock Alley in Temple Bar. We’ve drunk several pints of Guinness, wandered the streets, ate overpriced Indian and been generally happy. And tonight, we’re off to the Spiegeltent to do some dancing!

Our guide in all this meandering has been a crumpled piece of paper that has been in my back pocket the whole time we’ve been here, an impromptu guide to Dublin created for us by Pete and Bianca at a restaurant by the water in Kastellorizo last week. Thanks to them we’ve found Doheny and Nesbitt’s, Farrington’s, and the excellent cafe at the Irish Film Centre. And eaten a pub lunch.

I’ve decided that I approve of small towns. St Mawgan is so small it does not have a main street, just a little junction marked by the confluence of pub and church. Not churchgoers, we opted for the former last night and wished that we had a local like the Falcon. Although I was a bit flummoxed, upon ordering the scampi, that it arrived crumbed. With chips and peas.

Today, oh great relief, we ditched the tramping for two sets of wheels, hooray to be zooming down the country paths instead of clumping footsore along them! We rode the Camel Trail, 19 miles of cycle path along the route of an old railway. Through woods that could only be called woods and never bush or forest, along a river then an estuary, ending up in Padstow, or Padstein as we overheard someone call it. Rick Stein has colonised this seaside town with no less than 5 outlets for his wares. A restaurant, cafe, fish n chip joint, patisserie, deli and shop. Outrageous but the punters seem to love it. I have to admit we joined them, and the fish and chips were rather good.

Damon from Encounter Cornwall was very lovely, and we felt entirely more benign towards the countryside today.

After some very tortuous and circuitous travelling by bus on narrow and windy country roads, we have arrived at St Mawgan, a tiny village not far from Newquay, in Cornwall. This is that random sort of travel that you do for a purpose - I’ve ostensibly been working, having put in 4 days at the BASA conference at the very new university campus in Tremough. We also fit in an afternoon’s “sight seeing” (read: eating scones and clotted cream, reading the paper and drinking pints of Tribute Cornish Ale in a quiet pub - that was such a local that one gent brought his dog in for a beer).

Cornwall is… subdued. Our experience of it has been of tiny out of the way towns, some holiday vibes, windy countryside. We feel that we have aged about 50 years in the course of the last few days!

Some respite has come in the form of Pendoric, a lovely, eco and surfer friendly B&B that seems to cater primarily for adventure sportspeople, which is weird considering how sleepy this village is! Perhaps the raging ocean sits just over the next rolling hill…

Tomorrow we cycle the Camel Trail to Padstow, and try to work off some of the pasties (pronounced with the a as in Patsy, and my have we heard some lovely accents, think Wallace and Grommit) we’ve been eating.

And this is just to give you a brief idea of what I did on Mykonos (apart from dancing with random Italian men - though I left most of that to Mads!):

It’s very difficult to track down an internet cafe let alone sit in one for long enough to do anything when you are on an island as irresistibly relaxing as Kastellorizo. There was very little to do there except lie around in the sun, swim, eat at cafés by the water and dance at the local wedding

We’ll write more about Mads and Dan’s wedding later, suffice to say that it was beautiful, traditional and extremely fun. For now I’ll just leave you with a few more shots of Kasi

Apart from the several relaxing (though flu-y) days leading up to the wedding I’ve had a week of almost constant transit and island hopping. Dubai to Athens (I’ll save my rant about Olympic Airlines for another post) to Mykonos to Rhodes to Santorini to Kastellorizo to Rhodes (by ferry) to Athens to London to Cornwall where I’m currently typing this while J is attending her conference.

Once all of that was out of the way I did another half-lap before I found a seat. I was pleasantly surprised when, upon opening my laptop, I found that there is free wireless internet here. According to the airport’s welcoming page it was rolled out only three weeks ago. That’s a big step up from Sydney International which wants you to fork out $15 or something for an hour of connectivity. Still that’s better than the connection fee and 60c a kB they wanted for email access on the plane. Okay, this is all very nerdy, but I haven’t travelled internationally with a laptop before. I promise I will put it away when I get to the beaches… maybe… ;)

My flight to Athens is not even listed on the departure screens yet. I arrived here, bleary eyed, just before 5am and my next leg doesn’t board until 9am. The sun’s just come up but all I can see out the window at the moment is fog. Hopefully I will be able to get a better glimpse of Dubai from the air on the way out.

We left Kusadasi by ferry to travel to Samos and then to Mykonos, where we are staying for a few days.

Allright, you’ll all be chuckling at me, but I need to make a list of all the things we’ve eaten here that have been excellent. And they have been excellent. Also, for the information of future travellers, is where we had the best example of each foodstuff. Enjoy.

Turkish Breakfast at the Kelebek hotel in Goreme.

Happiness, I have decided, is a wonderful breakfast in a beautiful place. This particular state of happiness involves a boiled egg, excellent bread, green and black olives, tangy white cheese sprinkled with black sesame seeds, cucumber, and good tomatoes. Also yoghurt, watermelon and honeydew. Partaking of this overlooking Goreme village for the last three mornings has been sublime.

Lentil soup at the Belisirma Restaurant, in the Ilhara Valley in Cappadocia

This restaurant had tables in the water, where you could dangle your feet in the river. Lovely! And here we ate what Lara decided was one of her favourite things to eat ever: lentil soup, with lemon and chopped vine leaves. Tangy.

Ayran at a courtyard cafe behind the Aya Sofiya

Cold, salty, yoghurt drink.

ALI NAZIK at Alaturca in Goreme

This was sliced lamb, chargrilled eggplant, yoghurt. Divine.

Mezes

I have mispronounced this word consistently for almost a week now, but we have eaten many of these plates of dips and salads. So good to nibble on when not quite hungry enough for a meal but looking for an excuse to eat some tasty Turkish food. By far the best we have eaten was last night at Alaturca. It included a chicken and walnut salad that was unexpectedly wonderful.

Baklava

Lara was on a misson in Istanbul. Good baklava. We had to get through several indifferent versions until we hit paydirt: Hafiz Mustafa Sekerlemeleri, a shop and cafe in Eminonu, near the Serkeci train station. This place was the bomb. Its baklava is dense, nutty, not too sweet. Our only problem there was working out how to say “can we have one of each?”

Turkish delight

We went to the shop owned by the family of the dude who invented this stuff, but it was still not as good as that we tasted at the Hafiz Mustafa. Their pistacio and hazelnut, in particular, were yum-oh.

Borek

This stuff - noodly pastry containing cheese, spinach, whatever you like - is the bog standard street food here and we’ve tasted some really greasy ones. We couldn’t believe it - also the best version of this was at the Hafiz Mustafa. I want to live in that shop. Or at least nearby.

Gozleme and apple tea

I’ve eaten many a hungover gozleme at the orange grove markets in Rozelle. This one, at the Nazar Cafe in Goreme, was different. Not at all greasy. the cheese here is not at all strong, but very tasty. good stuff.

The Nazar also served us the best apple tea I’ve tasted so far. And I’ve tasted gallons of the stuff. it’s usually made from a powder, which is kind of scary. But I love it anyway.

Raki

While I’m on to beverages, praise be to raki, the national spirit of Turkey. Like Ouzo, served watered down in a tall glass, with a tall glass of water to go with it. A glass of this and a game or six of backgammon and lara and I are two contented ladies.

Pickles

I bet you were wondering when I’d get to this. We went (twice) to the spice markets in Istanbul, which are fabulous fun, selling spices, tea, nuts, dried vegetables on strings, herbal potions… Down a sidestreet from the market we found a cheerful man decorating his window full of pickles with olive branches. So many different pickles! Lara and I had long planned to have a picklefest, and we finally had one: on the rooftop terrace of our hotel, with some bread and enormous mugs of Efes, Turkey’s ubiquitous beer.

After writing that enormous list, I’m exhausted. And hungry. We haven’t tried the kebaps yet…

Religion and tourism are never far behind each other, here. We saw Dervishes whirl in a hall off a train station platform in Sirkeci. The woodwork painted pastel pink. It began with a performance of sufi music. A flautist with too much chin, a woman playing the zither with not enough chin. An oud, and several singers.The room writhed with impatience, tourists fanning themselves with their programs and wondering when the dervishes would appear and start their whirling. One singer, a young man in eyeglasses, placed his music folder under his arm, closed his eyes and sang, swaying happily. They all swayed as they played. From the vantage point of my reduced height, all I could see from sitting position was the tops of their brown hats, bobbing from side to side.

The dervishes, when they appeared, were young, sweating, serious looking men. They were performing, and praying, and working. They began with their arms crossed across their chests, hands on shoulders, then one by one would start to turn, their hands peeling down to their waists, then slowly up into the air, one hand facing up to receive from God, the other pointing down to give to the people. We could hear a whistle and the train pulling in, the clicking of fans, and various camera pings and beeps and clicks.

A few weeks before we left I saw Crossing the Bridge, Fatih Akin’s film about the music of Istanbul, with a scungy Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten wandering around the city playing with various musicians. We haven’t seen as much live music as I would like, but I have been noticing the sounds here. The calls to prayer bouncing from loudspeaker to loudspeaker across Istanbul, the prog-metal emanating from a bar in Beyoglu, the intense hubbub rising as we got further and further into the Grand Bazaar. It’s awesome.

There is a gene in Turkish waiters that makes them turn to the page of the dictionary which contains the somewhat inexplicable phrase “will you do it for me”. The first waiter to stumble across this gem was at one of our favourite places, the Dervish cafe. This was straight after telling us, sesame street count style, that a girl had disappointed him ‘one year ago, two year ago, three year ago’ and that ‘I have lost her’. I’m not sure he fully appreciated why we were pissing ourselves laughing. I’ll leave it to Jules to tell you about the second one!

The third time we went back to the Dervish, the waiters stopped just giving us backgammon tips as they walked past. After I’d finished one go, he just picked up the dice and started playing for Jules, standing up through the entire game as though he was waiting, impatiently, for us to order. I had one of those moments where you realise that although you think you’ve been doing something ok, you realise that you’ve been playing in baby league. He beat the pants off me. We did, however, pick up a few tips and our games have been a lot more fun since (read lots more risks taken, a lot of slapping each other off the board with great vehemence.) Jules is still apologising when she hits me - I’m wondering how long that will last …

The taxi driver smiled at our written instructions - some hobbled together phrasebook attempt at ‘I’d like to go to the Istanbul hostel - it’s next to the Four Seasons hotel’ - and took off like a maniac. I thought of my yoga teacher and smiled on the inside - they drive just like me. I think I’m going to like this place ;)

The feeling was confirmed by our first coffee experience - Julieanne mastered the phrase for “i’d like a turkish coffee that’s just a little bit sweet” … “please” … “thanks” and we sipped with pleasure in a leafy cafe right next to the Ayiasofiya. The first of many sitting and sipping experiences.

We had lots of fun reading Ben and Shel’s recent travel/photo blog we’d thought we’d have a go at it ourselves. Can’t promise it will be as regular (or as good).