A few pictures

Here we are in front of the Turkish Bath house that we went to in Antalya. It was definitely a cultural experience where you feel pretty incompetent, not knowing what to expect or what to do and being unable to ask anyone who speaks your language.

You start in a steam room that has big marble octagon pedestal. An attendant (all girls on the girl side of the bathhouse) dumps warm water on you as you enter the room. Each of us then took space on the marble, laying on our backs to warm up. We found out later this is the belly stone, but it was too hard to lay on your belly!

They gave each of us an exfoliating scrup pad, and said wash. Were we supposed to? Did they do this? We waited, no one came back for awhile, so we started to. After 20 min or so attendants for each of us showed up and they proceeded to scrub, hard. Then dump more water on you. After that out to the lobby wrapped up to sit. They brought tea. They disappeared. We saw them in their break room. We waited, talked, waited. They talked amongst themselves and stayed out of sight.

Finally, one of them came in and sat with us - did she speak english? No. Hmm... waited more... Finally, another came by and we asked are we done?? She pointed upstairs. We proceeded and each attendant had a massage table, and each of us was worked over pretty good. The tables were all in the same room with separating curtains. So, we could here them ... giggling, whispering, talking - of course, we were convinced they were talking about us since we couldn't understand. Finally, Done. We changed and walked downstairs to find them back in their break room, eating, chatting and watching TV. It felt like we were their last customers of the day, and they were waiting for us to get the heck outta there.

We compared notes with the guys that went and found that they really got worked over, with range of motion pulls and tugs on on their limbs, etc.

Across from our hotel in Antalya, which was in the Old City, there was an old house turned souvenir and jewelry shop. We asked if we could come in and look around. This guy is the nephew of the owner who was also there. The uncle showed us the rooms on the first floor - it was 600 yrs old (he said), from Ottoman times, and the first floor were offices and the upstairs living quarters. While he was showing us around, S was talking to the nephew, who it runs out is a fledgling model. Here is his picture in an advertisement for a line of clothing.