Baste the Turkey: Clean and Massage to Prepare

So no post yesterday because nothing exciting happened. And by nothing I mean we did not get a little tipsy at our hotel, then take hotdogs we stole from breakfast to feed stray dogs, in the process loosing our key, get a new key, decide the old key needed to be found as we traipsed the grounds followed by our new found pack of wild dogs.
Our hotel staff definitely thinks, these American bitches be crazy.

So today we actually set an alarm to get the hospital shuttle to the ferries at Pendick bound for Yalova.

Before we ever left, Laura said she wanted to try the Turkish Baths. That scared me (I have issues with other peoples cleanliness) so I started researching. It turns out that a lot of tourists visit the Turkish baths. Rather than go into the city, I found out there is a small town based around a natural sulphur spring which would be easy to get to by ferry. Ataturk so loved these healing waters that he built a house there.

Back to today. So seabus from Pendick to Yalova, dolmus to Termal. If you're Keeping count we just got transportation Bingo.

  The seabus is a fast car ferry

We'd done a lot of research into Turkish Baths from procedure to clothing options. Me and women have completely separate areas. Men are required to remain covered while the women's varies. We both only packed one pieces so we decided a panties and sports bra combo would be fine. We were right as there were a couple young women in bikinis but most of the grannies were topless (sorry about the image of topless grannies).

We booked ourselves for the works including scrub and massage. We undressed, wrapped in our towels and headed down to the bath. We did a few minutes in the excrutingly hot sauna, then a few in the hot pool, then we rinsed with a little cold water, tried to lay on the hot marble slab which was too hot, and back to the hot pool. We had just decided that maybe we needed to go tell them we were ready for our scrub and massage when the masseurs came in.

This is the traditional Turkish Bath that we chose

The took us to small room with two tables with plastic mats on them. They scrubbed the beejeezes out of us. Have you ever been peeling from a sunburn and when you rub it the skin sort of rolls into balls? That. Over our entire bodies. It was one of those things that hurt but then you think it must be good for you. They even did our faces. I am not sure what you are paying but I just had full body microdermabrasion for 15 Turkish Lira. After the scrub, there is a rinse then a full body massage. I have a pretty tough massage therapist back home and this was what she does ten times faster (so I am sure not as beneficial) and with a bar of soap. We were then rinsed with cold water dumped over our heads.

This is one of the baths from the outside, each circular room has something different - a hot pool, sauna, hot marble slab to lie on.

After we recovered from the shock of what we just went through, we dressed and headed out. We grabbed the usual Turkish fare. Oh, do not come here if you want to try flavors of the world. This is kebabs and only kebabs.

We did a tiny bit of walking around Yalova's produce market and caught our Seabus back home.

The produce market

Tonight, in honor of our last night here, I think we might drink some Raki.