Lion's milk

Well. One might wonder how one could whinge about a week in Turkey. 

One might. Wonder. Especially since the view from my room looked like this.

And yet...

I was fine for the first couple of days. Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

And then on Tuesday I came down with the plague. 

It was awful. Sore throat Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning I was a sniveling mess. 

Mr. D was ever so sympathetic. He ordered me coffee via room service... 

and left me with tissues and a Suduko and strict orders to take good care of myself while he went off to do important electrical things. 

So I went about my important business of surfing the internet, breaking Blogger in Turkey, and entirely messing up Mrs. G's amazing statistical pie chart by visiting her site 17 kachillion times. (Note the extremely large slice of Polish pie. My fault.)

However, people do travel to get cured, don't they? As in the tubercular patients in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.... which of course I didn't bother to read in German class because I was all ticked off about my stupid German-speaking ex-boyfriend, and let's not think about that bit any more, shall we? 

Moving on. Not bitter.

But that's what the sun and the Mediterranean Sea are all about, right?

Lie on a sunbed. Soak up the sun.

Accidentally ingest some delicious salt water to rehydrate or re-ionize or some damn thing. I don't know. I really didn't feel too well. I floated around in the sea a bit, and lay in the sun for a while, and stole a whole box of tissues from the room and was generally miserable.

Of course this did excuse me, on Thursday, from Mr. D's ramble over extremely precipitous crags and ruins. I just lay in bed and moaned softly to myself.

Thursday evening I did pull myself together for dinner. After all, feed a cold, starve a fever.

The waitstaff took pity on me, and Murat, a waiter, suggested something special. 

"This thing will make you well. Raki and juice of fresh lemon. Good. Drink, then you get sweat. Take shower, next sleep."

"Ummm, okay."

I dragged myself off to scoff some more baklava from the dessert buffet, and returned to my table to find this.

Mr D, with a naughty glint in his eyes, said, "You're supposed to drink this down in one go. Supposedly you'll feel great tomorrow morning."

Hmmmm. Mr D is trustworthy, but sometimes I do wonder just a little bit.

But down the hatch it went.

WHOOOOAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Crickey. That was strong. The combination of lemon juice and licorice/aniseed could peel the soles right off your feet!

After I drank this noxious potion, Mr. D informed me that in Murat's Turkish childhood, his mother would brew up this potion for him and have him drink it. Then Murat had to lie down on a bed of newspapers with holes poked through the pages and he would sweat out his "toxins" or "germs" or "WTF, whatever!" and wake up the next morning a new man. 

Or a new child, perhaps, since apparently the Turks don't mind giving 180% proof alcoholic bevvies to sick children. 

The good thing was, I felt better the next morning. Well enough to go shopping with Mr D. He kindly took me to the Antalya Museum, where we looked into buying me a sacrophagus. Since I was pretty close to DEATH'S DOOR.

Entirely appropriate for my possible entombment, post-plague.

Go out in style, that's my style. Love the garlands, don't you?