Trabzon.

Arrived in Trabzon after a long overnight bus. Checked in to a lonely planet recommended cheap hotel. Planned to stay here just for a night or two to see the cliff hanging Sumela monastery, send a few things home to Mum and organize myself for heading into Iraq in a couple days. The Sumela monastery was really beautiful and spent a whole day out there – was a mission of a walk down from the top of the mountain where this ancient monastery stands, hanging from the cliffs .. yep, pretty much rock climbing and bush walking overseas hahahaha, well not quite. The monastery itself is also called the 'Virgin Mary Monastery', was built in 412 A.D (the oldest christian place of worship on the entire black sea coast) and consists of 4 stories and 72 rooms .. most of which are not available to the public.

Also in Trabzon, I experienced my first Hamam - a Turkish bath where you enter this huge marble room which is exceptionally hot, like a sauna, you strip down to ur undies and drench yourself in small buckets of hot water. After doing this for about 15 mins, a lady comes and you lay out on a big warm slab of marble and she rubs your body down with these special material mittens and it literally rolls the dead skin off you .. completely gross but absolutely amazing! After this, you wash off all the rolled up balls of dead skin and then you lay back on the slab where you are lathered up with soapy water and washed from head to toe, once thats rinsed you lay back down for an amazing olive oil soap massage, which was outrageously good. I had total Hamam shame .. seeing how much dry skin was coming off me ... and tried to explain to the woman washing me that I had been on the med coast and had gotten burnt and thats why I had so much dead skin .. her turned up nose didnt change hearing my pleas and excuses!!! Embarrassing! Was an amazing thing to do though, skin felt phenominal after, even though I lost about 2 shades of tan to the loafer!

Also in Trabzon, we headed out for food and walked straight into a political protest with a heap of Turkish and Palestinian flags flying, with a huge police and milatry presence with a huge area sectioned off ... exactly what I was trying to avoid in the Middle East! We didnt really know what was happening but figured it was something about Israel - we asked a few people reading newspapers with pictures of burning flags etc, and put the picture together bit by bit about what was happening - looks like Israel may be off the itinerary.

At this point, we still werent sure if we were going to head into Kurdish Iraq, but after sussing out the busses and checking out the news to make sure it was all good in that region, we booked an overnight bus from Trabzon to Cizre, reasonably close to the border. It was a 16 hour bus ride so we arrived feeling pretty average. Decided to mission it across the border as soon as we arrrived in Cizre .... which is where our Iraqi adventure began!

Pictures - the top one is looking up at the monastery from the tea shop down the bottom, the next shot is of the amazing trees as I walked towards to monastery, next a Fern obviously!, then a shot of one of the many waterfalls at the base of the mountain, the next two shots are looking down from the monastery into the valley, was really spectacular and I can ALMOST understand why people mountain hike (almost), the next five shots are from inside one of the places of worship which has amazing frescoes and mosaics, some of which youll see have little bullet holes in them where soldiers decided it would be a good place to target practice, unfortunatly a lot of the monastery has been vandilised and there is a lot of grafitti and 'ahmed loves milek' everywhere ... but it was recently listed in UNESCO world heritage list so is definitly under better restorative hands now, then next shot is the outside of that building where the frescoes are. The next 3 shots are of one floor of the monastery where visitors are allowed to come, one of them with the security guard looking ample bored and a little 'model like'! The 3rd last shot is taken from within one of the rooms of the monastery, looking out directly into the drop of the valley, and the last two are of the walk down from the top - one looking up at the monastery and one looking down at the very steep pathway!