My hair was standing up on end like I had stuck my hand in a wall socket. My body was pinned to the captain's windshield by the brute force of the wind. I kept my eyes half open, sometimes closed all together. I wondered, "Is this the exhiliration the Greeks felt as they rowed across to meet the Trojans in battle?" The Aegean Sea!

Fifteen minutes earlier, Abram and I had left the sleepy Greek island of Chios on the early morning ferry. Now, I was perched at the bow of the ferry as it steamed across the channel between Chios and the Turkish port city of Cesme. Abram was at the stern of the boat, doing what he does best: chatting up a stranger and getting advice on how to make our next move. This adventure of a day had only just begun.

We were fortunate enough to be on the ferry at all, in my opinion. The Turkish ferries are notorious for cancellation at any sign of bad weather. There was a thick, grey cloud engulfing Chios' hills as we boarded the boat. But soon enough, we left it behind us. The fellow passengers were an eclectic bunch, to be sure: a Korean tour group (fanatical about taking photos), a few Greeks and Turks, an American gentleman from Oregon, and an Australian novelist (hey, Mel, if you're reading this -- hope you made it to Istanbul safely!). The video (above) does an effective job showing the windy weather. Stand too near the edge, and you were bound to get a quick bath of salt water.

Chios was still visible off the stern of the boat as we pulled into port in Cesme. We must look American (I guess we certainly do sound it!), because the Australian struck us up in conversation as we disembarked, "So where you guys headed?" She was going on to Istanbul, and us to the seaside town of Kusadasi. We had to find Cesme's "otogar", the main terminal for Turkey's favourite mode of transport: coach! (A tour guide later told us that 100M Turks used a coach last year... in a country of only 75M!) After a poor guess on my part, and some of Abram's good instincts, we found the coach station. We waved euros, and gestured, smiling and muttering the name of our destination city. The Turks, we discovered, are lovable and friendly people. Nine lira later, we were beckoned onto the coach and given the whole back row, as the rest of the cabin filled with locals.

The entrance visa into Turkey was 15 Euros; much cheaper than the purported 45 Euros they charge at the Attaturk Airport for U.S. citizens. Haha! We frugal travelers win again!

What a way to see the Turkish countryside! Abram could not help but draw parallels to his honeymoon, where he spent nearly 33 hours traveling by bus through South America. Ill-fated for him that I am neither as pretty nor as amiable as his lovely wife! The Turkish plains were filled with olives, myrtles, orange trees, cotton, figs, grapevines... and all this in abundance. Abram was in horticultural heaven, spouting off words like "intercropping," "organic viticulture" and "multi-polymer lactivius gene splicing." (Okay, I made up that last one.) The coach would stop periodically, it seemed, when anyone wanted to get on or off. In the middle of a valley with no civilization in sight, the coach would screech to a halt and swoosh its doors open to let on more human cargo until all the seats were filled. My legs spent half of the 1-hour journey wedged next to a hefty gentleman who was standing in the aisle chatting up my Turkish neighbor.

The Turkish love for coach travel really hit home when we arrived in Izmir, Turkey's second largest city and our connecting point. Their coach station, just on the outskirts of town, made the Colorado Springs airport look like a dog house. Four stories high, with hundreds of buses and taxis milling around the upper floors, this concrete structure was more airport than Greyhound stop. Inside, it was a riotous mess, with hundreds of bus companies vying for attention. Their booths lined the length of the structure, with confusing coloured signs and poor lighting.

I won't bore with the details of our next trip, as it was similar to the first leg. We arrived at the Kusadasi coach station and then hopped on a smaller bus known as a "dolmus." These are shared ride coaches that follow certain routes every 10 minutes or so. "This way, my friend!" exclaimed one of the drivers as he whistled down the dolmus we needed to catch. I promised myself I would not complain about our hotel -- Hotel Derici. All I will say, is that its sign says it is a 4-star hotel but they are not using any standard I am familiar with.

Abram and I dropped our bags (I wrapped them in my PacSafe) and headed out the door to catch some of Kusadasi's sites before dusk. What awaited us was incredible: an ancient fortress, overlooking the ocean. We found a peaceful corner and watched the sun set behind the mountains on the other side of the bay. Serenity. And so, that night, we dined on sea bass.