Jim Fini — Spain and Turkey: A Guide for Hip Boomers

Hi folks. It’s been a little while since I wrote and a lot has happened in the world that is worth writing about. I have been working on a review of the early days of the Trump administration but happily my life got in the way and my topics reflect me taking my foot off the political pedal and writing about experiences I think you may find interesting. Music, Food, Travel. So, for you geopolitical junkies, don’t fret. You’ll get it next month. I just finished a glorious trip through Spain and Turkey the past month, two countries I have never been to. This is the second year in a row I have travelled to Europe in May, and I find it a great time to go before the big summer crowds, when things are more available and less expensive, and the weather is not too hot.

My trip started in early May in Madrid where I saw the usual sites like the Prado Museum and the Palacio Real. The Prado was nice, but half the museum was closed and most of it was relatively recent Spanish artists like Velazquez and El Greco who painted in the country’s heyday of the 15th – 18th centuries. On an easy day train trip, I visited the very walkable walled city of Toledo that fell to Islamic conquerors about 753 A.D.

I also had a chance to watch LA psychedelic rock legends, Brian Jonestown Massacre, at Madrid’s Sala Riveria nightclub. When I saw the show in my search for local live music, I reached out to my Air Force buddy Stu for his input. As it turns out he knew some of the guys in the band and gave them two thumbs up. They didn’t disappoint. Terrific show at a terrific venue.

**BrianJonestown Massacre at Sala Riviera in Madrid**

Madrid is a very clean big city (about 7 million) compared to its American counterparts of comparable size. No homelessness, no human poop in the streets. Are you listening San Francisco? By far the best Madrid experience was a traditional flamenco show at Corral de la Morería It’s an iconic, Michelin‑star club that Hollywood and royals have attended. If you’re prioritizing celebrity appeal, world‑class artistry, historic prestige, it checks all the boxes and is unmatched in fame and quality. The sweat pouring off the dancers and the intensity of the connection between the guitarist and the dancers was incredible. Being a guitar player myself, I was floored by the chops of the guitarist.

Unfortunately, I had some bad luck with hotels in Madrid. My first choice was what looked like a decent place on the Gran Via, the main shopping boulevard where you can find all the couture international brands. At $223 per night thru Priceline, let’s just say this place didn’t match the pictures. Small, no A/C, and a bit dirty. I left there for a 2-bedroom Airbnb in a great spot in the Chueca district for $250 per night. It was a nice place in a nice neighborhood but didn’t have enough towels and when I plugged in the toaster, electricity went down in the entire house. It took more than 3 hours for the host to get back to me to walk me through the process of turning the power back on. After 4 days of frustration, I just booked a room at the Palacio de los Duques Gran Meliá, a 5-star luxury hotel close to the Prado Museum. It’s beautifully restored 19th‑century palace, originally the Palacio del Duque de Granada de Ega, built in 1851. The rooms are superb, and interiors echo the ornate feel of Velázquez’s world, with reproductions of his masterpieces throughout common areas. The restaurant was also great as you would expect for a 5 star, and starting at $600 US in early May, it’s a bargain for the quality.

After a week in Madrid, I took the convenient 2.5-hour train ride to Barcelona through mostly rural and agricultural countryside. Barcelona was nice but seedier than Madrid. The Airbnb experience was also bad because I had to leave after I found bedbugs, or fleas or lice in my bed. The owner denied any bugs and both he and Airbnb offered no refund, so I booked another hotel and ate the $900 I spent on the apartment for the 3-day stay. Here’s a link to the Airbnb so you know to avoid it if you’re in Barcelona.

On the positive side, the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona is incredible. Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect known for his distinctive and imaginative style, designed several iconic buildings in Barcelona. The Gaudi-designed Sagrada Familia cathedral was started in 1882 and is still under construction with the final portion of its main tower. It’s already insanely beautiful and when its main tower is complete in a few years, it will be the largest Christian cathedral in the world. Also incredible is his luxury apartment building, Casa Milà, popularly known as La Pedrera, for its wavy stone façade, twisting wrought-iron balconies and surreal rooftop chimneys. Finally, Parc Guell is Gaudi’s landscape architecture masterpiece. Originally built between 1900-1914 as a housing development by Catalan industrialist and art patron Eusebi Güell, its 42 acres contain colorful mosaic benches, lizard sculpture (“El Drac”), whimsical pavilions, gingerbread-like gatehouses. These Gaudi sites are “must see” but get your tickets early because they sell out fast.

An easy day trip is Montserrat, a stunning mountain and spiritual site located about 30 miles northwest of Barcelona. It’s famous for its dramatic serrated peaks, a monastery, and the Black Madonna statue, making it a popular destination for pilgrims, hikers, and day-trippers alike. The 1,000-year-old Benedictine monastery is perched on the mountain and is still active with around 80 monks. I booked the tour on Expedia for $150 which included transportation.

Despite its ancient history, great tapas, and Gaudi, the best part of Barcelona was visiting my Air Force Academy buddy Stu. A midwestern-raised long-time resident of Los Angeles, he’s a retired advertising guy living in Barcelona for a while. In the eternal words of the 90’s band Faith No More, “It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it.”

For several years Stu’s side hustle has been a psychedelic rock record label in Los Angeles which entails pressing and distributing vinyl recordings and hanging out with twenty and thirty something musicians who are keeping alive the psych rock genre that was birthed in the 1960’s by bands like The Byrds, Pink Floyd and others. Stu and I hit his favorite neighborhood joint and spent two glorious hours eating tapas, drinking vermouth (yes that’s a Spanish thing) and getting to know each other better as we talked about everything under the sun, including the rendezvous with our Air Force Academy compatriots, Colin, Dan and Coz.

The next day I was on a flight to Istanbul to meet Coz. He and I met each other when at 18 years old in the summer of 1978 when we were jammed in with 298 other cadet candidates at the Air Force Academy Prep School. Going through basic training with kids from all over the country was an amazing experience. Dudes like us with, shall we say a taste for risky behavior, kind of find each other. We are maybe a 10% cohort at a military academy but for us, that’s where the fun is and those are the guys you want flying fighters in combat like Colin. Coz was a California kid, and I was a Boston kid, but we loved the same kind of music and other stuff. Dudes like us just seem to find each other.

Istanbul was only the second time I’ve stepped onto Asian soil. It’s a big city. Twenty-five million strong. Founded as Byzantium around 667 BC by Greek settlers from Megara. It was renamed Constantinople in 330 AD by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who made it the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. It became Istanbul after the Ottoman Empire took the city in 1453 where the name “Istanbul” gradually came into common use and was officially adopted after the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. By the way, there are statues of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk, everywhere. I cannot emphasize enough the historical importance of his revolution overthrowing the sultanate monarchy. It established a separation between church and state, democratic representation and women’s rights, all core values of the United States. This may explain why Turkey is economically, militarily and culturally the most important Muslim country on earth. Sure, there are plenty of mosques everywhere and plenty of women wearing the hijab, but there are restaurants that serve alcohol, great music venues and fashionable folks everywhere. It’s an example of what’s possible for other Islamic countries where the autocrats and theocrats rule with an iron fist.

We had a great guide, Serkan, who we each paid 200 Euro with tip. He spoke good English and really knew history. The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia and the Royal Palace (Topkapi Palace), built by Sultan Mehmed II after his conquest of Constantinople in 1453, are together an incredible architectural timeline of the collision of two cultures. They are all in the same area of the old city and can be done walking in a full day. One cannot overstate the historical immensity of the conquest of the 1,000-year-old Byzantine Roman Empire by the Ottoman Turks.

**Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque Istanbul**

On the way be back to our nice hotel, we walked through the famous Grand Bazaar, a massive covered outdoor marketplace place that began shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople and was part of a broader initiative to stimulate economic prosperity in Istanbul. Anything you could possibly want from spices to rugs to appliances to jewelry (fake and real!), it’s here. Serkan knows lots of folks and he brings us by their stalls so we can get the hard sell. In Turkey, everyone is selling all the time. The line uttered by Alec Baldwin to Jack Lemon and Alan Arkin in the 1992 classic film, Glengarry Glen Ross, comes to mind: “Coffee is for closers.” This “always be closing” cultural ethos goes back millennia to the heydays of the Silk Road. Coz was the first to fall when he bought a beautiful rug that he haggled into what seemed like a pretty good deal. Who knows? I managed to resist this rug merchant in the Grand Bazaar but there was a lot of time left on the clock. More on that later.

On the subject of commerce, here’s a pic we took from the van on our ride from Istanbul to our next destination in Bergama. In the banking district, the streets were full of dudes on scooters with huge stacks of cash strapped on the back. The Turkish LIRA is a cautionary tale of what happens when governments spend beyond their means.

And let me disabuse you of the notion that Europe is cheap to visit with your American dollars now. With a few exceptions things are about the same price for most things as in the US. Even beer, a long benchmark of mine was $5-$8 for a bottle of cheap local stuff. Bread from a bakery was still cheap though. Given the last four years of money printing by the Democrats and our current President’s ill-advised tariff experiment, my advice is stock up on BTC and Gold to hedge against the rotting currencies around the world.

But I digress. I had originally rented a nice van to drive us down the coast of so we could visit the ancient Greco-Roman cities of Pergamon and Ephesus on the way to. Upon further consideration we decided to ditch the rental and hire a tricked-out van and driver arranged by Serkan. That turned out to be a great call as we drank wine, chatted, listened to tunes and played backgammon while our driver negotiated the impossibly narrow streets and provided the translation services we needed. The van and driver, which included gas and his hotel, was about double the 4-day Avis rental of $850 but totally worth it.

Our first stop was the modern day city of Bergama, home of the ancient city of Pergamon. When we pulled up to the Hera Boutique hotel, I was shocked at how good the owners English was. Turns out he graduated college from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and worked for several years as an IBM engineer in Billerica Massachusetts, both less than an hour from where I grew up. After checking in, he took us down to his wine cellar. Apparently, the main house was built on the 2,000-year-old foundation of an ancient wine cellar. We polished of a bottle of pretty good Turkish Sauvignon Blanc as he regaled us with some history.

After that, we were on a tour arranged by our new hotelier friend. The ancient Acropolis is situated on a mountain that was about 1,000 vertical feet above the city of Bergama of 120,000. The original fortress walls were built by the Lydian King Croesus in 530 BC and expanded in 430 BC by one of Alexander the Great’s generals coming back from India after Alexander died. It was further expanded by the Romans and became an important city where many emperors stayed. As such, it had the obligatory bath, temples, and amphitheater that are impressive to witness. The 10,000-seat theatre is built on the side of a marble mountain and can be seen from miles around. The aqueduct bringing water to the city started near the top of a higher mountain some 20 miles away. Engineering was one of the great skills of the Roman Empire.

Our next stop was the Turkish city of Seljuk, the site of ancient Ephesus. Yes the same city whose 25,000-seat amphitheater, hosted Saul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul) as he spoke about the one true God to the Artemis-worshipping Ephesians. Paul was subsequently chased out of the city when the crowd figured out their livelihoods of making wooden Artemis statues was at risk with this one true God. The ancient city is preserved by 140 years of archeology, and you can just feel the spirits of the ancient Romans who walked the same marble promenade we were on. At the end of the main boulevard was the ancient port and the second most important library of the ancient world with thousands of scrolls. During the winter months in the lead up to the famous naval Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Marc Antony and Cleopatra spent the winter preparing for battle. He also arranged to pillage the great libraries of Ephesus and Pergamon and bring their scrolls to Alexandria in Egypt. Ephesus and Pergamon were the second and third largest libraries of the ancient world behind Alexandria, and its 400,000-700,000 scrolls, which was unfortunately destroyed during invasions over the centuries.

After the Ephesus tour, our guide took us to lunch. We paid for most of our lunches in Turkey but when a free one is given by the guide you can be sure it comes with strings attached. She took us to what looked like a farm but with a nice outdoor grape arbor with tables and simple but good food. After some small talk, our host Pasha took us to a work area where there were two women weaving a Turkish rug using a process that hasn’t change much for centuries. It was so cool how they used a cauldron of warm water to release silk from the silkworm cocoons and spun it onto threads on a spindle.

What followed was the next step in the natural sales “Always Be Closing” process in Turkey. “Come with me to my shop and I’ll show you what the final product looks like,” said Pasha. Here comes the closer. The whole situation was exacerbated by Coz who had been cajoling me since Istanbul to buy a rug. He was laughing his ass off as Pasha and his boys spread out one rug after another. Our lady guide just stood by and smiled as she knew she had hooked a live one for her friend and I am sure she got a taste from the price I haggled on Pasha’s rug. Still, it’s a very nice angora wool rug that will look lovely somewhere.

Our next stop was Bodrum, a port city of about 200,000 about 7 hours south of Istanbul. Founded in 353 B.C. by Dorian Greeks, it was known in ancient times as Halicarnassus. It was home to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We beelined it to our hotel, Casa Nonna, on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Aegean Sea 20 minutes south of Bodrum. Persian friends of ours from Jackson Hole recommended it after their stay a couple months earlier. It was a very nice place worth the $450 /night and we were psyched to finally get a proper shower, air conditioning and nice beds prior to our cruise.

If Coz and I were cats with nine lives, we certainly must have burned through more than half of them over the course of our lives. The first day in Bodrum we literally burned through another life. We were outside at the beachside bar playing backgammon on our new boards enjoying a couple local brews, when we noticed a storm coming towards us over the mountainous Greek Isles in the distance. We could hear thunder, but it was far away. Then out of nowhere, we were knocked off our chairs by the percussion wave from an explosion. It was a lightning strike on a palm tree about 15 feet from where we were sitting. A sign from the gods and bullet dodged. What a great way to start our cruise!

With that bit of excitement behind us, the next day we took a taxi to Bodrum port to board our ship. The E-bike cruise company is Inselhüpfen’/ Island-hopping, a German outfit that we also used the year before with some of the same friends in Croatia. We had so much fun we decided to do it again in Turkey. The 7-day voyage took us down the coast from one beautiful destination and one beautiful ancient ruin after another. There were about 20 of us, all friends or friends of friends, which was just about capacity. The rooms were nice, but the air conditioning was a little spotty and the food was good, but a little bland repetitive. Being an Italian foodie/cook, I love Mediterranean cuisine with its olive oil, grilled veggies, lamb and fish. If you’re curious, here’s my Bolognese recipe. However, the Turks do food a little different and while theirs is good, let’s just say I prefer the cuisine of my ancient Roman forbears.

But food and air conditioning aside, the rest of the cruise was awesome, especially our guide, Adem. He was a 24-year-old native Turk whose side hustle was playing thrash metal in a local band. Being someone who usually travels with a guitar, he found me and my Nirvana and Grateful Dead tee shirts quite fascinating. During my evening performance on the ship, Adem joined me in a rousing rendition of Blitzkrieg Pop by the Ramones. He also regaled us with his solo version of Enter Sandman by Metallica. He was such a nice, funny and kind young man who was an excellent E-Bike guide that spoke great English. At $2,500 per person, this cruise was well worth it.

Nighttime on the boat was glorious listening to music and enjoying wine and beer with our friends talking about the day and everything under the sun. If you have about 20 friends you can travel with, it gives you a lot of leverage for a personalized experience. Little did we know that we had inadvertently booked a level 5 E-bike tour which meant 35–50-mile days with up to 2,000 ft of elevation gains through a very mountainous coastal Turkey. After the first day, our 60-something year-old group told Adem we had to dial back the difficulty so everyone could enjoy themselves. He did a great job planning routes that were Level 2-3ish which gave us plenty of time to walk among ruins and have lazy lunches at cool local spots. And you get to ride by amazing views of the Aegean Sea like this one:

**Aegean View on E-Bike Ride near Fetiyeh Turkey**

One of the cool things about this trip is that you can anchor pretty much where you want. Even though we kept to the script our guides and captain originally had, with a full boat and some ideas of your own, you can probably convince the tour team to deviate from plan a bit to suit your desires. I had conversations with Adem about the group wanting less bike difficulty and more ruins and maybe that influenced where we anchored next.

Gemiler Island is located off the coast of Fethiye in Muğla province and has a rich history dating back to the early Byzantine period. Known in antiquity as "St. Nicholas Island," it was an important Christian pilgrimage site between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. The island is home to the ruins of several Byzantine churches, and a 350-meter processional walkway connecting them—believed to have been used by worshippers honoring St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. It’s a popular destination for boaters and it’s easy to see why. Ours would have been the bottom ship in the photo below.

We are anchored right off the rocky shore of the island, and we are enjoying the remains of the day with cocktails, conversation and sunset. Some are swimming off the boat because the Mediterranean is as blue and clean as any sea I’ve seen. We were discussing the ruins in the distance when Colin emerged in his bathing suit intending to swim to shore and climb to the rocky summit and explore. Before I got the words, “That will take an hour and a half up and back,” Colin was already in the water swimming to shore. After Stu dove in right after Colin, I said “What the F---. It’s an adventure.”, and followed them in. The climb was pretty rocky, and there wasn’t a clear path, so we just scrambled up rocks the 500 vertical feet, through cool ruins, until we eventually found the pilgrims path to the top. There we met plenty of others in their street clothes who obviously found an easier way.

We made it to the top and walked among the ruins drinking in the amazing 360-degree views. This definitely was an important outpost for sailors. On the way back down, Colin followed the same route we climbed, but Stu and I took a shorter path to the water that required swimming about 400 yards back to the boat. I’m not the strongest swimmer but I can manage longer distances by doing backstrokes, so I wasn’t gonna chase Stu who surfs. It was longer than I bargained for and about 50 yards from the boat, I was stung by jellyfish. Yay! Nothing too serious that antibiotic-anti-itch cream, some Benadryl and a couple glasses of wine cannot take care of. Recommendation: Include antibiotic-anti-itch cream and Benadryl in your travel bag.

Probably my best day on the bike was visiting the ancient Kaunos ruins near the Dalyan resort in Mugla. The rock-cut tombs overlooking the Dalyan River were built from the 2nd through the 4th centuries B.C. by Lycian royalty and are among the most iconic ancient sites in Turkey. On the river boat we got close to the tombs that are carved right into the marble cliffs. Lycians believed that the soul was transported to the afterlife by winged creatures, so elevated tombs made sense spiritually. Our guide Adem told a cool myth about the King of Kaunos, whose tomb is believed to be in the cliffs, and his sister who had an unnatural love for her kingly brother. When he spurned her, she threw herself off the cliffs and Kaunos was so devasted he built the tombs there. Hmmm. But it was amazing to see such detailed architecture created so long ago. The 20 minute ride up the wide river delta reminded me of the scene from the movie Apocalypse Now, where Robert Duval’s character, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, lands on the beach in his Apache chopper. I blurted out a movie line from the surfer GI Lance: “ We can’t hit that beach sir, that’s Charlie’s beach.” While channeling his inner Kilgore, Dan replied, “Charlie don’t surf.”

Right up the road from the cliff tombs was the Roman city of Kaunos, built in the 6th century A.D. by the early Byzantine Roman emperors. It contains the obligatory bath complex, marketplace (Agora), a Christian church, a 5,000-spectator amphitheater that is in pretty good shape. We were told they still occasionally used it for music performances. Since the famous theatre in Ephesus was closed, this was my chance to finally stand in the arena of an ancient coliseum, and shout at the top of my lungs;

“Are you not entertained?”

As great as the food, biking, walking ruins and cruising the Mediterranean was, the best part was being with dear friends, some of whom I have known for 47 years. I feel blessed. If you are a boomer like me, and you are lucky enough to be retired or close to it, I recommend travelling with friends and doing something involving an activity. Biking, hiking, skiing, swimming, and skiing, and seeing rock concerts works for us. The possibilities are limitless if you find the right crew.
What is not limitless, is time. Spend it wisely.