Fenerbahçe won the football league here. Everything still hung on the last match which was yesterday evening, so with Cem, the boys and many friends and family supporting Fenerbahçe, there was a lot of excitement round here. Personally I wasn’t bothered - my team is Beşiktaş and I only support them to annoy Cem – but I would rather they are all happy and celebrating than miserable and sulking. Some of you know how seriously they take their football here, and how noisy they are about it. Even the municipal tannoy system crackled into life at the end of the match with the Fenerbahçe march…so apologies to any guests who were hoping for an early night!
It was also noisy for a while on Saturday. As I mentioned last week, Turkish guests are not very good at making reservations and here is a good example. Twenty-six sixteen year old girls and nine teachers on a school trip turned up at about 6pm on Saturday night looking for diner and rooms for the night. That would not be SO unreasonable, except for the fact that they stayed here last year and had our phone number! We sorted the rooms out (including evicting Murat from his room) and then Cem went shopping while Yılmaz and I ran around in the kitchen, but it would have been less stressful if they had just telephoned even a couple of hours before to say they were on their way!
Still plenty of bookings coming in and we are full for middle of June and middle of July. We are now having a struggle with the agency, who sold at 15% discount for all bookings up to start of May (that is 15% off OUR money of course not theirs!), on the basis that they would pay 50% of all those bookings on 15 May. Guess what – they haven’t! It is getting so tiring, calling and visiting (and listening to their stories about what a difficult time THEY are having), that we are considering not working with them. The other agency we have a contract with are – apparently (we have only just started working with them) – much more reliable.
But mostly this week I am happy because Frank and Lorraine are here, Grant and Dawn are here (see photo of Kaan and Grant below) and my sister and brother-in-law are coming tomorrow so I’m giving myself the day off!
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| Kaan and Grant 'bombing' |
