I woke up this morning to the devastating news from home of the flooding. I can’t get the girls who are missing from camp out of my mind. I know it’s trite to say “I’m hugging my kids tighter” but when Millie crawled into our bed this morning, I did.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then slowly packed up. I laugh to myself every time I pack my bag because I was so careful to pack very light, and yet I am carrying around a pair of plastic unicorn high heels. Just the essentials.

Millie stayed busy labeling her things. Except she can’t write so she labeled them with drawings of the object, which is incredibly helpful for identification.

We set off on our 3 hour drive to Pamukkale. We had a “low tire warning” light on which we assumed was a result of driving from the cool mountains to hot lowlands. We stopped in at a garage to get air and have some one look at it just in case. Nick managed to communicate with the guy via Google translate, and got the bad news that the tire had a small hole in it. Nick said that he (or maybe Google translate) ended every written sentence with “bro”: “The tire has a leak bro” “you can drive but it might explode bro” “we can fix it bro”. This of course entered our lexicon immediately.

Despite the annoyance we felt lucky for many reasons. We discovered it before driving through the middle of nowhere on a super hot day. We opted to get insurance through the rental agency and they were incredibly helpful. We were able to sit in the air conditioned car the whole time while they fixed it. We didn’t end up paying a dime because the rental agency paid over the phone. When Nick asked if we owed him anything else, he replied “whatever’s in your heart bro”.

The drive was smooth from here. Once again I’m so happy driving because we get to see the landscapes changing and the small towns of Turkey. It’s a beautiful country. Car window photos do not do it justice.

When we arrived in Pamukkale it was over 100 degrees. Luckily our hotel has a pool so we swam until it was time for dinner.

Side note about hotels… I am the one in charge of booking hotels and airbnbs and I have a method down. If we are getting a hotel, I filter for: ratings over 9/10, free breakfast, self parking, and within our price range. I think there is a sweet spot when it comes to “niceness” – the worst ones are REALLY bad, but “best” aren’t that much better than those in the middle. I like to choose non-chain hotels in the lower-middle price range.

Anyway, all this to say, we are staying at a weird but great hotel. It has a pool with a bunch of kids games around it. The rooms are renovated. It has horses for some reason. And it is cheap.

We started to get hungry and headed to the center of town for dinner. I don’t know if it was the heat or tiredness but Millie was very whiny and on edge, crying at small things. We drew some pictures and ordered and I thought we had gotten through it.

She ordered chicken nuggets and wanted ketchup with them. We’ve been encouraging her to talk to adults more (she’s been doing great) so we told her she could ask the waiter herself if they have any ketchup. I was proud when she sweetly asked him “Do you have any ketchup?” But when he said they had just run out, she immediately burst into tears. He was gracious about it but we were kind of horrified to be the Americans with a kid crying hysterically about ketchup.

On the plus side, the old lady who worked there took pity on all of us and brought us a plate of apricots and watermelon from her garden. They were the best apricots we’ve ever had.

After dinner we tried walking up to the Hierapolis site to watch the sunset. The line was inexplicably long, Millie was complaining, and we couldn’t figure out if the expensive tickets would get us in in the morning or if we’d need to buy them again. So we gave up and went to bed early hoping to go back in the morning before the heat of the day gets to be too much (forecast high for 105 tomorrow).