Your tax dollars -- My summer in Turkey: Top ten reasons I love Amasra

10) The pine trees and the cliffs

9) The fisherman and their boats

8) The tiny little fried fish

7) The amazing Amasra salad

6) The Black Sea - it's wonderful! (I'm looking at you, 90 degree Mediterranean)

5) The wind that comes from the Black Sea

4) Turks live there

3) Russians don't go there

2) Kolbastı is from the region (well, Trabzon is close enough...)

1) It's just plain beautiful, and it's one of the most calming places I've been to in a very long time.

I definitely did not want to leave Amasra after only 24 hours. But I guess now I have an even bigger reason to come back to Turkey as soon as I possibly can.

We left Ankara early on Monday morning and arrived at the Black sea just in time for a lunch of fresh gozleme and ayran (yogurt drink), served beachside in a small town near Amasra. We had a chance to go swimming afterward, an experience made all the more pleasant by the perfect water tempurature and waves. It was a much more agreable day at the beach than the one afforded to us in Alanya. After splashing about for a while, I swam across the cove with a friend of mine (about a mile or so in total) - we stopped for a moment before turning back to admire the scenery of the green cliffs and the complete calm of the water around us. It was exactly what I needed.

After leaving the water, we drove to Amasra, where we stayed in a small house on the hillside of the city, our bedroom overlooking the Black Sea. After a bit of shopping, we settled down along the docks for a dinner of fresh fish from the region and a generous portion of the famous "Amasra Salad" - basically a raw vegetable lover's dream - followed by a chocolate dipped banana from a nearby vendor.

We hung out as a group on Monday night, both in the house and out in the town. My host sister had come with us, so I ended up speaking more Turkish than I'd expected, as she speaks little to no English and shook her head at us in disapproval everytime the conversation devolved into English. Around midnight, a few of us shared a beautifully cheezy moment on the breakwall, playing guitar and dancing Kolbastı with some random Turkish guys we'd just met. They were impressed that we knew how to dance, but seemed confused that we couldn't manage to coordinate and sing even one entire song in English for them.

On Tuesday morning, we enjoyed a delicious Turkish breakfast on the balcony (overlooking the sea of course) followed by some shopping, exploring, and a quick trip to Safranbolu on the way back to Ankara. Safranbolu is a beautifully preserved Ottoman town whose charm was mostly destroyed by the hilarious and poorly translated tourism video we were forced to watch in a lokum factory store and a frightening display of lifelike Ottoman mannequins in one of the houses-turned-museum near the city center. I'm glad to have seen the town, but I don't think I need to go back again. I'd rather save my money for the Black Sea.