Indy!

Having indulged ourselves in Istanbul and shivered our way through the ‘fairy chimneys’ of Cappadocia, we accelerated on down a spanking new motorway through stunning mountain ranges and arrived in Iskenderun, the port for the ferry to Egypt.

Hmmm – something familiar about this place we thought.  Why yes!

“During the Crusades, three Knights of the First Crusade discovered the Holy Grail and stayed with it in the Temple of the Sun. When two of the knights left for Europe, they left behind two markers that led to the Grail's location, listing Alexandretta [now Iskenderun] as the starting point...In 1938, after discovering the second marker in Venice, Indiana Jones sent Marcus Brody ahead to Iskenderun to meet up with Sallah and start the search for the Holy Grail while Jones went with Elsa Schneider to rescue Henry Jones, Sr.. Brody and Sallah met up at the train station, but Brody was kidnapped by Nazi agents, who took the map. Days later, Sallah met up with Jones and his father in the town, and drove them out to the desert, where they spied Walter Donovan's convoy and attempted a rescue”

Thank you Indiana Jones Wiki.

We liked Iskenderun. Maybe because it is 10 degrees warmer than where we’ve come from, but it had a feel of freedom about it, which I think only comes in towns distant from their administrative centre. It is comfortable in its own personality, subtlety influenced by the outside world through its large port, and friendly to fault.

James and I arrive in Iskenderun