We left at 7:00 pm. We walked the long way, and got to the bath. We were in the great city of Istanbul. As you know Istanbul is in Turkey, and you also probably know if you are going to bother to fly 5000 miles to Turkey, you might as well get a Turkish bath.

We got our little tokens and scrubbers and mom and I separated from the boys, and started up the stairs. I still don’t know what Carter and dad did but mom and I got black bathing bottoms, and a towel to wrap ourselves in. We went down two sets of stairs, and entered the bathing room. Again, I don’t know what the boys saw in their bathing rooms, but we saw a pretty weird sight. It was a steamy hot sauna with a giant marble slabs that a dozen woman and a couple girls were lying on.

We laid down on the marble slab and the lady told us to wait for ten minutes so we would start to sweat and our pores would open up. Well mission accomplished. We sweated like crazy. I could see sweat running down my mom’s face, and she could probably see sweat running down mine. But the heat wasn’t hot. It opened up my lungs and calmed me down. It didn’t feel like sweating humid heat, it felt like you spent the day in the snow and had a warm cup of hot chocolate. Or fell and hurt yourself then got a big hug from your parents. A pleasant heat. Then as we were relaxing, the ladies dumped water on our heads. They scrubbed us all over and rinsed us off. We looked at our arms and legs and there was dirt all over. It had come from our skin!

The ladies got out a bucket of sudsy water and a bag. They filled the bag up, dumped it on us, and began to give us a bubble massage. Then they brought us over to a fountain and slopped shampoo on our heads. And I mean SLOPPED! It ran down our eyes until the ladies poured bucket after bucket of cold water over our heads. Then they were done, and sent us into a little room with three fountains we put the heat to our liking and poured bucket after bucket of water on our backs and over our heads for what seemed like hours.

Mom preferred the water nice and warm, but with it being so hot, I liked the ice cold water. After we were wet to our content we went to the Jacuzzi. There was hot, and super hot. Mom put her knees in the hot one. But I went all the way into the hot and floated on my back. It was especially nice because my ears went under water and I couldn’t hear her telling me that we had to go. But I could still read her lips so I closed my eyes, and that was much better. Mom splashed me until I finally agreed to get out.

We went to wait for our oil massage for 30 minutes then the lady asked for a red ticket but we didn’t have one! I wanted to get one but mom said that that wouldn’t be fair to the boys, but I could tell she wanted to. We went to the terrace to meet dad and Carter. While they were waiting they had started a game of backgammon. Actually it was their second game. They said their treatment only lasted 30-45 minutes because they didn’t have a Jacuzzi or accidentally wait for a massage. We ordered drinks and watched them play their game.

As we were walking home I had a feeling I wouldn’t have to shower for a long time, but I also had a feeling mom would make me anyway.