Artichokes and Aqualillies: My Weekend at the Bodrum EDITION

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FRIDAY 9:37 AM | Milas-Bodrum Airport

 

Incidentally, I’d been due to arrive in Turkey the same day as President Donald Trump, who this past May was scheduled to host peace talks between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Istanbul. This made me neither excited nor particularly wary; I simply hoped the President’s arrival wouldn’t cause mayhem at the airport, where I snacked on buttered croissants, feta cheese sandwiches, and black coffee before continuing on the second leg of the trip to Bodrum for a three-night stay at the swanky Edition Hotel. As it turned out, the President cancelled his visit to Istanbul, jetting back from the UAE to our nation’s capital on Air Force One. I wondered if, in a late-onset case of self-awareness, he came to see himself as an impediment to peace, though it’s more likely he just wanted to get the hell out of the Middle East.

Having narrowly avoided the hubbub of international diplomacy, we arrived at Milas-Bodrum airport on Friday morning well-fed and ready to face the day. From the window of the sprinter van that transports us from the airport to The EDITION, I can see the Bodrum Peninsula stretching out into the Aegean Sea, its cyan hues announcing the unofficial arrival of summer. As we wait in the hotel lobby to check into our rooms, we’re given little ceramic beakers of ice cream: caramel and pistachio and vanilla and honey, with tiny wooden spoons that pierce the surface with surprising ease. My neighborly steward escorts me to my room, where I fall asleep to highlights of the previous night’s New York Knicks game.

7:28 PM | KITCHEN at the Bodrum Edition

 

Overlooking the Bodrum sunset, French-trained chef Osman Sezener has prepared for us a sumptuous dinner to kick off the hotel’s summer season. But before I get a chance to inspect the menu, delicately placed at each table setting alongside a generous and artfully arranged helping of butter, I’m distracted by hordes of fellow hotel guests—the kinds of telegenic people who make me wonder if I’ve awoken from my nap and been airdropped onto the set of a European arthouse film. They wear mini-dresses and hold ring-lights; their rolled-up sleeves reveal tan lines where chic bracelets were once wrapped. There’s even a step-and-repeat. Being in the company of my new supermodel friends offers a reprieve from jetlag.

Unsurprisingly, dinner is excellent: we’re served artichoke with sorrel, shrimp with citrus, a salad of strawberries and stracciatella, humus with sauteed mushrooms (since there’s a surplus of this last dish, I ask for more bread). Then, as the sun sets, entrees are rolled out: octopus with fava bean purée, pasta with asparagus, lagos (I had to look this one up) with potato cream. By the end of the meal, jet-lag has reemerged and I retire, nourished, to my room.

SATURDAY 8:15 AM | KITCHEN at the Bodrum Edition

 

I woke up early—2 AM Turkey time, to be exact—to watch the Knicks clinch the series against the Boston Celtics, advancing to their first Eastern Conference Finals in 25 years. Bathing in the warm glow of victory, I’m first to breakfast the next morning, where I feel certain this is one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve ever been to, never more so than when cast in the bright morning light. Over coffee and eggs benedict, I read a recent special issue of a prominent American weekly magazine dedicated to the theme of “happiness”: our relentless pursuit of it, its promise and folly. One of the features finds a journalist on assignment in Finland, which has topped the United Nations’ “World Happiness Report” for eight consecutive years. Politics notwithstanding, I wonder if the architects of the so-called happiness index have ever been to Bodrum, where things are going quite nicely for me. 

11:07 AM | The Art House at the Bodrum Edition

 

Later that morning, I made my way to The Art House on the hotel’s lower level for a matcha workshop with Ace Nayman, a tanned and extremely fit fashion designer whose line of resortwear is nestled in the hotel shop. Like her clothing, Nayman is very colorful, decked out in flashy shades of blue, yellow, and pink as she extols the virtues of tea powder and a litany of salutary additives. When I’m asked about my personal experience with matcha, I answer truthfully: I’ve had it just once and found it chalky and distasteful. Nayman has marked me for conversion. “Do you drink coffee?” she asks. Just three cups a day, I tell her. “Very bad,” she laughs, before instructing us to place a dollop of matcha powder in our respective mugs and grind it to a pulp with the instruments at hand, one of which resembles a scalp massager.

This matcha, it turns out, is not so bad, and I’m taken by the possibility of a less jittery and altogether more healthful existence, one characterized by increased cognitive function and an ironclad immune system. Nayman brings more ingredients to the table: blue spirulina, a strawberry probiotic. I load them into my mug and chug. “Like an American,” my instructor quips. “Do you like it now?”

7:41 PM | Pool at the Bodrum Edition

After a day at the pool, I retire to my room, where I shower, moisturize, and attempt to make myself presentable for the weekend’s centerpiece event: a cocktail party by the pool replete with food and drink by a curated selection of the hotel’s chefs, including Osman (of last night’s octopus) and Stefano Ciotti, who boasts a Michelin Star. I chat up a native New Yorker who’s lived in Bodrum for a decade now—”It’s a mess over there,” she tells me, her Bronx drawl familiar and comforting. As I ingest a plateful of the buffet options—some sushi, truffle risotto, two scallops—the galvanizing opening notes of Ellie Goulding’s 2012 hit “Anything Could Happen” start blaring from a nearby but unseen speaker.

Out come the AquaLillies! They’re a professional synchronized swimming and dance company who’ve performed for the likes of Kim Kardashian and Justin Timberlake. First, they circle the sprawling hotel pool, the edges of which appear to bleed into the sea. Each of their limbs are in perfect alignment with one another and the beat as a captive audience of journalists, influencers, and hotel guests watches in awe. Then, as “Love on Top” starts to play, they dive into the water with textbook precision, their white swimcaps like buoys on the surface. This, I imagine, is like the wedding of a Saudi Arabian sheikh. Flamingo, tuck, crane, ballet leg. After 20 or so minutes, the AquaLillies elegantly exit the pool and take pictures with their newest fans.

SUNDAY 1:07 PM | The Etrim Village

 

It’s our last morning in Bodrum and, for the first time, we’re venturing off-site. It’s a testament to just how grand and capacious the Edition is that we haven’t yet, but one assumes there is more to do in Bodrum than eat, lounge, and lay recumbent in the hammam. We pack into the sprinter van and head to Etrim Village: population 400. There, we’re given a tour of Etrim Carpet, a family business founded in 1980 that happens to be one of Turkey’s leading retailers of hand-knotted and flat-woven rugs and kilims. The process by which these rugs come into being is unbelievably intricate—so intricate, in fact, that our tour guide, Engin Başol, exchanged one rug for a gold wedding ring, he tells us. As we watch him dye a ball of silk in a cauldron of onion skin, he explains the centuries-old tradition of Anatolian weaving, in which one square meter of carpet might contain no less than 60,000 double knots, spun carefully out of anywhere from 900 to 1,500 meters of silk.

After the tour, the proprietors of Ertim Carpet usher us inside for a traditional Turkish breakfast, the abundant contents of which have been homemade by Başol’s grandmother, Ümmüham, who watches us eat with a prideful smile on her face. Our meal gives me the energy to shop, so I browse the colorful wall of items on offer at Etrim Carpet, thumbing the filaments of various rugs and pillowcases. I buy two, ensuring I won’t be going home empty-handed.

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