“It’s cold. I mean, really cold.” That’s what I heard when I mused about the temperature in the Aegean Sea, when my new ginger-haired husband and I started planning our winter honeymoon to the south coast of Türkiye. We love travelling in January. The crowds stay at home, the weather’s usually not too bad, and we can roam (with lots of sunscreen) without worrying about heat stroke! This trip, we had some ancient Roman ruins to ourselves without a single soul in sight. Bliss.

Temperatures were looking like 8-10 Celsius for the two weeks we’d be there, so perhaps people were right about the water. But on the other hand, the last time we’d been in Turkey in January, every time we sat down to eat on a terrace or other outdoor table at a restaurant, I’d had to bring out my rusty Turkish. “No need,” I’d tell the surprised wait staff. “We’re from Canada. This isn’t cold!” They’d laugh, but the heater still went on. Nothing much had changed from when I’d spent a year there in the mid 1980s and people bundled up in far more clothes than we’d wear at home in the frigid north.

So bearing that in mind, I decide a little research was in order. The Great Lakes really are cold. Right through the year, and even a dip in the summer is refreshing. I asked Google. But I wasn’t really prepared for the reply. The Aegean hovers around 16C in January. And Lake Huron in July? Exactly the same. Lake Superior, the deepest of the Great Lakes is a few degrees cooler.

I didn’t swim, but I did venture into the sea up to my knees a couple of times. It really did feel quite warm, especially against the cooler air temperatures.  If I’d packed a bathing suit, I could easily have dived in.

The last few days of our honeymoon were spent in Istanbul, where it really did feel chilly. Rain – and on one day snow – was in the air and the temperature hovered between about 2 and 4 degrees, so we enjoyed some hot beverages (coffee, tea and sahlep, yum!) and were happier for the patio heaters than before.

The day before we flew home we thought it wise to check out the weather, to discover Toronto was seeing daytime highs of -10C with a huge snowstorm on the way. We crossed our fingers and watched the monitors. We were lucky. Our flight landed late enough that the storm had finished and the upwards of 20 cm of snow had been cleared from the runway.

The temperature has since plummeted with nights seeing -20C, and we’ve discovered that there actually is a temperature at our cozy condo (that we can never get cool enough) where indoor heating comes on!

And even that 20 cm now seems like child’s play compared to the 56 cm that Toronto received on January 25 – the most snow ever recorded. Clearly we’re being reminded that winter in Canada, despite climate change, really does happen. And the sea is calling again!

So to my friends who assured me that the Aegean Sea was really cold – it’s just a matter of perspective!