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Published: June 11th 2011
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Got up this morning and it was just too early since we had been up late the night before. I had offered the use of my shower to the other girl traveling alone, Bex, since her shower had zero water pressure and mine is like a waterfall, so we made arrangements for her to come by in the morning and have a proper shower. We then all met at breakfast, and let me tell you it was sub-par to the Apricot Hotel, I wanted to cry when I got my bowl and was already for my yogurt, and to my horror, there wasn’t any yogurt, it was soo sad.
After breakfast we headed to Ephesus! We had a specialist tour guide, Sky (that is what her name means in English, I have no clue how to spell her Turkish name) who really knew her stuff, but was a little more uptight than Fatih (we all joked that Fatih needed help because he had a hangover). We got to Ephesus and to be honest Steph and I had more fun doing funny poses for pictures than listening to another story about a pile of rocks (although it was a very old pile
of rocks and was probably very interesting, but still). The Wall of the Library was very impressive, but after halfway through the tour we really just wanted fun pictures with the piles of ancient stones. One of the hilights was using the ancient toilets!
We had a great time (although I think we were irritating Sky a bit by not being very serious), but we did listen and learned a few things along the way.
We then went to one of the Ancient wonders of the world, the temple of Artemis. And boy, let me tell you, what a letdown! It’s just one Column standing in the middle of a field! And someone had to reconstruct it and put it there. (Dad, if you thought Troy was a pile of rocks, I don’t want to know what you have to say about Artemis.) From there we were supposed to go the House of the Virgin Mary, but no one really wanted to do that so we went wine tasting in the Fruit wine country of Turkey. We tasted Pomegranate, Peach, Blackberry, and Black Mulberry wines. All very interesting but Peach was my favorite.
From there we went and learned how
carpets are made and saw girls making wool on cotton and silk on silk carpets. This particular company is subsidized by the Turkish government and this company goes into the villages and gives the girls the raw materials and then sets them free to dye the materials and gives them free reign to work as often or as little as they like and which design and colors they want to use, then they send the carpets back to the store where we were. 70 percent goes back to the girls making the carpets and 30 percent goes back to the company to cover costs. We watched the knots being made in the carpets and we got to feel a silkworm casing and saw how they take the silk and spin it into thread, and feel it as all of the silk threads were being spun, it was fabulous!
The guide then showed us about a hundred carpets and explained which part of the country they are from and how you can tell, and what carpet is made from what. He showed us what cotton on cotton looks like and it looks so similar to silk on silk, but its costs
Ancient toilets
Left to right : Steph, Brett, Taylee so much less, so if you are shown a “silk” carpet but without the silk price then its cotton on cotton.
We all got back to the hotel and passed out until dinner at 7:30 which we ate on the roof again, it is so peaceful eating on the roof on a beautiful summer night, with the water right there just watching the sun go down, it really makes you feel like you are on Holiday.
It was a much more tame evening since we were all worn out from the prior evening’s activities and the long day ahead of us tomorrow, we are driving to Pamukkale which is 3 hours by bus, we will stay for 2 hours, and then drive 3 hours back. Good thing I sleep really well on buses!
B
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As usual your blogs are so interesting. So happy you learned about carpets. When we were there the young girls did the silk knotting because their fingers were small enough to make the knots. It sounds like they get a bit more money and have more freedom of work designs then 30 years ago.