Day Sixteen (Sunday)

Not at all what I imagined Turkey would look like

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Our bus dropped us off near our ship and in the center of downtown Kusadasi. Everything seemed very modern and tourist-friendly in this area of town. We could've kept ourselves entertained all day in this part of town.

So close I could almost touch it

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Even though we didn't have too much time to explore the town seeing how close our ship was docked convinced us we could do a little last minute spending.

Last chance shopping in Kusadasi

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We arrived back in downtown Kusadasi with almost an hour left before the ship departed. We spent a crazy hectic 45 minutes running around looking for stuff for Tyler to get for his Turkish friends at work.

Still shopping

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The people in town seemed very friendly and willing to help the confused tourists. Gail kept making eye contact with the merchants which would send them into long spiels about how good and how cheap their stuff was. She ended-up buying a shirt for half the original asking price by playing one merchant's price off against the guy across the street.

The Amazing Race

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We miscalculated how far we were from the ship. We had ten minutes to get back, but we had to walk/run a much greater distance than we thought. Even though the ship only appeared to be a couple hundred yards from us the way to it required running through a shopping mall, parking lot and a lot of barricades. We made it on board with about 2 minutes to spare. But in the end the ship departed about 15 minutes later than originally scheduled.

Our last dinner on the Sea Diamond

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Back onboard we had to return to our cabins in order to spiff ourselves up for our "dress-up dinner". We had another very satisfying, filling meal washed down with more Mythos beer. I ahd my final Moussaka of the trip along with beef kebabs and Baklava for dessert. We returned to our rooms soon after dinner where we spent the next few hours trying to pack-up all our newly purchased goods. We had to have everything packed with our suitcases left outside our room by 11:00 pm so that the crew could get it off the ship for us in the morning.