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Delicious Cherries!
we bought a GIANT bag of cherries from this man on the street and we have already eaten them all! delicious! Yesterday we were almost late to our shore excursion!! My heavens, it gave us quite a scare, but we made it aboard our bus/van for a “Taste of Kusadasi”. This turned about to be a smaller excursion, with us being four of only twelve people in the group. We drove out of Kusadasi, passing by several sites of historical significance - the site of the temple of Artemis, the theatre where St. Peter preached Ephesians, and the statue of the Virgin Mary that leads to her house. It was amazing to see all of these things and to realize how old and well preserved the spots were, but seeing as history is not our thing and we were on a “taste” tour (for the people who very kindly say that they are into “culture” rather than “history” but really are just too shallow and unsophisticated to listen to the good stuff) we just zoomed right by and headed to a village a little out of town.
Our tour guide explained things about the country and about Kusadasi, such as how the Turks pronounce the country “Turkia” and how 90% of the citizens are Muslim. He told us how, as good
Shopping
Mom bought a very pretty table runner from this woman... Muslims, they believe in Adam and Eve, as do we. Therefore, since those two people were the beginning of civilization, then we are all “brothers and sisters” in this world. It was really neat to hear him say that to our small group of tourists, and we all agreed with him. At one point on the way up to the village the views got particularly panoramic, and I kid you not, I heard, from 3 rows back, Helen’s pill bottle open. Bless her heart. Once again, beautiful views. On either side of the road we saw artichoke plants, grape vines, and trees of all kinds - olive, orange, apple, apricot, peach, tangerine, and more.
We went to the village, where we had some free time to look around on our own for 45 minutes or so. So of course, we “traipsed” off to start shopping in the bizarre. First things first, we bought some DELICIOUS fresh cherries from a street vendor. We paid 2 euros (3 dollars), and expected to get just a few, but the man just kept grabbing handful after handful and putting them in our sack. I carried them all day today and I think we
Turkish Rug Store
Look at the giant pile of beautiful rugs - they showed us each of these and described its characteristics. have all made ourselves sick from eating them. We, as a collective unit of four, bought olive oil, a handmade linen-esque table runner, some more scarves, etc. We then met back up with the group at a restaurant to have our coffee cups read by a fortune-teller. In order to do this, unfortunately, we had to each suck down a small cup of Turkish coffee, which tastes oddly like muddy playdough sweetened with molasses, then we turned our cups over and, apparently, revealed our future in the way that the coffee fell down the cup. The fortune-teller spoke to our translator, who then spoke to us. It was pretty generic but still fun. She told me that I would wait until 30 to have kids and that it is too early for me to be married! Yippee!! I loved her instantly.
After the coffee fortune telling, we walked up a hill to a Turkish home. This was a real place of inhabitance - like as in real Turkish people lived there. The 15 of us took of our shoes by the front door, walked up some very steep stairs, and arrived at a table set for 15 and covered
Proud Owners of New Turkish Rugs
Mary's rug is the larger one, mom's is the smaller. Helen's are not shown here, but I promise they are beautiful! in traditional Turkish food. We ate salad and seasoned rice wrapped in grape leaves, followed by lamb meatballs, potatoes, green beans and rice, all with a very distinct Turkish seasoning and all washed down by homemade wine. The experience was amazing! We thanked our hostess and left the house and headed back to town to visit the Turkish rug store.
What an awesome store! We went in, were led up to a second floor show room (they treat the cruisers like royalty… we found out why about an hour later) where there were beautiful, handmade rugs EVERYWHERE. We watched a demonstration on how the rugs are made, and I won’t bore you with the details, but just know that they are made with a double knot technique, setting them apart from rugs from other countries, and that some of the larger ones we saw took 3 years to make with 2-3 ladies working on them. Of course, they don’t work on them all day, but geezah that is a long time.
We drank Turkish apple tea and watched the knowledgeable rug salesman display all of the rugs. We learned that if you ever buy a Turkish rug, or
any rug for that matter, you have to make sure you look at them from opposite sides because the way that they are made makes the colors really rich from one view and much more muted from another angle. All very interesting. Anyway, the demo ended, and I was gathering my things to go when mom very decidedly said “I’m going to buy a rug”. Aaaaaand that is why they treat the cruisers like royalty. Even the Beverly Hillbillies might buy rugs, you never know. So, one hour, four rugs, one Harem ring, numerous refreshments, many “special prices just for us”, and 4 very sweaty rug salesmen later, we left the store with lighter wallets but an excited feeling about our new Turkish rugs that were in route to our doorsteps. Well let me rephrase that, mom, Helen, and Mary were excited about the their new rugs, and I was excited about the rug I may one day inherit. It is so nice to be able to say, when hassled by pushy salesman, “I just graduated from college and I have no money”. It is truly a blessing.
We went back to the ship, thankful that the next day
My Inheritance
Apparently in Turkey these rugs are passed down from generation to generation as inheritance was an “at sea” day so that we couldn’t spend too much money. Stay tuned - next we might just buy a donkey. Which, come to think of it, might be cheaper than Turkish rugs.
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I didn’t plan on updating for our “at sea” day, but unfortunately I just had to so that I could tell y’all one little story.
So I was so excited to spend some time by the pool today. After a couple of hours though, I was very hungry, so I gathered my things and went to get in line at the poolside grill to get some food and then take it back to eat in the room. I got my chicken burger and was going through the condiment line when I rounded the corner, stepped in a puddle of water, and went FLYING through the air. I crashed to the ground, my tray, two plates, and silver wear hit the ground (at all distinctly separate times to make sure that rather than one crashing noise there were about seven), and, then about 229 old people gasped in unison. To make matters worse, there had just been a lovely little shipbuilding competition by the pool so the area was particularly crowded not only with passengers but also with crew members, so about 9 crew members in white uniforms rushed up to me to help me up and fell all over themselves trying to make sure I was okay. I’m sure they were having nightmares about a lawsuit. Anyway, I was laughing so hard I was crying (making the attention from the crew even worse), and I backed away promising them I was okay then ran down the stairs to our room to relay my story. I noticed halfway through my retelling of the saga that there were several very minute pieces of “plate shrapnel”, if you will, in my knee. That is how many pieces my plates shattered into.
Of course, I was still hungry, so I changed clothes and put on a hat to go back with mom. And dark sunglasses. And an Indian sari. I promised mom and Helen on the way up that, although the mess would be cleaned up, there would surely a yellow caution cone near the scene of the incident. Sure enough, as we got off the elevator, we saw not one but four yellow cones surrounding the condiment bar. And to add insult to injury, the little Indonesian man working at the condiment bar recognized me and laughed. Go figure.
Glad it wasn’t one of the old people - they might have broken a hip...
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Emily Franke
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Your Mom's purse...
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