All about Turkey

Even though I was semi-absent from half of our trip to Turkey, Matt borrowed the camera when I was confined to the ship. The first day I was totally fine, though, and the first day was pretty thrilling.

We landed in Izmir, which is southeast of Istanbul, and actually located on the Asia side of Turkey. It's Asia Minor.

So...

I WENT TO ASIA!

And you know what? It's gorgeous.

Box checked. Maybe that's why my body was all like, "ok, we hit a new continent, so you can be sick tomorrow, it's only Istanbul and it's only Europe."

But yes, Asia. Guess what - they had ruins, too!

 It's hard to see it, but in my hand is a pudding-size container of water we were given in the van. Clever alternative to bottles.

 Don't worry, Matt wasn't pushing this over. It was totally leaning all on its own.

 We did our best to get pictures where there weren't hoards of people.

 That giant thing was once the library, the library people!

 Library up close...

 Apparently Sting has performed here, along with other modern musicians.

 The group taking a short break.

What we neglected to take pictures of in the afternoon are a few things, including lunch. Lunch was outside under shady trees and consisted of a ton of delicious things - things like roasted veggies, carrot puree stuff, bulgur, which is similar to rice in consistency, meat patties and chicken skewers. Oh- and sour cherry juice. All great.

We also visited a government-run rug shop, which is essentially like any other rug shop with slightly less pushy salespeople. Less pushy because, as our guide explained, they get paid either way. They're trying to keep the art of rug weaving alive, so they get their subsidies no matter what. We saw silkworms, women actually weaving rugs, and then finished rugs spread out across the floors. They made some really great stuff, too - no purchases were made though, since the patterns just don't go with our modern style. (Even our guide said she only had a runner in her modern apartment).

Since we had some time before going back to the port, our guide asked us if we'd rather visit a leather store or a pottery place. We were ambivalent about both, but opted for the leather store. I knew Matt and I wouldn't get anything there since last Fall we got leather jackets in Florence.

We thought that it would be a similar marketplace setup. Boy were we wrong! We were taken to the expansive Rossini Leather store where we were treated to a private runway show where they had models on staff to do a presentation (and drag a few of our friends up to help model), before we were escorted into the large shop area. The runway show was an unexpected treat and highlight - I feel like I've been shopping the wrong way this whole time, buying clothes without seeing a fashion show first!

Back on the ship is where things got off track for me. Needless to say I didn't make it out of bed the following two days as we were docked in Istanbul, but Matt ventured out and had a great time. He even went to a Turkish Bath! (Google it, people! For the pictures alone!)

He didn't take any pictures of that, but he did capture some other things in the city:

Matt was very neutral about it all - maybe because he didn't want me to really know how awesome the city is and be sad I missed it, or maybe because it was just another large city. He did say the Grand Bazaar was chaotic and everyone was super pushy and that's certainly something I wouldn't have liked.

It would have been nice to go to Pinkberry, though, as I haven't had that treat since October. Sigh.

Maybe we'll go back and visit a beach resort area. We heard those are nice. And beachy.