Basically, the tour consisted of spending the day driving around on the back roads of Turkey, visiting small villages and seeing how people live outside of the big cities. It was advertised as a tour for people "looking for something off the beaten path," and it was certainly that. Only a dozen people signed up. At the end of the day, though, Tanner said that it was his favorite tour out of all the cruises he's been on. (And you have to remember that he's become quite a cruise veteran.)
I don't have lots of spectacular pictures, since the day was mostly just about cruising around the countryside, but here are a few. Our first stop was the village of Şirince, where you can buy orenges and pomegranets.
Our next stop was the village of Tire (pronounced TEE-ray). There, we visited a small museum, saw the inside of a mosque, and looked around at shops where they still make things the old-fashioned way. We heard the call to prayer, which they do five times per day. Most Muslems in Turkey aren't particularly religious, though, so everyone pretty much just went about their business.
This is the inside of the village mosque. (You'll see pictures from much fancier mosques when I get to the pictures from Istanbul.)
After that, it was time for lunch at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. (If there's a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, it must be good, or else no one would eat there.) We had lamb meatballs.
Finally, we stopped at a shop where they make Turkish carpets. Here's a vat of silkworms, which was really cool:
Then came the sales pitch. I was an easy mark because I already went in there planning on buying something. I figured that you can't visit Turkey twice without buying a carpet, right? I really liked the silk rugs that started at about $1800, but I managed to talk myself down to a cotton on wool rug that was substantially less than that. I don't have a picture of the one I bought, so if you want to see it, you'll just have to come out and visit us.
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