After a quick breakfast in Kusadasi, we packed our bags and loaded into the bus for a short ride to a Turkish carpet factory, where we were going to learn about Turkish carpets, the different types, how they are made, etc.
The gentleman at the Turkish carpet factory was called Mehmet, as are 95% of Turkish men he joked. Mehmet gave us a brief history of Turkish carpets. He explained that the Turkish people were nomads in their early days and therefore had to produce a multi-purpose item that could be easily transported, much like the Native American Indians. In Turkey, these nomadic people were born on, slept on, played on, and prayed on carpets. The carpets were made by taking the wool from animals, washing and cleaning it, using vegetable dyes to color it and then weaving the wool on a loom to make the carpets. The quality of the carpet is not determined by its thickness but by the number of knots per square centimeter. There are three main types of carpets. The first is wool on wool which done with wool thread on a wool stringed loom, these are the carpets traditional of the nomads. The second is the wool on cotton which is done with wool thread on a cotton stringed loom which allows for more knots per cubic centimeter which lends to a more durable carpet and allows for more intricate designs. The final type of carpet is the silk carpet. The silk carpet has 100 knots per square centimeter compared to 10 for a standard carpet. Carpet factories hand select girls to make the silk carpets because of the high level of skill required, and errors cannot be afforded due to the expensive nature of the silk. Also, unlike in the other types, the weavers cannot merely do the design by eye but must follow what are called millimetric papers. The average silk weaver works about an hour and a half during a working day and can do about 2000 knots maximum in that time, at this rate it would take 500 working days to complete a silk carpet 1 square meter in size, which may have something to do with why they are so stinking expensive.
After learning about the carpets and seeing all of the different types, a few of our group purchased carpets, although we did not as the one I liked most was 7000 US dollars. What can I say? I have expensive taste. So while the others completed their shopping, we enjoyed a nice cup of Turkish apple tea, which I am going to dearly miss once out of Turkey, before heading on to Ephesus.
Ephesus was amazing, much busier than the other ancient cities we have visited thus far. It was nearly impossible to take a photo without someone walking into it. Settlements in the area of Ephesus date back to 6000 B.C., however, the earliest settlements were 60 kilometers from the site we visited and in those days were called Asaba. The city of Ephesus spanned many eras and had throughout history been occupied by among others the Hittites, Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The escavations started in 1825 and while only 50% complete, much of the ruins are very well preserved/restored. With all the tourists walking down the ancient streets of Ephesus it was almost easy to picture the way it would have been when it was a living breathing city as we made our way from ancient site to ancient site. I would love to go back to Ephesus and spend more time, one of the down sides of these organized tours is that they run on a schedule, but the nice thing is you get to see so much in so few days.
After touring Ephesus we stopped for lunch at an adorable open air restaurant where you took your shoes off and sat on big cushions on the floor, something I’m sure designed for tourists to think they are getting an “authentic Turkish experience”, although I must say the only Turkish looking people I saw were sitting at tables. At lunch we all tried guzleme, or Turkish pancakes. Tim had the honey guzleme and I had the spinach and feta ones. The guzleme was quite good, in fact perhaps my favorite Turkish meal, the drink however was a slightly different story. Iyran is a yogurt drink, which essentially tastes like cold frothy sour milk. I drank most of it, and it did get better the more I drank, but overall I would give it a pass if ever I came across it again. When in Rome!
After lunch we stopped at a leather shop, which I must say was not nearly as interesting as the carpet factory and was mostly pushy salesmen trying to get you to buy extremely expensive leather jackets. The one and only thing worth mentioning about the leather factory is the fashion show. While mostly horrendous, the glimmer in the show was when my husband got pulled up on stage and walked the catwalk in a slick leather jacket. Don’t worry! I got the whole thing on video!
After that it was time for us to wish Turkey farewell. Gurkan, our Turkish guide dropped us at the port where we met Steve, our Greek speaking Aussie tour guide, who was going to take us through the Greek Islands. We had originally been meant to depart on Thursday, but as we learned, Greek ferries sort of do their own thing, and if we didn’t leave on Wednesday we wouldn’t be able to leave until Friday. So we boarded our ferry and had a short stop in Samos where I had the absolute best Mousakka I have ever had, although I haven’t had many, at a little restaurant that Steve said was his favorite in all of Greece. I also discovered that wine in Greece is as cheap as water, a discovery I would soon regret. But for the mean time I enjoyed a nice bottle of Fokianos a local wine found only in Samos. After dinner we boarded a ferry to Syros where we hauled our bags up winding streets and stairs before crashing at our hotel at nearly five o’clock in the morning, Thursday we had to rise again and be aboard our next ferry by around 10:00 a.m. Easy to say, we didn’t get much sleep.
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