Memories of Turkey
When I was watching the Olympics and saw a runner from Turkey, memories of that wonderful country came flooding back. I lived in Izmir, Turkey in the 60's for three years. My, then husband, was in the Air Force and we were stationed there. I loved those people and to this day still have a Turkish friend that I hear from every now and then. I even went back in the 80's for a visit and vacation. I think about that country a lot and what a great time I had when we lived there. I loved going down into the old market place. It was like you see in the movies, dark narrow alleys with little shops by the hundreds. Some alleys were called "Gold Alley" with shops full of gold jewelry. When you looked down the row of shops it was a solid row of gold. When you shop for jewelry, carpets or clothes they offer you a chair, and send for hot tea. You sit, shop and drink tea and visit with the owner. What a neat experience. The alleys are much more fun to go to than a regular store on a downtown street. I also loved the open air vegetable markets. Their fruits and vegetables are just wonderful. They are perfect. No early picking but perfectly vine ripe and wonderful tasting. They have, what they call "string bags" that are made out of white string. You put your items in the bag and it will get bigger and bigger the more you put in them. You have to buy a loaf of their bread that is sold from a push cart and is so good. A great meal is shish-ka-bob (which is tiny pieces of lamb on bamboo sticks), tomatoes, cucumbers and bread. I am sure some things have changed after all these years but there are some things in the Middle East that never change. You can pass a camel train on a main road along with cars. You see ruins from bible times every where. Cities on the Aegean Sea or resorts are delightful places to visit. We would ride downtown on a horse drawn cart for a quarter. Izmir sits right on a bay and is a beautiful city. It is the city that in ancient times was called Smyrna and not far in different directions are ruins of cities mentioned in the Bible. A couple of neat web sites are http://www.mersina.com/Turkey/Aegean/Izmir/index.html and http://www.dikomarine.com/turkey/index.html. The people are so very friendly and kind.
posted by Ann at
12:48 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Ann, I used to know a guy that lived in Turkey for a while. He said he loved it there also and he talked about the wonderful food and vegetables as well. He did say they would scare you to death driving over there. I enjoyed the post and will check out the links.
Judy, yes their driving does leave a bit to be desired. I had to laugh because when they break down on the road they just park at that exact spot, circle their vehicle with rocks and that warns other drivers to watch out and if you hit them its the drivers fault. Also they play their radios even louder than our teenagers do - if you can imagine that!
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