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We traveled for 20-some hours yesterday. It's a necessary evil with international travel, but it puts this unfortunate pall over one's memory of an otherwise perfect trip. I will have to remind myself, when asked about my vacation, not to rant about the Keystone Customs guys who LOST someone, causing a shut-down of the whole international terminal in Houston. Or the 42 metal detectors we went through. Or the weird, but well-intentioned, Dutch airplane food. That was just the very end, the price of coming and going. When I asked, I will talk about:

The Turkish people. They're the most welcoming bunch of folks you could want to meet. Even the ones that are rough around the edges. They have immense national pride and it's well-deserved. We liked Turkey better than Spain and almost as well as Italy (yes, you heard me — someone call the EU Chamber of Commerce!). No evidence of the current Turkey-U.S. spat.
The East. There's magic in being somewhere that is not quite Western. It's Western enough, mind you — that's why we felt comfortable going. But the combination of Islamic elements (call to prayer, covered heads) and Asian elements (architecture, geography) was eye-opening.
The food. Consistently very good. Grilled meats and vegetables. Rich yogurt sauces. Eggplant prepared a thousand different ways. Not as weird or mysterious as you'd think: just earnest and delicious.
The big scenery. The hot-air balloon ride was the perfect climax to two weeks of eye-candy. Three different seas, lush hillsides dotted with grapevines, the moonscape of Cappadocia, architecture that is a religious experience (as it was intended).
The small scenery. Six little old ladies in their best headscarves carrying wrapped presents on a bus. The calf in someone's house. Shop windows filled with fezes and other wonders of felt. Grapes piled high on the roadside. Our breakfast table.

Our trip will not be tarnished by the many long hours home, or our sadness at its ending. We had something good to go home to: Lu. She was very cuddly last night, and kept saying, "I missed you guys. I'm so glad you're home."

The Moon

Cappodoccia defies description. I say this as a way out of describing it well. The rocks aren't quite earthly -- their formation from above is evident in their formation. They look like the combined creation of JRR Tolkien and George Lucas. When I think about telling Lu about them, I get as far as "rock palaces where fairies live." The photos are better than my troglodyte words (thanks, Jo).

Because Lu's Who You Really Care About

Gentle readers, I know that reading about our Turkish adventures is probably boring you. A quick Lucy update: she is in El Paso with Baga and Opa. When I talked to her this afternoon (for the 30 seconds she deigned to speak to me), she was on her way to get a manicure. Seriously. She spent a week with Nini having all kinds of fun, and now she is very busy between visitations and viewings by her adoring El Paso public. Aren't we so mean for not taking her with us?

Dolmus

That is the Turkish word for stuffed -- they use it to describe grape leaves stuffed with rice as well as local taxi-buses. And us, after all this Turkish food. We have eaten:
--Lamb stewed in tomatoes
--Chicken kebabs that put all others to shame
--Lavosh bread right out of a wood-fired oven
--Baba ghanoush, yogurt sauce, hummus and spicy couscous
--Tiny lamb-filled ravioli in yogurt sauce
--Tomatoes! Oh, the tomatoes!
--Cucumbers, olives, peaches, melons, all grown near where they're eaten
--Fresh fish right out of the Bosphorus

Writing this list has made me hungry and I just finshed eating my eggs...

Wedding Day in Kirazli

We awoke to the sound of gunfire this morning. This, a mere hour after our predawn awakening to the call to prayer blast sung by a tone-deaf imam. We heard the first shots and Jason wondered if it was gunfire. Surely not, I said. Then, unmistakably...gunfire. We didn't panic (well, I did a little, but only thinking my mom would KILL me if I got myself shot in Turkey). Jason went out of the room to check it out and he ran into the hotel owner, a darling Welshman who said, "Not to worry, we haven't gone to war. There's a wedding in the village and that's how they celebrate." Here comes the bride...heralded in a hail of gunfire.

We are near the South Aegean staying in a gorgeous little hotel. The village, Kirazli, is remote at best. If I asked a movie scout to find me the quintessential rural Turkish village, this is what they'd come up with. Goats, donkey and toothless old neighbor lady included.