Vol 53 Day 6 Selcuk

After an excellent sleep I joined my fellow travelers on the terrace of the pension for a delicious breakfast where I met Simca, from Holland. Simca is a lovley woman, probably somewhere in her sixties. She was planning to go to Osman's carpet shop to finalize selecting a carpet so I asked to tag along. I had decided it would be best to avoid Dervis for the day since he was getting so clingy.

Osman's carpet shop is one of the nicer ones I visited in Turkey. By this time I had been to quite a few, gaining a little more education in each one. I knew how to tell a new rug from an old one, a poorly made one from a well made one and an original piece from a factory produced "tourist" carpet. I had also learned how to get the rug-sellers to stop their usual sales-pitch tactics.

I watched as Simca selected a lovely, long silk runner for her home in Holland. I listened as she haggled over the price. It is always fun to listen to the haggling. Haggling is something I first experienced in Thailand and have grown used to in Oman. While some stores have "fixed prices" there are many with no prices marked at all. You simply ask how much something is and then scoff at the answer. Good naturedly. You then make a ridiculously low counter offer at which they get to scoff. Then the price will be lowered and you get to scoff again. It goes like that until you agree on a price. Simca was not much of a haggler so Osman made a good deal with her. Good for him, that is. But she was happy, so where's the harm?

Then it was my turn. For those of you who have never been to a carpet shop I'll tell you how it works. You enter the shop, they offer you a seat and a cup of tea. You give them an idea of what you are looking for and then they proceed to unroll carpet after carpet, setting aside ones you say you like into a "maybe" pile. Then they go back through the maybe pile and eliminate the ones you no longer like. When they get it down to one carpet the hard sell starts which is fine if you have found one you want to buy but in my case I had yet to find a carpet I loved enough to fork over my hard earned money for. This is the part where I usually then make my exit, thanking them for the tea and the effort.

After Simca left Osman started showing me carpet after carpet and we chatted all the while. I learned a great deal more about Turkish carpets from him. I'm afraid I am terribly picky and difficult to please. He had to unroll half of the carpets in the shop.

And wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I found 2 carpets that I loved.

The one towards the back is a really nice runner from the Bergama region. The one on the right is a camel bag converted into a carpet. The one on the left is a pillow that Osman offered to throw in if I bought both. I told him I had to think about it. I wanted to check out Erkan's shop too, to see if they had anything I loved more. Just like a woman. The piles of carpets you see in the photos, like the one Osman collapsed on, are all of my rejects. There were pile of rejects all over the store, (which is twice as large as it appears in these photos). He has two guys that work for him and it is their job to roll the carpets back up when Osman is done selling.

Osman and I sat around the carpet shop for the better part of the day, chatting about everything and nothing, and laughing. I even helped him sell a couple of pieces. At lunch time, when I mentioned I was hungry and needed to go get something to eat, he sent one of his workers off to fetch pide, a turkish style pizza that is soooooooo much better than pizza. This one is mushroom, tomato and green chili. It comes with a little rocket (arugula) tomato salad which is simply wrapped in plastic wrap, no container. The lemon is to squeeze onto the salad.

I found Turkish men to be gracious hosts. They fed me if I even looked like I might be hungry and I was given gallons of tea.

I had dinner with Erkan the CouchSurfer. He took me to a really beautiful European-style restaurant, overlooking the Temple of Artemis. We ate pasta, drank wine and talked about traveling and business. He has some interesting ideas for businesses in Selcuk which got me thinking. After dinner we went to his uncle's carpet shop and he gave me yet another lesson in carpets. He unrolled quite a few and there was a camel bag style carpet that I liked quite a bit.

On the way back to the pension I stopped into Osman's shop. We drank a bottle of wine together and talked into the night. Turkish wine is yummy! Very fruity.

Then it was off to bed with dreams of handsome Turkish men dancing in my head. If all men were as available and nice and handsome as the men I met in Turkey, I would never be without male company again. Wish I could import one or two to Oman- there is still a drought here.