A 6-S-ful Holiday

We have had a good holiday so far, in spite of some rain and a bad cold.  We had more than a week of sun, sand and sea, enjoyed swimming, sleeping and SHOPPING.  Turkey is a shopper’s paradise, especially in the tourist areas, starting with the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul where you go for gold and silver jewelry and for carpets.  The resort area of the Mediterranean coast on both sides of Antalya is wall to wall resorts close to the ocean and wall to wall shops “across the street” like a giant strip mall that runs for miles and miles. 

In our area, the vast majority of tourists are Russian or Ukrainian and every shopkeeper speaks Russian, though I did find a couple who also spoke English.  The stores feature the products for which Turkey has a reputation and a commercial advantage.  Leather and furs; textiles such as towels and related, clothing such as jeans and related; grocery stores selling fresh fruit, tea, coffee and Turkish Delight; souvenir shops with everything from water pipes to hand carved chess sets and restaurants selling real Turkish food for when the resort buffet starts to look the same day after day.

Valya and Elena, from Mariupol, had come on the same flight as we did and also stayed at our resort, so we had someone else besides ourselves to talk to for the first week.  Tanya and the two “girls” hit it off immediately.  Tanya spent the week with them, shopping up and down the street, about 1 km in each direction.  And I didn’t have to go.  Best part.  They harassed, cajoled, terrorized, flirted and negotiated with the Turkish men in all the shops along the way (Turkish women are rare in retail) driving the hardest bargains they could.  Because it is end of season, bargains can be had.

They found Turkish bath and massage at half the price of our hotel.  They found Ali who will pay us $50 per liter bottle of good Ukrainian vodka next time we come (we can bring four bottles between the two of us).  They found a tour to Pamukkale at $18 under the price quoted by reputable tour companies. 

Tanya found a lovely leather coat that started at $2000 but quickly came down to $600.  By dint of tough bargaining Tanya got it down to $450, after several trips to several stores, playing one against the other.  I went with her when she drove the final bargain and paid for the coat.  The store did alterations on the spot; including an extra button hole for which no matching button could then be found.  Another $10 had to come off the price and there was no backing down on Tanya’s part.

I said to the guy, who also spoke excellent English that eventually Tanya would give him money and go away but I was with her forever.  He laughed at that.  

Tanya, Elena and Valya: Shopaholics Unanimous

Tsarist Russia 1812. Republican America 2012?

"Moscow in 1812 was a sprawling city of about 250,000 inhabitants in fall. Throughout the winter months, when the nobles and their serfs returned from their country estates the population would increase by about 100,000. Rising out of a sea of single story wooden houses, many of them little more than huts, were the great stone palaces of the aristocracy. . . The palaces situated in large gardens were not nearly so numerous as the 6 cathedrals and 1500 churches that tended to the souls of the Muscovites. As elsewhere in Russia a citizen. . . either had everything or nothing. Everyone was either connected to the great families or served them. The small middle class consisted mainly of merchants and those who provided skilled services for the nobles or for the government. Many of these people were foreigners.

"To describe the Russian aristocrats are “conspicuous consumers” would be something of an understatement. . . This was underlined by the summer exodus of the nobility; when the nobles took their service entourages along, the population of the city was reduced by 28%. Yet even this statistic does not iclude everyone connected with the palaces, because staff remained behind to look after these empty “townhouses”.

"In addition to maintaining residences in St Petersburg (and Moscow). . . the great families duplicated their lavish domiciles in their summer residences outside Moscow and often on their vast agricultural domains. There, amid thousands of serfs, they lived in a grand style. To put it plainly, this very thin elite layer atop the Russian social strata was all the counted. The rest of the population were considered of little consequence. . .

"When word of what had happened at Borodino got around, the nobles at once put their serfs to work stripping their Moscow residences of all valuables. . . About 10,000 soldiers, wounded in battle needed to be moved but there were no wagons or draft teams left because everything that had wheels had been used to transport the property of the wealthy."

****

"Invoking the name of God, the aroused peasants committed unspeakable cruelties and almost every kind of torture imaginable to prolong the agony of their victims. In this they were morally abetted by the fact that the average Russian believed that all west Europeans were unbaptized heathens who had been led into holy Russia by the anti-Christ. This was the way the situation had been presented to the uneducated population; from St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Russian army headquarters, manifestos attesting to these “facts” were circulated in every market square."

From: 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign by Richard K Riehn. McGraw Hill 1990.

How to tell a shop carries my size

Two big dummies

Carpet Weaving

Our tour to Pamukkale took us through Denizli where we stopped at a carpet factory and warehouse, established as a tourist attraction.  We saw how silkworm cocoons were turned into silk thread and then dyed and finally woven into very expensive hand made carpets.  Each knot is tied by hand.  The women working there make $400 per month which is likely top rate as it is a tourist spot.  You can hardly see their hands move when they are working.  The patterns are very complex and while they have a paper pattern to work from, they seem hardly to look at it.

Carpets are silk, cotton or wool or combinations.  We didn't even ask how much.

Working on a large woolen carpet

Inside the loom

Working on a small silk wall hanging.

Detail of the wall hanging

Spas-ed out

Hard enough to dull an axe

Cleopatra's fish farm uh, Pool

Modern Pamukkale Spa Town

New Luxury Spa going up

Those who read my Truskavets series from a couple of years ago (starting here) will know I am not entirely sold on miraculous cures from "taking the waters".  The water at Pamukkale is touted as curing everything external or internal.  Judging from the mineral content it should certainly cure constipation.  The Romans knew a good thing when they saw it ie people who think spas are useful must have money and should be parted from it as soon as possible.  Modern Turkey is onto it as well.  Going into the hot pool in Hieropolis is $18.  It reminded me of a fish farm.  The Romans built on top of the hill as it was the source of hot water and easier to defend.  The Turkish spa town of Pamukkale is at the bottom of the hill to escape UNESCO.

Hieropolis - Roman Spa Town

Hieropolis started out a couple of thousand years ago as a Roman spa town complete with temples to Apollo but by the time a final earthquake finished it several centuries later,  Christianity had crept in.  We found a cross on a stone from the ruins of a church.  Again, the website has all the facts so I'll just throw in a few photos.  The whole area is covered with ruins.  As a UNESCO World Heritage site it has money for restorations and archaeological digs so things are happening.  There is enough rock there to rebuild the whole city if they wanted .

Part of the water utility

The main theatre (there were two)

Click to open panorama of part of the city

Ruin among ruins

Pamukkale

Travertines of Calcium carbonate

Pamukkale hot springs are located about 300 km north of Antalya.  Tanya and I took a day trip excursion yesterday.  5:30 am to 9:30 pm.  More on another blog about excursions. The website linked to is awesome and provides all the in depth information you need, but here are a few of my pictures.

Map of the ruins of Hieropolis and of Pamukkale

We walked out onto the travertines to wade in the pools

Click on the picture for a panoramic view

A quiet place to sleep