Part of being on a tour where you cover something like 1600 miles is that you spend a lot of time on the motorcoach. It may seem like we "stop" a lot, but that is punctuated by periods (sometimes long) that are just driving with nothing more remarkable that looking at the landscape.
Our first stop after Pergamon was restaurant/road stop.
The bread in Turkey was inevitably delicious.
If I recall correctly, this was falafel:
Beer in a fancy mug:
More of that sweet, sweet grilled meat (and rice and more bread):
Another baklava? Of course!
And coffee to go with it:
From lunch, we began to work our way back towards the coast.
Our destination for the evening: Kuşadasi
I always love seeing the local cuisine. I'm guessing the climate is considered Mediterranean?
ReplyDeleteLeigh, I would say yes, as we are still largely not too far from the Aegean Sea, often as close as we were in Greece.
DeleteThe cuisine was great. We never had a bad meal.
A cheerful post TB although when I read "2024 Turkey..." my mind's eye flashed a picture of a browned turkey in the roasting pan.......(sigh) off to make breakfast.
ReplyDeleteHeh heh.
DeleteAt one point I thought of changing to the "modern" spelling of Turkey, then realized I was far too along in the series to change.
(Also, I have a bit of an argument with that - it is not like we call Italy "Italia" or Japan "Nihon"; it appears we do this willy-nilly as it suits certain purposes).
The only bus tour I have taken was one to see Delphi recently in Greece. I know this might seem blasphemous to you, a historian scholar, but I really enjoyed the stop we made on the way there and one on the way back. On the way there was just a stop at a simple roadside store where we could look among Greek wares that travelers buy and sample. It is there that I bought my first carbonated lemonade that blew my mind away. On the way back, we stopped for a late lunch and while all the group went to a designated restaurant, we walked across the street to a little mom and son run place where they preserved their own ingredients from a garden out back and made everything from scratch. That too blew my mind away and both stops were highlights of the trip... for me anyway. I'm sure my historian daughter preferred Delphi.
ReplyDeleteMInd not blown at all, Ed - I loved all of our little stops along the way, simply because we got exposed to things we would never get exposed to just in the big cities or main tours - like the carbonated lemonade you mentioned (they were great, were they not?). I will say that is something where a car might give one a bit more control over the "local" nature of a trip.
DeleteI will say - at least for our coach tours - the stops were scripted but tended to be reasonable, affordable, and representative of where we were. Yes, I assume the tour guide/bus drivers had "an arrangement", but I suspect that is the way it works in that industry (and the places we stopped were never pushy).