Country Facts:
Population: 61.9 million
Religions: Muslim 99%, Other 1%
Currency: Turkish Lira (1 USD = 650,000 TRL)
Per Capita Annual Income: $2,780
Literacy Rate: 82%

We arrived at the port of Marmaris, Turkey from Rhodes at around 9:00 AM. We shelled out our $45 for the visa (the most we've paid for a visa on the entire trip!) and were in a "taksi" in no time.

On the hydrofoil ride over, we casually talked about how nice it would be to rent a car and be in total control of our time in Turkey. So, we had the taxi driver take us to the local Avis office to see how much it would be for a set of wheels. Avis quoted us the astounding amount of $63 per day for a bottom of the line Fiat without a/c. We walked over to a local company and their best price, after 20 minutes of negotiation, was $60 for a nicer car with a/c. Still too much for us. About to give up and head for the bus station to catch a bus to Koycegiz, we spotted a EuropCar a few blocks away and decided to give it one last shot...and we scored, with minimal haggling. We rented a Ford Fiesta, with a/c and unlimited kilometers, for about $50 per day. Still a lot for a budget backpacker (we've determined that we're not really budget backpackers), but we called it my birthday present.

In less than 30 minutes, and after a delicious Burger King lunch, we were en route to our first Turkish destination. We made the drive from Marmaris to Koycegiz in a little over an hour. After parking the car and wandering around a bit, we decided to move along down the coast. I had originally wanted to stay in Koycegiz for the thermal hot springs and mud baths, but that lost appeal rather quickly in the blazing hot and humid air. Right there the car had already proved useful since we had originally planned to take a bus and would have been stuck in a place that we really didn't want to be. The drive along the southern coast was amazing. Neither of us had ever imagined that Turkey was so absolutely beautiful. The towns of Kalkan and Kas were so quaint and lovely, perched on a lush, forested hillside, overlooking the Mediterranean, it was more like we were in Santa Barbara than in Turkey. We had both definitely pictured the stereotypical Turkey: dry and barren with lots of camels and mean police officers and nasty prisons. I know, I know, it's awful to judge a book by the cover (or a country by a single movie), but not knowing anyone who had ever been to Turkey, we just didn't have another picture in mind. That'll teach us!

Since the rough itinerary we had come up with before we decided to rent the car was completely shot to hell. We weren't dependent on the busses anymore; we were really taking this as it came. I flipped through the Lonely Planet and picked the village of Cirali to spend our first night in. Getting there was a bit of a challenge. First of all, everything you've ever heard about Turkish drivers is absolutely true. They are complete maniacs. It's rumored that the taxi drivers in Istanbul have their blood type painted on the back of their cab and now I believe it. It's a hair-raising experience to be a passenger, let alone the driver. Needless to say, we were driving with extreme caution! Secondly, the Lonely Planet SUCKS for driving directions, and third, well I'm just not a good navigator. We were almost out of gas when we saw the sign that the LP said we could turn off on, assuming we were on a bus, and not at the wheel of our own vehicle. Since it was only 11 kilometers away, we thought we'd fill up on our way out of town the next day. We were both happy that we'd get to the village before dark. About 10 Ks down a steep, winding road, we come to a fork and it suddenly became very unclear on what to do. Of course, since I was navigating, we turned right at the fork instead of left. Now, I can't take complete responsibility here because I've told my husband time after time to always do the exact opposite of what I say to do when it comes to driving. We went about 10 Ks further before realizing that we should have gone left. So we go back and turn left and after about 12 Ks come to a dead end. By now it's dark and the fuel light is blinking away. About the last thing I want to do is run out of gas on a dark, winding road in the middle of a country where I can't speak the language. There were a few small pensions in the area, but it really looked like a hippie commune with tons of very young, earthy types with dread-locks and tattoos, playing very loud Grateful Dead music. All the rooms were in open-air tree houses, and I knew if we stayed here, neither of us would get any sleep. Besides this, it was still about 90 degrees outside with about 98% humidity and I wanted A/C! Most normal people would have bitten the bullet and just stayed put until morning, but not us. At my urging (again, this goes back to the "always do the opposite of what I say" rule!) we drove back up the hill and luckily made it to a gas station on fumes and a prayer. Back on the main road, we took the next turn off, which LP said we could also turn off on, and were in the village of Cirali in no time. We drove around a bit before finding a vacant room, which unfortunately didn't have a/c, or even a fan to keep some air moving. It was a long, still night of sweating away!

Since it was so hot in Cirali, the next day we decided to move further down the coast. We didn't want to spend the entire day in the car, so we decided to stop at Karin Cave for a few hours of hiking and exploring, and stay the night in the town of Side (SEE-DAY).

The cave was awesome! Since it's inaccessible by public transportation, and sort of off the beaten tourists track, we were the only people there. After dealing with the crowds at all the sites in Greece, this was a most welcome change. It was about a 20 minute hike up a steep rockface, but so well worth it. The cave consists of three huge rooms, dug deep into the rock. It was pretty creepy exploring the back rooms but very cool (both climatically and visually). Because of the ideal living conditions, scientists have determined that the cave was continuously occupied for 25,000 years.

Then we drove to Side. The Lonely Planet describes Side as follows:

"Once upon a time, Side was a small Turkish village with a fine sand beach and wonderful Hellenistic ruins. Unfortunately, the world found out and Side is now not quite so alluring".

This is the understatement of the century. The little town was nice enough, and the ruins looked impressive, but OHMYGOD...the crowds of people, coupled with stacks and stacks of huge, square concrete hotels along the beach was appalling. I've never seen anything like it. It was also very bizarre as it was like going to Germany. All the tourists were German, all the prices were quoted in Deutsche Marks, everything was written in German, all the food was German, and all the Turks spoke Turkish and German, but not English. Even the hotel room we ended up in was German looking, with the low sloped ceilings (which I banged my head on four times). It was like being in Disney Turkey. The beach was packed rows deep with parasols, jet skis, banana boats, para-sailing, water skiing, and inner-tube rides. It was an awful scene!

It was ungodly hot and humid so we spent most of our time in Side drinking hideously expensive umbrella drinks and playing backgammon at one of the trendy bars on the beach. The waiter, Mahmet, was quite taken by the fact that we were from California, which he called "paradise". He sat with us for a while asking questions. He asked if we knew the words to the song "Hotel California" and actually wanted Chris to come back later because they had a guy that played in the bar that did the song and he wanted to know our opinion of the rendition. He also offered to let Chris sing with the guy. I take it they don't see many Americans in these parts. Earlier in the day, we were walking around the old town and Chris started talking to a carpet shop guy that wanted to know where we were from. When he found out, he said he wanted to come to California and go to the "Ghetto" because he loved hip-hop and rap. Boy, would these two guys have very different vacations! One in paradise and the other in the ghetto.

Our third day in Turkey was spent driving from Side (we were going to stay two days, but decided to get the heck out of there and head to Cappadocia) to the town of Nigde, just outside of the village of Goreme and the Valley of the Fairy Chimneys! I don't have too much to say about Nigde, except that we stayed at one of the worst hotels on the entire trip there. It was dark when we arrived and the Lonely Planet description said it was "the newest and sweetest" of all the hotels in Nigde. I really would have hated to see the other ones. This place, the Hotel Nahita, was really gross. The red crushed velvet bedspread had cigarette burns all over it. The carpet had giant holes and was wet in spots, and I'm not even going to tell you about the bathroom, except that I wouldn't sit on the toilet seat, nor enter without shoes and I wouldn't have dreamed of actually taking a shower in there. Thank God we only spent about 8 hours there.

Goreme/Konya (August 27 - August 30)
by Chris

We drove the short distance to the Cappadocia region, better know as the Valley of the Fairy Chimneys. The "Chimneys" are actually rock formations. They were formed about 10 million years ago when volcanic ash hardened. Boulder of harder rock trapped in the ash protected the "tufa" directly underneath from wind and rain erosion resulting in large cones of soft rock. Most say the landscape brings to mind the moon, but for me it's all Flintstones. The rock is soft enough that people have been carving houses into the towers for thousands of years. We stayed in the village of Goreme. In fact, our hotel room was actually more of a cave that had been cut into the wall of a hill. This area is an absolute must see for anyone coming to Turkey. And best of all the weather was cold, not cool, but downright cold! It was a wonderful change from the humidity of the southern coast.

Another interesting site is that of the underground cities. There are several, but we only went to one in Derinkuyu. The cities were used by the locals to hide from invading armies for up to six months at a time. The one we went into went eight levels deep below the ground. It was like being in a giant ant farm. It was a bit claustrophobia inducing but well worth the exploration. You could look up through the ventilation shafts to get a real feel for the depth of the city. There were rooms, stairways, kitchen areas, and even a winery. I don't know that I could have handled living down there for months at a time, but a few days wouldn't be too bad.

Becky introduced me to backgammon back when we were dating, and we have been playing off and on in a heated rivalry ever since. Backgammon happens to be a national obsession in Turkey. We were sitting outside of our room on the terrace playing and sipping on a bottle of wine when a Turk sits down with us to watch us play. As we were about to make moves, he would shake his head and move the pieces for us. He eventually challenged me to a game (which is actually first one to win five games). Have you ever seen those chess tournaments where they play at lightning speed and hit the timer after each move? He absolutely crushed me 5-0 in less than 10 minutes. He could see the board so well that he would know exactly what he needed for any scenario and would generally pick up the dice almost before I could see what the hell I had rolled. He taught us a lot in that short time and we've been using his strategies on each other ever since. After my stunning defeat we turned in, but before hitting the hay, we took our first HOT showers since Nairobi! It took us a little while to realize that after Nairobi, we had been in either very hot or hot and humid areas and had only been turning on the cold water tap. It was kind of weird to have steam on the mirror again.

Our second day started out with the open-air museum. We tried to get to the place as it opened to avoid the tour buses, but there were already two waiting at the entrance when we got there. The museum is actually several chapels cut into the mountain. There were some nice frescoes, but overall it wasn't that interesting. The real fun started when we determined that Cappadocia was as good a place as any to get familiar with buying a carpet. We chose one pretty much at random and got very lucky. The guy was very helpful in describing the different styles and was very low pressure. I love Turkey! If this had been Egypt or Morocco, we would have had to surrender our souls to get out of the shop without a carpet. We actually found one that we really liked, but didn't feel ready to buy since it was our first shop in all of Turkey.

After all that running around we decided to go to the internet cafe/bar/movie/TV place. Pirated movies are very common in Turkey. In fact, the day before we caught the end of "Gladiator". It's very funny, there was a sign in the bar saying, "We cannot be responsible for the picture or sound in the movies because they are pirated", just matter of factly. We had been starved for some mindless entertainment and we were rewarded with several episodes of the Simpsons and the final six episodes of Friends from last season. God, we didn't even know that Chandler and Monica were getting married! We ended up spending about four hours watching all this before going to dinner. This in itself was an experience. Turks have a great sense of humor, very dry, but all fun. We went to this restaurant that our hotel had recommended and I ordered chicken schnitzel (lots of German tourist here). The guy brings out this huge loaf of flat bread. I mean HUGE! It was easily a yard long. Becky looks at me like, "What the hell did you order?" We're looking around and don't see anything like this on anyone else's table. I ask the waiter what this thing is and he replies, very seriously, "This is your whole chicken, the breast is in the middle and the legs and wings are here in the ends." I'm looking at this thing like I'll be eating on it for a week. He smiles and says it's just bread and it's on the house. Turns out it was delicious flat bread, but we didn't come close to eating it all. I eventually got my chicken (in schnitzel form) from our comical waiter.

The next day we drove to Konya. Konya is the Islamic equivalent of the Bible belt in Turkey. It's very traditional and all the women wear head coverings of some kind and the town is dry (no alcohol). Actually, you can get beer at one of the 5 star hotels, but I guess they give you pretty dirty looks if you order it. We still, to this day, could not tell you how we got to our hotel or what way we came into town. Konya is a town of about 500,000 people, so it's pretty easy to get lost. The Lonely Planet map we had only covered a very small portion of the city so we had to drive around until we came upon a sign for the Dervish museum, which was on the map, and followed the signs until we got there. We still weren't sure exactly where anything was in relation to the museum (and us for that matter), so we started driving in the direction I thought we should be going. A guy comes from the front of a carpet shop and asks what we are looking for. "A place to park" I say. He motions for me to follow him and he basically leads us to a parking lot. We get out of the car and he introduces himself as Mehmet and asks where we are from. We told him San Francisco and it turns out he has been in the bay area before. Normally, you will get a guy to say, "Oh, I have a friend there", or something general. This guy actually knew many of the small towns and it was pretty obvious he had actually been there. We started talking to him and he ended up taking us to several hotels and negotiating prices for us until we found one we were happy with. He was very nice and asked us (of course) to stop into his shop for a cup of tea or coffee. He left and we went in search of food and to just check out the area. After a couple of hours, we went in search of an internet cafe. As we were walking, about a mile from our hotel, whom should we come across, but Mehmet. He asked where we were going and we told him we were trying to find an internet cafe that our hotel had told us was in this direction. He offered to call his son on his cellphone so that he could come and lead us to one. We thanked him, but declined, as we wanted to explore on our own. We did think it was weird to have come across him again in a city of half a million people. We found the cafe and managed to get out tickets arranged from Kathmandu to Hanoi.

We wandered through the bazaar on the way back to the room. We had always pictured Turkish bazaar as having lots of crafts and such, but we have found that for the most part, they cater to the locals. You can find clothes, tools, buckets, and just about any household item or utensil you could want, but not really much for the tourist. We did manage to find a nice shop that sold Turkish delight. I didn't really know what Turkish delight was, but it's pretty much a general term for soft candies of many different varieties. We bought a few pieces, but didn't think much of it. We went back to our room and went to bed early so we could go to the Dervish museum in the morning.

One thing we have learned the hard way is to test the mattress before taking a hotel room. We have never slept on a mattress so hard in our lives as we did in Konya. It was somewhere between a moss covered rock and a sandbag. It was a stuffed mattress and had no springs in it at all. They may have designed it for parents with children that like to jump on the bed. I tried it, and I might as well have been on a trampoline of granite. Of course, my back could have told me that too. If kids were to jump on this bed they would end up with shin splints. We decided to leave for Egidir a day early based on our bedrock mattress and the meager breakfast that was included with our room. Before we left we went to the Mevlana museum. The museum contains artifacts owned by Celaladdin Rumi, Mevlana to his followers, who studied Islamic theology. Upon his death his son organized his followers into the Mevlevi, or Whirling Dervishes. I'm not sure when the whirling part began, but they do it to achieve a oneness with God. There were some beautiful carpets and carved doors in the museum.

On our way back to the hotel to load up the car, guess who we should run into, by chance, of course. Our carpet guy. I'm sure that the hotel called him to let him know we were leaving early, because it was just a little too convenient that he should be hanging out at the exit of the museum, instead of his carpet shop. He attempted once again to get us to visit his shop, or at least come back to the shop to get his card. We felt bad, because he had been helpful, but we also felt a little stalked too. Based on that feeling we declined and left Konya to work our way to Egidir.

Egirdir and Pamukkale (August 30 - September 1)
by Becky

The town of Egirdir is in Turkey's lake district, and sits, appropriately, at the tip of Lake Egirdir. We stayed in the Yesilada area, which is a tiny island connected to the mainland by a long causeway. Over all, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to do in Egirdir. We spent the day walking around the town, playing backgammon, and chatting with Mehmet, our innkeeper. He was a nice guy and his wife was one heck of a good cook!

On our way to Pamukkale, I had my first and last driving experience in Turkey. Chris was getting tired of doing all the driving, so I offered my services. Now, I'm not the stereotypical female driver, in fact, I'm an excellent driver and can negotiate the streets of San Francisco along with the best of them, but the Turks scare the hell out of me. It's one thing to be a passenger in a car in Turkey, quite another to be the driver. The Turks drive so fast and maniacally, I think it took ten years off my life, and probably 12 off my husband's! I was so intimidated by the nutcases on the other side of the road passing people, I would step on the breaks each time an oncoming car got a little too close or tried to overtake me on the right, which absolutely infuriated the Turks behind me. I think I drove about 15 miles before Chris asked me to pull over.

We made it to Pamukkale mid-day and checked into the Meltem Hostel, which was recommended to us by the Mehmet. It was a pretty nice place for $7.00 for a double. We signed up for an evening trip to the mud baths and Karahayit, the iron rich mineral springs that the Turks hold as their fountain of youth and the cure to such ailments as arthritis and rheumatism. There were tons of Turks at the springs, wading around and actually drinking the hot, red water! I dared Chris to take a sip, but he had been having enough tummy troubles. It was to indulge in such risky behavior.

After visiting the red hot springs, we drove over to the town of Akkoy for the mud bath. We were with a group of about 10 other people, and the first step was to take a dip in the mineral pool, which was a balmy 120 degrees and as green and thick pea soup. When I got out (which, because it was so hot, was shortly after I got in) I was covered in stinky green slime that hardened as it dried. I have no idea why the water was so green and I don't want to know. I just keep telling myself that nothing can grow in water that hot. Some of the locals with us were actually swimming laps in this pool!

Next came the mud bath, which was quite similar to the ones we've visited in Napa Valley. The only difference is that you're in there with 10 complete strangers, two to a tub. The mud was much hotter too, but not quite as hot as the green pool. The mud was so thick it took a while to actually sink, but it was very relaxing.

On our second day in Pamukkale, we got up extra early to beat the tour busses to the Travertines. The word Pamukkale means "cotton castle" in Turkish and describes the Travertines perfectly. The entire hillside facing the town is covered in gleaming white calcium deposits that look like they're dripping down the slope. I thought it looked kind of like a giant wedding cake. The Travertines are the pools that have formed over the centuries filled up with sparkling blue, calcium rich mineral water. It's really magnificent.

We purchased our tickets to enter the area, walked up the way a bit and came to a sign that read something like "It is not certainly allowed to walk on the Travertines so that they can preserve this natural beauty as they used to be". This is something we've enjoyed in almost every country throughout our trip...trying to figure out what the heck the signs actually say. We took this particular one to mean that they didn't want us walking on the white calcium deposits, yet we could see no other way to get to the top. So we walk back down the hill and ask the ticket guy how to get up to the top. He replied "yes". By this point, some other tourists were there and they were walking all over the Travertines, so we figured we had just misinterpreted the sign. Sure enough, you can walk all over the calcium deposits, provided you take your shoes off, and don't wade in the pools.

A few years ago, the Turkish government finally got the clue that the Travertines were being ruined by the hordes of tourists bathing in them. Also by the stacks of modern hotels that were built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, many of which disposed of their sewage right down the gleaming white mountain! Pamukkale was declared a World Heritage Site in the late 1990s. All the hotels were demolished and conservation efforts started (although the only conservation effort we could see was a guy who stood at the bottom of the hill who would blow a whistle at the people who tried to sneak a bath in the pool). Although the guest quarters are closed down, The Pamukkale Motel remains standing for its amazing mineral pool where you can swim for a whopping $6.00 each (which we did splurge on)! The pool was magnificent though and worth the money. It was built on the same spot that housed a "sacred pool" in ancient times, complete with submerged columns and archways.

The sacred pool was the center of the city of Hierapolis, built as a cure center (for the curative properties thought to be found in the mineral water of the travertines) in 190 BC Eumenes II, the king of Pergamum. It was later ruled by the Romans followed by the Byzantines until several different earthquakes drove it into ruins. We wandered around the Hierapolis for a few hours, our favorite spot being the Roman theatre, which is by far and away the best preserved theatre we've seen throughout Italy, Greece and Turkey. Much of the stage still stands as it once was, with many statues (with heads no less!) and friezes.

On our way in to the theatre, we were approached by a young guy trying to sell us what looked amazingly like an ancient artifact. It was a cherub head that did not look like a reproduction. He was trying to be pretty sly about it too. When I looked at him and said "you shouldn't try to sell tourists this kind of stuff as it belongs to your country and they could be thrown in jail for trying to take it out of Turkey" he shoved it down his pants and ran off. We were also approached on our way out by a little old lady trying to sell us a lace table cloth. When we declined her numerous pleas for the table cloth, she shoves her hand in her skirt and pulls out a pouch containing some ancient coins. All it took was one exasperated shout of "NO!" and she shoved her booty back down her skirt and bolted. We encountered several more people trying to sell artifacts at both Ephesus and Afrodisias. After talking to our hostel staff about it, we found out that this is a real problem in Turkey and most of the stuff these guys are trying to sell are indeed antiquities. It seems pretty crazy to me that anyone would actually consider trying to take this stuff out of Turkey. I've heard that the accommodations at Turkish prisons are less than five stars!

Selcuk (September 2 - September 6)
by Chris

Turkish food has been wonderful, but we were getting a bit burned out on all forms of kebaps. We were craving a McDonalds hamburger (or something familiar) and we scored in Aydin on our way to Selcuk. We arrived in Selcuk in the afternoon and made our way to the Artemis Guest House. It's a pretty nice place, especially for $11/night. Based on recommendations, we had determined that Selcuk was to be our do or die place for buying a carpet. We had read many a horror story of the shops in Istanbul, and we wanted to avoid that if at all possible. We went to Outback Carpets and just didn't find anything that caught our eye. The guy was very nice and gave us some good advice. We had decided we wanted to by a Susani, which is an embroidered bedspread, made by Kurds in the east part of Turkey. At least that was the most consistent story. We had been told in Cappadocia that they were from Azerbaijan. We were to find many an inconsistency in our search for a carpet. Though we didn't see any we liked at Outback, they were nice enough to lead us to another store that had a much larger selection. It was a bit of an experience as the old gentleman running the shop was nearly blind and he kept showing us the backsides of the Susani's, which aren't nearly as nice as the fronts. We ended up buying a 30 year old one for about $35. This is a phenomenon of Turkish craft, the older the better the more expensive, at least in general. Becky isn't too much into this. She wants something pretty much unused for the prices they are asking. We went back to the guest house for a BBQ, which was very good.

Because we were going to be in Selcuk for a few days, we decided to return the car early rather than pay to babysit it in the parking lot. The guest house was very helpful in giving us suggestions for daytrips and places to see in Selcuk. Since a couple of them require a car to get to, we decided to do this first. We drove out to a little town called Birgi which had a mansion called Cakiraga Konagi. It was built in 1761 as a gift to the two wives of a local rich guy. The interior was beautifully painted. The windows were painted to look as if they had window sills and there were lots of flower vases painted on the walls. We had a little difficulty finding the mansion since we couldn't read Turkish and there were only two signs leading to sites of interest. We, of course, first followed the one that led us to the grave of somebody. Must have been somebody pretty important because there were tons of Turks, dressed very nicely, waiting in line. I only discovered it was a gravesite when the ticket agent made as if he were sleeping and pointed towards the gate.

Becky was feeling a bit homesick because tomorrow is her birthday. She called home and while she was on the phone, I snuck away and bought a couple of slices of cake at a bakery and surprised her with them at midnight. It was pretty tasty, even at midnight.

We've either been travelling too long or were losing our minds or a little of both! Over breakfast, I came up with the plan that if we didn't find a carpet in Selcuk that we liked, then we would keep the car and drive back to Goreme and buy the one that we had seen there. Now, we had decided yesterday that we didn't want to spend Becky's birthday in a carpet shop, we had actually planned on spending the day at a national park on the coast and having a picnic, then on the way back drop the car off in Kusadasi. But, if we wanted to return to Goreme for the other carpet, we would have to hit the carpet shops today. We would have enough time to get to go to Goreme and then get to Ankara, which was where we were supposed to return the car in the first place. Whew! Like a trooper, Becky volunteered to postpone her birthday until November 8th, when we will be with her stepmom in Thailand, ergo relieving us of the carpet shop on the birthday problem. Our guest house owner was also part owner of a carpet shop (big surprise! I think everyone is part owner of a carpet shop in Turkey) and suggested we check out his shop. Before we dove in, we decided to drive to the town of Sirence, which is know for its lace and embroidery. It actually turned out to be a nice little town. We picked up a couple of things and had an excellent lunch on a terrace that overlooked the village and the valley. The place was also a winery, specializing in fruit wines and we ended up having a really tasty mandarin orange wine with lunch. It turned out to be a really nice day for her birthday after all.

We returned to Selcuk late in the afternoon and headed to the carpet shop. We had decided that we wanted to spend no more than $1000 at the very most and hopefully less than that. We sat down and let the show begin. They flung out carpet after carpet, several very nice, but the one that caught both of us, was this huge 8 square meter wool one with silk backing and some silk highlights which the guy said was made northern Turkey. We narrowed it down to that one and began the bargaining, which ended up not being to bad because they wanted $4000 for it! Of course they said they could give a better price, but what was our best price. We knew they would never take $1000 for it so we said it's just too much and were ready to leave, they said they would leave the room so we could discuss the price we wanted. We decided that if they would take $2000 for it, we would buy it. They came back in and we offered our amount. No way, they could not do it, how about $3500? This went on for a little while before we ended up leaving with their best offer being $2500. For all of you looking to buy a carpet in Turkey, this will give you some indication on the mark up. A bit dejected, we stopped in another shop, just to see what they had. This guy showed us a few carpets, and we told him about the one we had seen at the other shop. He explained that the carpet we were trying to buy was not Turkish at all, but Iranian! He said there are no Turkish carpets that use wool on a silk backing, that is an indication of Iran. Turkish carpets are either wool on wool or silk on silk. In fact, he showed us a couple with similar silk highlights that were from Iran. He said that they would sometimes not tell you this because most tourists are looking to TURKISH carpets. We thanked him for his information and left. We were at the point we didn't know who to believe. The guy in Goreme had told us the Susani were form Azerbaijan, the guy in Selcuk says no, they're made by Kurds in Turkey. One guy in Selcuk tells us this wool on silk carpet is from northern Turkey, and another says no, it's from Iran. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up not buying any carpets and pretty much laughing that we were looking to buy one when we didn't even have a home. What were we going to do, put our $99 Cost Plus coffee table and $50 futon on a $4000 carpet? For that price we could take another Dragoman trip through Africa! So, in a single day, we went from going halfway back across Turkey to buy a carpet, to not wanting one at all. Well, we wanted it, but not for that much money.