Kusadasi, Turkey

At the end of the day, we returned to the port city, Kusadasi.

Everywhere in Turkey we saw houses with solar panels and barrels on the roof.  These provide hot water for the household almost year round.

In Kusadasi, our tour concluded at a Turkish carpet (what we call a rug) store where we sat in on a demonstration. We watched for a few minutes as a young lady worked on tying each individual knot of a detailed carpet. One carpet can take a woman almost one year to complete, depending on the size. The salesman brought everyone drinks and then proceeded to roll out carpets of all shapes and sizes. They would flip them to show how the colors appeared to change when you viewed it from different angles. Since they are handmade and very high quality, the carpets should last at least 100 years or more. No worries, if yours doesn’t, the salesman said you could bring it back in 100 years and he’d give you a refund! Most were not our style, but they did have one that we liked in their modern collection. We asked the price, but even if it lasts 100 years I wasn’t quite willing to spend $2500 on it. Here’s the salesman showing us that there really are flying carpets in Turkey!