Goodbye Turkey.... Hello New York

At the last minute I decide to purchase one way tickets from Ankara back to Tampa.

Turkish Air has great food and entertainment systems on the flight from Istanbul to JFK. Unfortunately, the flight leaves late and is then is kept on the tarmac at JFK long enough for us to miss our connection to Tampa. We are pleasantly surprised when they comp us with a nice hotel, dinner and breakfast vouchers and we get some unanticipated sleep with a 6:30 AM replacement JetBlue flight.

A few days earlier we say goodbye to the Utopia Cave Hotel in Cappadocia.

We see another Cappadocia cave castle on the way out...

Alice and Carnot take us to an ethnic museum/restaurant on the trip back to Ankara. We learn a little about marriage and family customs here about 100 years ago...

Even if you read Wiki, it is very hard to understand exactly who this man was and what he taught. However this shrine is very popular for Turkish people. Alice was very pleased that we were the only Americans visiting today. There were hundreds of Turkish people crowding the shrine of this Teacher/Prophet/ Holy Man? Maybe he is why Turkish people are kind to stray cats and men give up their seats to old women and cripples?

Some women at the shrine in traditional dress.

Back in Ankara, Alice takes us to see Achmed, her favorite Turkish rug merchant.

While these rugs are very beautiful, Mrs Phred and I just spent five years painfully divesting ourselves of a lifetime of material acquisitions. We can make little sense of buying a rug no matter how lovely...

Eventually Alice buys another rug.

It's a pip.

Later we walk to the old walled city and then to the Ankara Archeological Museum.

I like this ancient two headed duck.

And this Roman head.

Cuneiform tablets and envelopes...they write some very small letters on the clay tablets. Mrs Phred thinks they write the letters when the clay is wet. She thinks it would be too hard to carve these tiny letters after the clay is dry...

We stop for lunch at the Washington Restaurant. Bill Clinton ate here.

Mrs. Phred climbs up to the top of the old city and takes this great shot of Ankara.

and of the old fortress.