Our Last Night in Konya

July 16

Our last night in Turkey was filled with delicious food, yet again, and music. The top picture of this blog shows one of the specialties in Konya, which is a dough wrapped around a very spicy sausage, sliced. The hilarious aspect of the dish was the two smiley fries, which are exactly like the ones Annelise and Allegra get when they go to Bob Evans! The mushroom dish was a vegetarian plate for Patricia, who has sworn off meat. The Turkish diet is loaded with meats: beef, lamb, chicken... The waiter brought a single mushroom to the table, motioned that it was to be sliced, and then we just nodded yes. Patricia ended up with an amazing casserole of mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, etc... doused in olive oil, butter, and cheese.

Later last night, we went to the "night club" at our hotel. Keep in mind that Konya is a very pious city, where most of the women veil in one form of another. So, the nightclub is really a boys' club, as very few women come out for those kinds of events --whether they be indoors like this or out on the street in a cafe. There instrumentalists accompanied the female singer, who was very alluring and sexy in her performance. We couldn't tell whether the songs were traditional Turkish folk songs or popular Turkish music, but everyone seemed to know all the tunes. They were easy to pick up and hum along to...

One disappointing thing happened regarding laundry at the hotel. The previous hotel in Cappadocia charged 15 lire for a whole bag of wash. Patricia and I both submitted a few items to be laundered -- about 20 items in all. The bill was 170 lire, which is almost $120 dollars. We could have thrown out all the clothes and bought a partial new wardrobe for that price. Even the workers at the reception desk said, "Yes, very expensive." I allowed my self to "pout" for a few minutes, and then had to just let it go and move on...