Today marks our 4th visit to Kusadasi since early July. We were not looking forward to returning. Then we set some goals for ourselves. We would look for a small backpack like the one we got for Shelly in July and we would buy a new suitcase to accommodate the stuff we have accumulated along the way.
When you leave a cruise ship here you are forced to wind you way through an endless number of shops before you exit the terminal. The most aggressive shopkeepers are jewelers and carpet sellers. We got past the jewelers by not making eye contact or looking in the windows. The carpet sellers were more difficult, but I discovered that telling them we bought a carpet in Izmir stopped them cold.
We did stop at one luggage shop. This guy was also very aggressive. He stood on the case. He slammed it to the ground. He wheeled himself around on it. He was impressive, but he had one failing. He did not go low enough on the price.
We were finally out of the port and into the bazaars. We kept an eye out for the backpack and a suitcase. There was no trace of the backpack. There were many luggage shops. They all had pretty much the same spiel. Then we met David. He was low keyed and the case we liked was comparable to the others. He offered what we thought was a good price. I did not want to lug it around while we shopped for the backpack so we told him we would return.
Now we wandered focused on finding the backpack. After a lot of walking with no success we returned to David and tried for additional savings on the bag we liked. That did not work and we ended up paying $40 for it. Laundry and shoes will find their way home in it. Our treasures will ride in our original cases. We walked the new bag to Journey.
Next we returned to the bazaars in a futile search for the triangular shaped backpack. We finally found one shop that recognized what we were seeking. The owner explained that they were sold out at the end of the season. He tried to sell us something not at all like it and we returned to Journey for lunch.
After lunch we decided we would explore one more avenue for the backpack. Then we would walk to the beach near the marina so Alice could go for a walk in the Aegean Sea. The backpack hunt almost paid off. We had been explaining that the bag was fabric not leather. One shopkeeper asked if it was like carpet material. Yes it was. This man knew of a shop that might have it. He pointed the way.
We had not been down this street before and there was hardly anyone else there. It was in the direction of the beach so we carried on. Soon we spied a shop ahead of us with fabric bags. They had a triangle shaped one that could have been big brother to what we sought. Sadly, we were told that the smaller ones were all gone. Our search was over. We headed for the beach.
We stayed on this off the beaten path road. It ran parallel to the sea so we were not going out of our way. It had many interesting and unusual shops. And we were nearly the only shoppers. At the end of this road it was just a short walk out to the shore. We passed two pebble beach areas that were accessible only by steep paths. We knew that the beach near the marina was sand. At last we arrived and made our way through the sun beds to the water. Alice’s wish came true. Mission accomplished.
We still had 360 Turkish lira left. That was almost $20. We headed to the bookstore in the marina mall. We had visited here in July to buy some cards for the crew’s Indonesian Independence celebration. The staff did not speak English but did their best to help.
This time we were greeted by a man who had helped us before. We asked him if he had any English language travel books. He explained he had only a few. When he took us to them, the second book he showed us was the DK Turkey guidebook. We were elated. DK are our favorite guides and this one covered all of the sites we visited on our land tour. The book was 310 lira. Alice found 50 lira worth of cards. I gave all of our lira to the gentleman. We all got a big kick out of this and parted smiling.
After our long walk back to Journey my iPhone confirmed that we had walked 6 miles today. One of the carpet salesmen in the mall announced that we were passing him for the sixth time. He counted our comings and goings.
We freshened up and changed to attend the upper tier loyalty club cocktail party. This was held on the sun veranda aft on deck nine. The captain greeted us and thanked us all for our loyalty. Of course he encouraged us to keep coming back.
Then other officers started circulating. We were visited by the hotel director. We discovered that we were on Quest together when our voyage was halted in Oman. He told us stories of what happened to the ship after we got off. They were nomads for over 3 months shuttled from port to port but not allowed to get off the ship. It was a very interesting conversation.
Next came the guest relations manager. When conversation drifted to the impact of Covid, we learned that he was also with us on Quest. He shared some more interesting stories with us.
Dinner and the show followed with sleep quick on their heels.
Another busy but fine day.
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