Turkey
I really had low expectations for Turkey. I thought it was going to be a nasty, run down place with rude people and cheap junk for sale. This was not the case at all. Well, actually, there was cheap junk for sale, but there was also nice quality stuff available. Leather goods, gold, and fabrics all make a big showing here. It does pay, however, to know what you're buying, as you could find yourself buying a "Romex" watch for $2000 when someone else got the same one for $60. Our tour guide for our Ephesus trip, a native Turk, admitted himself that Turkey was the capitol of "genuine fakes".
It turns out that Turkey is not what you (or at least I) had in mind at all. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and wouldn't mind going back again. The place was thoroughly modern, and yet surprisingly inexpensive. I found it to be VERY similar to Greece, although I enjoyed the food in Greece more. I found, unfortunately, that not too much of the food was to my liking, but I'm sure many would disagree.
More importantly, there were some truly wonderful Greco-Roman ruins in Turkey, and although they weren't as historically significant as Rome itself, I found the ruins to be in vastly superior condition to those in Rome. And it's not as if Ephesus is exactly insignificant in history. (heck, it's got a book in the bible all to itself).
The ship was moored at the Turkish naval base of Aksaz, which was about 20 minutes from the tourist town of Maramis. The Turk navy seems to consist primarily of old US frigates and destroyers, although a half dozen German type-209 submarines were in evidence.
Maramis was a nice enough town, although the salesmen in the tourist section of town were very very pushy indeed. If you can deal with that, then you'll have fun here. Everyone seems to speak English, as the majority of the tourists that I saw were English or Australian.
Turkish rugs are NOT cheap. Well, maybe they are cheap in comparison to the price one would fetch in New York, but they're not cheap when compared to, say, that new DVD player you're considering. I saw carpets ranging from $150 (for dinner place setting size) to $35,000 for a silk-on-silk full sized floor carpet. Be VERY careful that you know how to tell the fakes, because they're out there. If you do the tours, they will swing you through a "complimentary tour and sales pitch" at a sanctioned carpet distributor. This is probably the safest way if you're unsure of what's good and what's not.
