Friends, Football and Carpets...

We have been lucky enough to have some wonderful friends from Australia staying with us recently.  Which has meant lots of goodies brought over from my family, some gorgeous gifts, some yummy food and Yashar's first football/soccer match!  

Half the adventure was getting to out seats!  Wading through the excited crowd outside, through the barage of security checks.   Yashar was at times enthralled, at other times excited and clapping along to the different chants...and at other times accidentally kicking and dropping biscuits on the lady in front of us...hmmm

Our friends' visit also meant carpet shopping! A trip to the carpet shop is an experience in itself...all the more enjoyable if the pressure is not on you to buy!  There's the tea drinking, the flamboyant pulling out of all the carpets, the banter as the carpet salesman works his magic.  Even Yashar loved it, he spent most of the time climbing all over the carpets! - you can spot him sitting on some of them in the photo below.

As you most likely already know, carpet salesmen are notorious, so we took them to a long time friend of my husband's where we knew they wouldn't get totally ripped off!

He's a fascinating character and definitely the person I hope to get some gorgeous carpets from in the future.  A book has been written about his shop - 'In Turkey I am Beautiful'.

He served us a delicious tea while we were there - his own mixture of sage, cloves, linden leaves and blossom and cinnamon.  We were invited to walk barefoot over each carpet, feeling the texture, the softness of the older carpets, of the wool.  His style, rather than pushy and in your face, is warm and charismatic...all the more dangerous!   Despite having no intention to buy whatsoever I found myself thinking that perhaps we could have just one, and pay it off in instalments, I mean, surely we need to have one, and they are so beautiful...this man is definitely good at what he does!

After the carpet buying was done he showed us downstairs to a cave like basement where carpets covered every square inch.  He showed us beautiful pieces he had that were way beyond our slim wallets.  We asked what his favourite carpets were and he showed us the two small carpets he bought at the age of 10 with the help of his grandfather...carpets are in this man's veins!