Balloons Everywhere

Day 48 May 22

Out early again, and lovely calm weather and great light so double balloon flights today (as all the ones were scrubbed yesterday).











And once they were all well shot, there were (of course) some poppies near by. . . .






And other flowers---






A Window Straight into the Past

Here’s something I’ve seen in lots of museums but never in this fine a condition---






It’s about 7 feet high, and 30 inches wide and made from thick wood, and is curved on one end.

There are hundreds of little gashes/slits in it, and each is filled with a piece of chipped flint.

And you hook it to a donkey and lay out all the harvested wheat on some hard ground, and the donkey pulls this sledge-thing around and around and all the flint knives cut the wheat into very short pieces and then, when you have the wind blowing the right speed, you toss it all up in the air gently, and the stems and leaf particles (chaff) blow away and the heavier head of wheat fall straight back down, and you have separated the wheat from the chaff.

Then you take the wheat to the mill to be turned into flour.


Another Sculptural City


At the first photo site today (Zelve) there were the usual tourist stall gauntlet shops.

But one of them had some what looked a lot like pretty bad African native art (which means that I may have seen more African art lately than Africans. . . .

Susan and I saw lots more Africans (a couple dozen, as I remember, in the Balkans, but I've only seen a very few here anywhere on the whole trip).

This is part of the amazing cultural stuff available in the gauntlets--- remember the Native American eagle-feather head-dresses and bows and arrows at Troy --- that seems so out-of-step with where it is.



There was a considerable break in local tradition here, though--- someone had something for sale and they were the only ones selling it. Normally, in order to have souvenir stall, you can only sell stuff that at least 40% of the other stalls also sell.

But these items were unique.

Amazing.



Here’s a “ladder” up to the higher levels of this place. You can see to the left of the ladder the place where the wall split and come down.



More church frescoes



And just more great (carved-out) spaces. Sometimes up in these spaces, you feel as though you are inside a sculpture.










Market Day in Avanos!

Then we headed out to the local town where the weekly market was.

Here’s about a fifth (or less) of the whole place:



So, stuff and people.





























And here’s grandma buying a balloon



for her (very dubious about photographers) grandson.

Seemed a universal little vignette to me.




Arithmetic or Geometric?

So Thursday, I had one travel pal, Selime, from Augsburg, Germany--- and Friday another person from the pensiyone here joined us-- Courtney, a retired elementary-school teacher from Sequim, who may want me to do some house-sitting for her this winter (mostly based on my Portland schedule).

So one very nice woman travel companion on Thursday, and two on Friday.

It's now Saturday AM-- I woke up pretty early (before 5:00) perhaps anticipating the excitement and wonder--- will I have three lovely and pleasant travel pals today (arithmetic progression) or four (geometric progression)?

(Hell, I can't even handle one, but that that's a different story about other parts of my life.)

Updates forthcoming.