The seven-course dinner was built around a vegetable cutlet, soaked in olive oil and redolent of the thyme that grows exuberantly in the Turkish wild. So exotic was the texture and flavor, I thought it was a filet of some Turkish mountain antelope. Over the inevitable after-dinner Turkish coffee, guaranteed to help you stay up to greet tomorrow's dawn, a colleague who had accompanied me to the dinner admired an antique silver filigree tray. Our hostess instantly stuffed the tray into her guest's camera bag. All this hospitality sprang from my asking a stranger how to find my hotel.
Turkey deserves the tourist boom that is flooding the country.
Vast resort construction projects are springing up along Turkey's Aegean and Mediterranean beaches to handle hordes of Europeans who have discovered the sunny climate and the seashore's charms. But a sunny coastline alone cannot account for the boom. The ancient Greeks and Romans felt the same way. Mile for mile, the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Turkey have more classical ruins than the Roman and Greek homelands themselves. And Turkish hospitality holds up even among the postcard and soft drink vendors who swarm about the entrances to the ruins.