Corlu Road Trip

We tagged along with Cam today.  He had to take the car to the dealership for service.  The appointment was for 10:30 am which meant we had to be on the road no later than 8 am.  It's 200k from our door to Corlu and it takes a little more than two hours. He bought the vehicle in Ankara (8 hours from our home) so that his employer's business manager could help him with the transaction: payment, licensing, road tax and insurance. The nearest Nissan dealership to our home is the one at Corlu.

Cam dropped us off at the Orion Shopping Mall.  Malls in Turkey are a relatively new shopping alternative. Most cities, towns and villages still hold weekly or biweekly market days when vendors set up tables in the city center. You can buy everything from socks and underwear to fruit and vegetables. The malls often have many "brand name" stores like Nike, Polo, Adidas, or Pierre Cardin. However the goods they have for sale don't seem to be any better quality than the ones you might find at the local market (pazar in Turkish).  One nice thing about the mall however, is that if you're trying to buy "socks and underwear", you won't be waited on by a tween boy and his dad, like you might be at the pazar!

We had lunch at the food fare. Johanna, Nicole and I chose to eat Turkish pide from "Sampi", while Sam opted for a McDonald's cheeseburger and fries. Pide is a rectangular flat bread covered in meat and vegetables - like a pizza but without sauce and sometimes without cheese.  It's cooked while you wait.  The girls had sausage and cheese.  Anytime sausage is on the menu it is typically what we would think of as a cocktail wiener served whole or sliced. Today was no different.  Because I'm not eating much dairy any more, the girls ordered my pide with ground meat (beef I think) and finely chopped onions.

The best part of the food fare experience, from my perspective, was standing at McDonald's with Sam and watching the young male waiters at the Doner/Pida place swan around the girls.  All the activity died away once Sam and I joined them at the table, but it was fun to watch.

Cam picked us up about 12:30 pm and we zoomed home.