Category: on the road

Just got done brushing the fringe on my towels.

Along with apple tea, friendly people, fresh air and a gorgeous skyline, one of the bright stars in the starry, starry sky that is Istanbul are hand-woven towels.

This one store employs and inspires weavers to work their looms like it's a hundred years ago and machines for mass-producing towels haven't been invented yet.

Jennifer, the owner, understands the instant devotion her merchandise inspires. She thought it was normal when we spent two hours in the shop touching everything but her. "Oh, you'd have to stay another three hours to even approach the record," she said. 

Jennifer started with one weaver making sustainable, ecological, organically-grown silk scarves, cotton and linen towels and blankets. Now she spends half her time driving around the Turkish countryside looking for traditional artisans with still-operational antique looms who can produce work to the standards her devotees around the world have come to cherish.

When we visited, merchandise was set aside for a Saudi wife who likes towels in sets of at least six, and a special-order terry-looped robe for a Romanian prince.

Our first day in Istanbul, on the way to the Blue Mosque we found one of Jennifer's shops, got the story on the towels and bought a pile of them. Later we walked past another of her shops and ended up buying MORE towels. When we saw the third shop and went in and bought MORE, I knew I had contracted a disease.

Hand-loomed of ecologically grown cotton and colored from dyes made "in the garden" say her weavers, these towels fluff up to an organic whipped-cream luxurious-ness. I bought some textured white towels and some colorful ones, thinking the colorful ones were probably a little over-the-top for me. Now that they live with us, I love the subtly-stripped multi-hued ones best.

You only need to go to Istanbul every twenty years to buy towels because they are going to last that long, longer if you don't put them in the dryer, says Jennifer. But make sure you buy enough. Because somehow, in spite of visiting all three of her shops, I need more. 

It's just a towel! But having something you use and touch everyday, especially something you get naked with, to be amazing–these are life-enhancing towels!

Before using, the towels need to soak for twenty-four hours so the cotton becomes acquainted with water and learns how to be absorbent. Hang dry the first time. Somehow these towels when hung outside on the line, do not dry to a rough, flat board. They dry fluffy and plush with the soul of something made row by row by human hands.

These are the sports cars of towels–the same way you might find yourself polishing the wheels of your fancy car–you too might find yourself outside on a sunny spring day after a trip to Istanbul brushing the fringe of your towels. Not because you have to, but because you want to.

What's really funny about this sign is that no A2 highway leads to Constanta. Contrary to this sign's version of reality, the gorgeously paved 4-lane A2 highway to Constanta came to a screeching halt — and us along with it. We backtracked, on a narrow road through teeny villages where people sell peaches and nectarines from their gardens on the side of the road. They were good, too.

The drive to our house on the Black Sea didn't take three and half hours, as Google tried to trick us into believing, it actually took five. But if it had taken 10 and I was still driving home, it would have been worth it.

When we got to the house we were welcomed by swallows, liden trees, and a wide open view of the sea. Five minutes down the road is the rightly, if cheesily named, Golden Sands beach. I guess they were trying to make up for the very poorly named Black Sea.

I understand Azure Sea or Cerulean Sea might have made them go overbudget. But they should have spent a little more money and not gone with basic Black. I know it's classic, but it sends the wrong message. Maybe they can get a refund and go with a different agency.

Drive through Oregon-sized Romania to the California-sized Black Sea and tell me even Blue Sea wouldn't be a better name.

Right now, especially in the evening, Bucharest smells divine, like a $60 Diptyque candle.

I open the doors and windows of the house to let the scent fill the house. I can't figure out what it is, it's everywhere, but nowhere particular.

Last week I had a priest-beekeeper come to the embassy to sell honey. He brought huge jars of farm fresh acacia honey, which he sold for about $8. He told me soon he can bring other kinds of honey, depending on the bees, of course. He thinks the next variety will be "Tei tree, with the flowers." "Tea tree?" "Lime," he says. "But not lime the fruit." Google and I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. 

When we got to our house on the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria the air smelled sweet and delicious. "It's the lime tree," said the propriator. "The Bulgarians are crazy for it. You'll see them picking it everywhere, to make tea and to bathe in. We call it Tilia,"  she said in her British accent. Okay, let me look that one up.

Linden. Stefan made tea, Camille put the flowers in her bath (it's suppose to calm hysteria) and I'm just breathing the flower-scented air.

I entered into the Must Get Out of Bucharest Machine:

• Cheap, short flight
• Not expensive, dog-friendly accommodations (Paris/London = no way)
• A view…with a beach would be best

And out popped Sicily.

The view of the village of Taomina from our balcony.

The view of our balcony, not quite all the way from Taomina.

Camille and Bea opening the gate to The Lemon Tree Villa. I love staying anywhere called a villa.

I didn't even enter in:
• Good wine
• A diffent flavor of gelato every day
• The popsicle store
• A Fiat Cinquecinto "Wait! I drove up to the top of this road but we can't drive down stairs!"
• One-person-sized presecco
* Sheep on the road
* Spring showers at night, wam sun during the day 
• Aritchokes 

Even Bea is enjoying Sicily.