Selcuk: Lunch from the Saturday Market

We returned from Ephesus hot and tired. A quick shower revived us and we decided to grab some lunch. We'd heard that there's a large market held behind the bus station…. and this being Selcuk, nothing is very far away. We decided to do some "self-catering" and check out the market. We were both quite surprised at the size of the market…. starting from the household goods sold on the streets approaching the market…..

 
To what seemed like acres of cheese, olive, and fruit stands………

 

We'd noticed children dressed up in all sorts of costumes…. after asking around we were told it was Children's Day.

 

You not only had piles of fruit and vegetables to keep your attention…….

 

 

 

 

But had to heed what was above you as well……..

 

 

The somewhat elaborate make-up of various booths made me think about the amount of work it took to set-up, then take apart these booths every Saturday.

 

We'd covered maybe a third of the place before stopping and deciding to start getting stuff for lunch, otherwise we'd be walking around all day. Of course, this was when all the sampling started. Every olive and cheese stand we stopped at gave us samples….we could have filled up just by mooching! We ended up getting three types of cheese, including a really tasty Cecil/Tel Peyniri, basically string cheese.

 

Most of the places would try to sell us a kilo and we'd have to tell them that we just wanted a "little bit". So they'd give us the smallest amount that would work for them. In the case of olives….. well, we'd be eating the olives for a couple of days. One of the cheese stands told us "no pay, this is my gift to you!" Which was very nice and typical of the folks in Turkey. I ended up insisting on giving him a couple of Lira…..

We purchased a loaf of bread from this little shop……

 

Man that was a pretty big loaf; we'd also be eating that for a couple of days as well!

We'd decided to head across the street to the park and have our lunch. Along the way we noticed that outside one of the shops there were a group of women working hard making lavas and selling various items. The Missus immediately headed to the shop watching and wandering around, to the amusement of the women.

 

This seemed to possibly be the equivalent of a bake sale perhaps? Of course, you'd never get anything like this at your typical bake sale here in the US.

 

 

And the kicker was that the park had tea service! A young man walked from a nearby kiosk taking orders for tea. A few minutes later you'd have a nice cup of tea for .5 TRY, about 30 cents.

We enjoyed the sunshine and had a little picnic of sorts…. it was a wonderful end to a great day. And of course there was a nap afterwards to top things off.