Leaving Amasra (Amasra – Iznik)
Leaving Amasra by the back road, we promptly ran into several kilometers of repairs/construction in progress. It’s the season, we know, and Turkish roads, when not half-dismantled, are well-engineered and quite impressive—but every day we lose time while jouncing along and eating dust. But this is the trip, and as Mom would say, “It is what it is!”
Our planned destination, Karasu, we found to be less than attractive and inviting, so we decided to press on to Iznik. It made a long, hot day of driving, but when we pulled up in front of a sweet little lakefront hotel at 4:00 we were glad we’d come.
We cleaned up a bit, ate the peaches we’d bought at a roadside stand beside a peach orchard, and went out to explore Iznik, the ancient (4th century BCE) center of Turkish tile-making and ceramics. The first gallery we visited belongs to Sevgi Vardarli Inal, an energetic woman with three degrees in ceramic arts from Turkish universities. In addition to designing and hand-painting every piece in her shop, she teaches at university and travels internationally to make presentations and deliver master classes. When we asked whether we could visit a studio, she piled us both into her tiny car–along with Dee, an English-speaking friend who is finishing an MBA in San Antonio and just happened to be in the gallery when we stopped in—and took us on a mini-tour of ceramic workshops, a historic hammam (Turkish bath), and other highlights of Iznik.
Dinner was simple—salad and pide (savory pastries filled with meat or cheese or vegetables)—after which we watched the sun slide into the calm water of Iznik Golu (Lake Iznik) and turned in early.
