Mtn2Sea

Loving your review and photos!

Nice fall day in western North Carolina.

I have lost a camera before and almost did so again this past Monday. :eek: We were in Portland, Oregon and did a day trip to the Columbia River Gorge. When we left Multnomah Falls I put my camera on the roof of the car as I took my wet coat off... and drove away. A few miles down the road I had to swerve a bit to get onto the right side of I-84 and something came sliding off the roof and rested on the windshield wipers. My camera! Phew, everything was OK.

What luck! You need to go buy a lottery ticket.

Absolutely no need to apologize for taking your time in posting your review. The photos and commentary are wonderful!

Looking forward to your review!

Looking forward to your review & photos! We hope to cruise that area of the world soon.

We took a Med cruise a few years ago and stopped in Istanbul, which is an unbelievable port of call. The photo is the Aya Sofia Church, which started as a Christian church, but was later converted to a Muslim mosque.

Test using Photobucket

I posted a photo that I had uploaded to Shutterfly. My landscape photo, which I'm viewing on my iPad, is not as wide as other photos, which basically go from margin to margin. What causes this?

During 3 of our 4 stops in Kusadasi, we purchased a rug. The first time we took a ship excursion and bought a runner at the end of the tour. Love the carpet, but paid too much. We were given a cloth bag to haul it back - this was before the airlines started restricting baggage so much. On the third trip, we were in an out-of-the-way jewelry store, when my DW asked about an "honest" carpet dealer. The guy walked us quite a way back to a store near the bazaar area, where he introduced us to Ramsey. We bought a rug that was much bigger than the first and the same exact pattern as the runner at almost half the price. Because of the size, we arranged for it to be shipped. We were told approx. 6-8 weeks. One day we found a note on our front door (don't know how long it was there, since we rarely use that door). It was an attempted delivery notice, which indicated we owed approx. $20. No phone number or return delievery date was listed. I spent an entire day trying to track it down, but finally gave up when I was told I had to have a shipping number that was not on the notice - other numbers, but the people on the phone never recognized any of them. I finally was told I needed to call the shipper in Turkey to get the number. When my wife got through to Ramsey, she was told the rug had been returned to him. He stated he would deliver the rug to us at our home through his "door to door" service. He indicated he would have it to us around Thanksgiving (we were on our cruise in September). Needless to say, we were a little concerned about everything. I eventually received a call from Ramsey, who said he was about 400 miles away and would arrive in our city the next day. I told him to call me and we could arrange to meet at a convenient location. The next day, my DW called to say Ramsey was at the house. She asked that I come home from work because she was concerned he would be trying to sell her another rug. I left work and, when I drove up to the house, Ramsey and his companion were going through the back of a Ryder truck looking for our rug. He saw me, came over and gave me a big bear hug like I was a long lost friend. He brought the rug into the house. We offered to take them to lunch, but they were intent on getting to North Carolina to make their next delivery. Never attempted to sell us another rug, other than saying if we were ever dissatisified with the rug to contact him to arrange a swap. Six months later we were back in Kusadasi and looked him up. Again, it was like I was a long lost friend. He served us tea and chatted. We bought our third Turkish rug, not because he brought up the idea, but because we asked to see more rugs. This time we bought a small rug that we carried back ourselves, but would have felt comfortable taking up his offer to deliver it with his "door to door" service. Apparently, Ramsey, along with many of the other store owners, come to the states to deliver rugs during their off season.