Tulips, Tiny Cymbals, and Things Overheard

Tulips:  in a traditional tile shop in Iznik today, I picked up a beautiful blue vase with the traditional tulip design interpreted in a contemporary way, and my fingers wouldn't let go of it so I haggled the price down by 30% and bought it (since I don't have my camera cord, I can't post a picture of it here, and I couldn't find anything at all similar via a Google image search, so here's a traditional tulip tile to give you an idea)

Tiny Cymbals:  in a percussion shop in Istanbul two days ago, I found a hand-cast set of finger cymbals with a pure, ringing tone and paid the asking price for them because I had to have them no matter what; at our gig in Iznik last night, I used them as a tiny high-hat to help fill out our percussion sound since we couldn't bring the drum set with us (Johnny, the drummer, said, "You're my left foot," so I tapped my tiny high-hat whenever he tapped his left foot)

Things Overheard:  "Everybody's got their Virgin" (from a conversation at our dinner table about religion among two Christians and a non-practicing Muslim)