Day 39 - Gaziantep to Urfa

 This morning's breakfast was arranged at a local businessman's club after we took our leave of the school dormitory. Here we were joined by two local businessmen who were part of the consortium that had organised the construction of Zirve University which we had visited yesterday. Food was excellent as always and we enjoyed our start to the day. From here we drove to a local TV station, Dunya TV, which primarily serves the Kurdish population of Turkey. Again this institution is Gulen inspired and it was made clear to us that the wider Kurdish population of Turkey do not share the aims of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) which has been using violence in it's campaign for a separate Kurdish state. Indeed the great bulk of Kurds in Turkey are well integrated throughout society and are widely spread geographically. After our TV visit we spent some time wandering through the bazaar and shopping of course where Sue bought, among other things, a small silver tea set. Lunch today was a quick affair of kofte and mini pizzas which threatened to be a much longer and drawn out affair until we all put our foot down and insisted on having a snack for a change. Following lunch we then drove to a location to meet a representative of one of this morning's businessmen so he could deliver us gifts which hadn't been available at the breakfast. All this gift giving is overwhelming. And wouldn't you know it but the gift turned out to be an almost identical silver tea set as the one Sue had purchased earlier - oh well. Time to move on after this so we then drove to Sanliurfa or simply Urfa as it is known where we met our next local guide, a gentleman named Mehrat. We firstly checked in to our hotel the El Ruha and after a short break we set off on foot to explore the nearby precinct around Abraham's cave. The cave is reputedly where the biblical prophet Abraham was born. Nearby we also visited the mosque in this location and as well  the pool of Sacred Fish where legend has it that Abraham was thrown by Nimrod. At the end of our walk we went to what was a former nunnery or monastery and which is now a restaurant  Dinner on the top floor accompanied later in the evening by local Turkish musicians finished off a very full day.