Thrace

 ..is a place; the northeast part of Greece (and Greece goes further north and east than you might have imagined. We got out a map last night and realized we ain't so very far from Istanbul.)

So today we did a round trip tour of this bit on the end of Greece. Yesterday my humans visited a museum about Thrace and found out that these days it is all about agriculture - sunflowers, cotton, tobacco, wine (that's viticulture)... F seemed keen on a tour of agricultural and pastoral scenery with a few villages thrown in.

This isn't pastoral England. According to F it does however look in places like the NZ South Island of her youth - with better roads.

So for any Kiwis reading this try to imagine North Otago planted out in sunflowers, cotton and cereal crops (nearly all harvested now, just some cotton remaining), chuck in a good sized chunk of Central Otago and the McKenzie basin (pre-irrigation), some small towns like 1970s Temuka (but with red tiled roofs), a slice of Marlborough's Wither Hills (with the grapes), a special mention for the Cardrona Valley and poplar trees (for the English, think approaches to Kielder Forest, and bits of New Forest at altitude), there's a bit of Arthur's Pass (but with different coloured vegetation) and just before it all drops back down into the tobacco growing area of Nelson Bays, there is a section of the old Kawarau Gorge (pre-lake) with spectacular bluffs, rock outcrops and rock formations in a deeply cut river.

We also saw our first livestock that wasn't in sheds.

However the tour started in Soufli with a tour of a silk museum run by the 4th generation of a family in the mechanized silk production business.  Anyway, did you know that silk worm spit (or does it come out the other end?) is 600m long on each cocoon? F bought silk - some handspun stuff. She hasn't found any ceramic bowls yet but we have time.

Cotton piled up outdoors

Maybe it isn't your classic scenic tour, but it looks like BIG country.

The cows even had bells in case their horns didn't work...

And now for something uniquely Greek