Yeah, you guessed it, they grow opium right here, but no, you can't buy any - it's heavily regulated by the government.  Actually, over a third of the world's legally grown opium comes from here.  Aside from its name, the most distinctive feature of Afyon, as in Kutahya and probably many others towns in Turkey, is the old fortress atop the highest hill.  It's thought that it was first built by the Hittites around 1350 BC, and every successive culture added to it.  It's a strenuous walk to the top, but you're rewarded with fantastic views.

As usual, when we arrive in a new town or neighborhood, we are immediately besieged by children.  They are too cute to resist and we enjoy their company, so we let them show us around and then give them a treat for their hospitality.  Anyway, three of the cutest kids in the universe showed us the way to the fortress and, clasping our hands tightly and breathing heavily,  they accompanied us all the way to the top, their little legs scurrying like mad to keep up. 

It was a beautiful day to make friends, enjoy great views, and get a taste of clean country air.  After working up an appetite, we headed into town and sat down to a big Turkish feed, finished off, of course, with sweet pumpkin liberally garnished with kaymak.

Afyon is famous for its kaymak, or clotted cream, which is so thick and rich, it's more like cheese.  The opium farmers here feed the leftover plants to their cows, who blissfully and copiously produce the rich cream.  It's served on desserts like sugary baked pumpkin or pear, and it's delicious.  The kaymak is kept in short cylinders, which you can see in stacks in front of these sidewalk vendors hawking their sweet goods to passersby.

The Ulu Cami is one of the few surviving examples of the Seljuk style of mosque architecture which boasts beautifully carved wooden columns topped with ornate capitals supporting a wood-beam roof.  It's amazing that this giant fire hazard has survived a thousand years. 

These small towns are rather conservative religiously and socially, and you'll find most women covered with scarves and sporting those funky-fresh floral M.C. Hammer pants.  They give new meaning to the expression "undercover sister." One couple we saw knoshing on the sidewalk, however, looked suspiciously like sheep. 

The sweet shops are always amazing to me, and my sweet tooth immediately starts to quiver.  Here you can see the famous lokum, or Turkish Delight, in its multifaceted brilliance and flavor - it's sold by the kilo!  Erin-Kate is resting at the summit of the fortress, with our companions hiding bashfully behind her.

We stayed in one of Afyon's luxury hotels.  For 40 bucks, you get a jacuzzi tub, mini bar, and best of all, satellite TV replete with, for your viewing pleasure, cleavage-saturated quality Italian programming.  The hotel also has a hamam, or Turkish bath, where for the vast sum of about 7 dollars, you get the royal treatment.  First, warm up in a sauna, and then move into the domed marble hot room, where the attendant will loofah away an alarming amount of your skin as you lie on a heated marble slab.  Then, you are ushered into a bathing niche, where the attendant soaps, scrubs and massages you into a soporific stupor and then scoops buckets of warm spring water over your body to cleanse you. One of the attractively tiled niches where you get the shampoo, scrub and rinse is pictured below on the left. 

We finished off our tour of Afyon with a stop at their Archeological Museum, which is known for its fine collection of Roman artifacts discovered when they built the highway through town.  Of course, when we arrived in a freezing downpour the attendant said that the museum was closed indefinitely for renovations.  Fortunately, when he saw how despondent we were, he let us roam around the grounds outside where we found this magnificent sculpture of Hercules.