While I was on the tour I received an email from my Turkish friend Zeynep.  Here's what she said: 
"Check if your tour guides can get you "Maras" ice cream somewhere. (Pronounced "marash", both "a"s like in "to mar").  The really thick sticky stuff that you need to bite into, not lick."

So I asked Mete about it, and he said, "Oh, yes!  Good idea!  You can get some at the underground city."

So I did.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.  Zeynep was right.  It was like cold, sweet, very tasty axle grease. 
Life can't get much better than this.

I gave my empty cone to this poor little broken-legged puppy.  Turned out he knew all about "maras" ice cream, and he wasn't a bit happy that I didn't leave him any in the cone.

Here's a picture I "borrowed" from Saravanan Subramanian, a fellow from Canada who took the same  "Best of Turkey" tour with Mete earlier in the summer.  Saravanan's pictures look amazingly like my own -- what a coincidence!  Anyway, he saw something at this spot that I didn't, so I thought I'd include his picture of that glob of ice cream that looks like taffy being pulled.  What on earth is the recipe for this stuff?  Whatever -- it certainly is good.

And Herb Hoffman has sent a picture from the July trip too.  Do their cows eat glue?  Sure was good, whatever it was.