COLD TURKEY?

Rumor has it that wildflower bloom times in Turkey are a bit on the late side this spring.

Huh? What does that have to do with you?

Well, if you're not among the lucky ones on my roster, not much, because you're not packing like we are right now for a dream trip wandering among tulips and ruins!

Yeah, I'm a shit. But c'mon, it's five days and counting till lift-off. How can I not be jumping up and down?

Thus spake Wikipedia:

The tulip, or lale (from Persian لاله, lâleh) as it is also called in Turkey, is a flower indigenous to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia.

It is unclear who first brought the flower to northwest Europe. The most widely accepted story is that of Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, Ambassador from Ferdinand I to Suleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire in 1554. He remarks in a letter upon seeing "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths, and those which in Turkish Lale, much to our astonishment, because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers" (see Busbecq, qtd. in Blunt, 7).

In Persian Literature (classic and modern) special attention has been given to these two flowers, in specific likening the beloved eyes to Narges and a glass of wine to Laleh.

The word tulip, which earlier in English appeared in such forms as tulipa or tulipant, entered the language by way of French tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend, "muslin, gauze". (The English word turban, first recorded in English in the 16th century, can also be traced to Ottoman Turkish tülbend.)