Rize is a city I like to visit, and I had been there several times before June 2006, when I took the majority of my pictures. The weather, I have to warn you, was often overcast. It is the heart of a province on the Eastern part of the Black Sea coast where the Turkish tea is grown. The first time I went there was in the mid-90’s, the city had a “small feel” that it is losing now: there now are high rising buildings and the general aspect is more modern. Still, you can easily walk from the center of town towards the hills in its back and make a pleasant stroll through the tea plantations. Even in some of the suburbs tea is grown on small fields right in the town.