Turkey

After much contemplation about whether or not to visit Turkey during this time of turmoil, we decided to.

It was an absolutely amazing part of our trip and probably one of our favourites.  It’s really unfortunate what is happening there right now, and we could feel the anguish of the people we spoke to.  We are very saddened by the latest bombings.  We are also relieved we are no longer there.

We started in Istanbul which is such a vibrant city with a population of 14,000,000 people, and the people really appear to enjoy their city – they are out and about and eating and socializing.  The amount of cafes and little coffee shops surpassed anything we’ve ever seen in any city.  We loved all of the small neighbourhoods with all of their cute and funky shops and cafes.  Okay, so they don’t do coffee very well, unless you are into Turkish coffee, but they do the vibe well.  And I really started enjoying Turkish tea.  The people were SO nice.

There was so much to see in Istanbul that we even missed (don’t laugh or gasp) the Blue Mosque.  Actually, we got a bit confused and thought we had seen it, but it was the “other” mosque.  There are a LOT of mosques in the city.  Nonetheless, what we saw was spectacular.  If we didn’t know the Blue Mosque existed we wouldn’t have felt like we missed anything.

We were so excited about visiting the Grand Bazaar and had thought that we would buy a number of things there, but after our first experience in a carpet shop (for those of you who have experienced this you will know what I’m talking about), I actually ended up being very intimidated and quite stressed in shopping there and we ended up not buying anything!  Oh, except we bought an older backgammon game with inlay of different woods in an antique shop.  It was one of the things we really wanted to buy since we both enjoy playing so much.  It does take up a bit of room in Gary’s bag though.

We missed the Whirling Dervishes – we’re not very organized and so didn’t look into it and the performances were only on Sundays, and missed it, unfortunately.  Next time, since we have every intention of visiting Turkey again in the future.  But we did visit the museum and saw the beautiful room in which the ritual happens in.

After 8 days in Istanbul we flew to Cappadocia in central Turkey, another UNESCO site.  The entire area is comprised of a number of villages featuring amazing rock formations, some known for its fairy chimneys, some for its caves.  If you are interested in more info here is a website:  http://www.topofturkey.com/en/cappadocia.html.  We stayed in a cave hotel, a lovely small one with only 5 rooms and we were the only ones there for the 3 days we stayed.

We arrived early in the morning and went on a full day tour of the different valleys and areas with a guide shortly after our arrival.  We happened to ask him about carpets since this was something that we really wanted to buy while in Turkey and the Grand Bazaar had proved not to work for us.  Well, of course he knew of a place where his friend worked.  Luckily it was a co-op, for lack of a better description, where the workers were treated well and they had their health care subsidized by the government.  And we lost our heads and bought a beautiful carpet that cost the price of a small used car!  It’s being shipped (hopefully!) back home.

One of the many amazing things to do in Cappadocia is go on a sunrise hot air balloon ride which we did on the anniversary of our 6 months’ travel.  It was really quite fantastic.  I had no idea how a hot air balloon actually worked but found out that the pilot can only control the up and down motion, the rest is controlled by the wind.  Our pilot took us into spots so close to the rock formations which I thought would not have been possible.  It was a little unnerving at times, but amazing.  The landing was another thing I found fascinating:  the pilot actually lands the balloon right on the back of a small trailer attached to a pick up truck.

On our third day we rented a car and visited a couple of the underground cities.  Amazing!  We were headed towards the biggie, but on the way there we happened upon a small one in a little town that didn’t look like much but we decided to check it out.  No other tourists around so in we went.  As we were entering the “building” (these are all natural cave structures that various groups throughout history built into) the guide from the site asked if we wanted help and we said no that we had our own flashlight and we would be okay.  But he knew better and eventually followed us in.  Good thing!  I think on our own we would have been inside for a whole of 5 minutes, but when he showed us around I’m sure we were inside for about 1 hour.  It was pretty amazing to see how groups of people had lived in these caves, with stables for the animals on the first level, “wineries” on the next level, churches, living quarters, communication holes where they could send messages to different sections within, and shafts (tunnels) that they traveled through for safety.  These were small shafts that for parts were horizontal and then became vertical with foot holes on either side so that one could climb up.  When we got to one of them our guide pointed and motioned us to go up.  I looked at him to see if he was joking, but no, not joking.  And just to make sure, I asked “us, go up?”.  Yup, he said.  If memory serves me right, I believe he showed us how to do it the first time, and then we navigated through at least a couple more shafts.  There was two that I just refused to go up/down (even Gary refused one of them – he couldn’t see the end of it when he looked up).  At one point I turned to Gary and said, “This guy assumes we’re the athletic types”.  It was pretty crazy stuff, but a good experience.

The next day we were flying to Belgrade, Serbia, and when I woke up at 6:00 a.m. I looked out and lo and behold it had snowed and was -1℃.  I have to say that it was really beautiful.  We drove ourselves to the airport with our rental car – it was a beautiful drive.

We spent a couple of days in Belgrade and then on to Zagreb, Croatia.  I’ll write soon.