Catching Turkey

Turkey

So much to say and so little time!

Great to see green countryside and eat fresh fruit!

People loved Matija - old women and fishermen would pinch her cheeks, slap her knees and give her a big kiss.

Istanbul

We saw the Aya Sofia, The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Whirling Dervishes, went for a boat trip up the Bosphorus, walked around old suburbs where fruit sellers pushed handcarts and the modern new city with a huge walking thoroughfare, designer shops and trams rattling by. We visited the Grand Bazaar where thousands of tiny shops huddled under kilometres of covered walkway and the spice market with mounds of spices, cheeses, fruits, meat, nuts, fish, tea and coffee. We tasted fresh fish on a wharf with a purse seiner dragging it's nets in less than 500m from the restaurant, ate at a three storey kofta restaurant where they didn't serve anything else and had hundreds of diners eating at one time. We tasted amazing baklava (pastry sweets) tried stuffed eggplants, ate fresh sesame bread rings from street vendors and fell in love with sweet, strong Turkish tea and coffee.

Cappadocia

Istanbul had been cold and wet and busy with touts trying to drag you into their shops and restaurants. Cappadocia was more like Central Otago in Autumn. We stayed in caves at the tiny village of Goreme, we could walk around the slightly shabby town, pick up cheap pide (Turkish pizzas) and see dozens of old timers perched around tables drinking tea and playing card games. We took a spectacular hot air balloon ride through the pinnacles and valleys studded with ancient caves then hired four-wheel motorbikes that night and checked out most of the valleys on the ground. Matija even got a wee sleep in while riding on the motorbike in front of me. There were hundreds of ancient cave dwellings and churches and we visited underground cities where Christians had taken refuge over 1000 years ago. We made friends with the hotel owner and his mate who managed another hotel, drank tea with them, got shown the sights and left a couple of new friends behind.

The Lake District

We'd hired a car to drive back to Istanbul and we stopped in the dark at Lake Egidir, waking up in a slightly grotty hostel with amazing views over a lake with mountains in the background and a tiny fishing village in front. We walked around a little holiday island where an older lady who ran a cafe saw Matija on a swing and had to come over and pinch her cheeks, knees and shoulders before hugging her soundly. We went in for coffee and sat watching the view while Matija played with balloons and her husband relished his fresh bread, cheese, eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers and olives for breakfast, all washed down with strong, sweet turkish tea.

Ruins

We drove through countryside the was like Eastern Europe with old men and women riding on tractors and painted trailers from their villages to the fields, it was hard open country like the Maniototo, with a similar climate. We stopped at Pammukale to visit amazing travertine terraces (like the pink and white terraces at Rotorua) and bathed in an ancient Roman hot spring at Hierapolis complete with columns that had fallen in during an earthquake hundreds of years ago. There was a storm raging around us and we were the only ones game to take a swim!

We saw a huge market in a rural town and stopped to buy nuts, oranges and biscuits then sat eating Kofte sandwiches with tea that French speaking kofte vendor shouted us.

We drove to the amazing ruins at Ephesus where the houses of the nobility were being restored, complete with domed ceilings, plumbing, mosaic floors and walls completely lined in fine-grained marble. Just over the hill was where the house of Mary (Jesus mother) lived in her later years.

Ayvalik

We stopped at an amazing little fishing village with tiny streets leading like a maze up the hill and the odd marble pillared temple resting on a side street. We ended up being the only guests at a very special seafood restaurant where the owner prepared fresh salted anchovy then fired up the charcoal grill and cooked us amazing red mullet and deep sea bass that were so fresh they were sweet. It was followed by figs stuffed with local cheese and dribbled with honey. One of the best meals ever!

Gallipoli

It wasn't something we were desperate to see, but we crossed the Dardanelles and toured the sites on the Gallipoli peninsular. We are both extremely glad we went. We'd seen a film the night before that outlined the campaign and it was amazing to see the rugged piece of territory where so many of our people died and were buried. The thing that really struck home was how much that struggle led to the Turks national identity, as well as our own and the Australians. It was a beautiful thing to see Matija making daisy chains on the field where part of that struggle occurred. It seemed appropriate somehow.

Tekirdag

Our last stop before returning to Istanbul was a town on the Marmara that specialised in Kofte and raki. We took the coastal route and found that the wobbly green line on the map was a tiny gravel road, studded with rocks that climbed over a mountain before dropping through the coal smoke to Tekirdag. Matija had dropped off by the time we arrived so we put her to bed and sat rugged up on a little balcony, looking across the square to the Marmara, drinking red wine from Cappadocia and eating Kofte sandwiches. The army was just accepting the intake for compulsory military service and the chosen boys were celebrating by holding shoulders and dancing in a circle while a small band played a Turkish tune and their friends and family stood around clapping and congratulating them. It seemed an appropriate end to our trip to Turkey.