Basmala Bursa

We stayed in Bursa, the old early capital of the Ottoman empire for 2 nights. Bursa is sited beneath the imposing Mount Uludağ, and we found the city to be green and well laid out. We didn’t take many photos while in the city, but the ones we did take can be seen here.

Departing from Çannakkale, we had another long bus journey to the city of Bursa. We arrived at the bus station, which is about 10km out of the central city, and easily travelled into the center to find accommodation for two nights; no problem. After checking in, we had a look around the town centre and Bazaar, which was well laid out and quite pretty, before we grabbed some food and had an early night.

In the morning we immediately set off to see the popular Yeşil Camii (mosque) before it became flooded with tourists. When we arrived, it was pretty much empty, so we started by looking at Yeşil Türbe – the tomb across from the mosque which was tiled and decorated magnificently. We next entered the mosque (in the correct attire) which was sumptuously carpeted. It was peaceful inside the almost empty building – there was only one other person there.
There was another mosque nearby, Yıldırım Bayezid Camii, so we wandered down to see that. We had to walk past a large Turkish graveyard to get there – which look similar to European graveyards. As it seemed to be prayer time, we stayed out of this mosque and just wandered the courtyard, and peered in at the tombs.
After looking out at the great view over Bursa from outside the mosque, we headed back toward the centre and chose to make it three mosques in a row. The large Ulu Camii has twenty domes and an expansive interior. It was built under the reign of Sultan Bayezid I, as he had promised to build twenty mosques for the victory at the Battle of Nicopolis, but copped out by building one large twenty domed mosque instead. Inside, it was busy due to its central location with people praying and reading the Koran, but retained a peaceful atmosphere. The large şadırvan pool in the centre, illuminated by the skylight above really made it memorable.
We decided to do something different next so walked across town to the Kültür Parki (culture park). The park was mostly empty, green and expansive. We ate lunch there and wandered around for a while. They had outdoor free gym-like equipment set in an adult playground – we tried it out, laughing at ourselves.
Later on, after getting back to our hotel, we tried to book accommodation in Istanbul by ringing all the places in our guidebook, but we found that all were full. Hoping we’d find a place to stay the next day, we retired for the night.

In the morning we caught a bus to the otogar, where we jumped on a coach to Istanbul. The trip was more interesting that the others because half way through, our bus boarded a ferry for about 45 minutes across the Sea of Marmara. Once we reached the opposite shore, the bus began driving into Turkeys largest city…

Capturing Çanakkale

The main purpose of our two night stay in Çanakkale was to take a day trip to the Gallipoli peninsula to see the World War I ANZAC memorials, but we found the town itself had a couple of other things going for it, and was a nice place to stay to boot. We took many photos on Gallipoli and a couple of others in Çanakkale too; all of which can be seen here.

We arrived in Çanakkale at about 4pm after a long bus journey from Izmir. Accommodation was sparse, so we ended up organising to stay in two different hotels for our two nights in Çanakkale.
We elected to spend the remainder of the day exploring the area, this included a walk along the quay, and snapping some rather touristy shots of a wooden horse used in the movie Troy (the ancient site of Troy is nearby), we also stopped to grab a bite to eat as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After taking in the remainder of the waterside, we decided to call it a night as we were both shattered.

The next morning, after a great nights sleep, we checked out the Çimenlik park (maintained by the navy) which had many old cannons, torpedoes and mines lining its path and an old WWI mine laying boat which has been converted into a museum, as well as an old Ottoman fortress that had been guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles. After the park, we headed back to our hotel because the ANZAC tour we’d booked ourselves on was about to start. Joining another NZ couple at the hotel, we boarded the boat that took us over the strait to Gallipoli. Once we arrived at the other side we were met by our tour guide, a young Turkish guy (mid-twenties?). Once our full group had been assembled, we were quickly on our way. The tour guide turned out to be really informative and helped give some perspective, time-line and history to match with the sights we visited. The places we visited were: ANZAC cove, Lone Pine (Aussie memorial), Chunuk Bair(NZ memorial), a Turkish graveyard and memorial, the Nek (battlefield), and some trenches and tunnels from that battles that are still visible. After visiting Gallipoli, we both have a better appreciation for the magnitude of the lives lost on the peninsula, but it’s still difficult to fully appreciate what it must have been like for the young soldiers (some as young as 14).

The tour eventually finished at 5:30pm, and we were back for the 6pm boat to Çanakkale. We then checked into our other hotel (bags were moved for us), where that night I was eaten alive by a swarm of mosquitoes (Tanya only received 1 bite). In the morning I was tired and very itchy!
The next day, we boarded another bus for the long journey to the city of Bursa.

Ill in Izmir

We opted to stay a couple of nights in Izmir to take a look at Turkey’s third largest city, and so we could travel out to nearby Sardis.
Izmir has history going back 5000 years, and prior to the Ottoman Turks taking over, it was known as Smyrna. Despite a long and interesting history, there isn’t much visible in the city itself, as most of it was destroyed by fire after the Turks retook the city from the Greek army in 1922.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to Sardis, and we found Izmir to be the least enjoyable Turkish city we visited. This was definitely a low point in our holiday, but it wasn’t all bad, as Izmir was not completely without some redeeming features. We didn’t take many photos of Izmir, but the few we did take can be seen here.

We arrived from Selçuk at the Izmir bus station, 8km outside the city. We found the station to be huge and confusing and it took us a lot of walking around and asking many Turks for directions before we found the buses to the centre. Luckily, the ticket operator spoke good English, so we were on the correct bus to the centre of Izmir quickly.
We alighted from our bus, near to where we planned to look for our hotel, but we had trouble finding the recommended one we were interested in, even though a friendly American NATO trooper in civvies tried to help us out. We eventually settled on a slightly overpriced hotel across from the Hilton.
After dropping off our gear, we wondered around part of the long waterfront for a bit until we reached Konak Square, where we saw the clock tower, and the tiny Konak Cammi. We moved onto look at a couple of museums which were pretty good, but didn’t have too much in them for a city the size of Izmir.
In the late afternoon, we were feeling a bit down, which I think was a culmination tiredness due to our constant travelling, the problems at the bus station, not being able to find an open information center and finding Izmir to be a bit unfriendly – even though as we sat on a bench, one local said to us: “Hello, welcome to Turkey”.
That night we headed down to the lively bar/cafe and restaurant area which was packed full of locals. Every restaurant we passed looked full at first, but we eventually found a bar that served food with outdoor seating which looked good value, but what we didn’t realise until we sat down that there was no English on the menus or on the waiters’ lips. It was an interesting experience ordering our meals through guess work, but our meals turned out OK for bar food.

The next day, we woke up late, but still wanted to head Sardis as a day trip. We didn’t feel like trying to get a bus, as that would likely involve getting to the confusing otogar and back again, so we tried the rail station instead.
When we asked at the train station, we found the next train was in 3 hours, so we gave up on Sardis, and instead decided to look around the main park where we lazed around for a while, as we found it a relaxing place to be.
After the park, we took a look around the bazaar where we got shuffled into another carpet/leather shop. We made it clear that we weren’t going to buy, but they still insisted on sitting us down for some apple tea and a chat before we left. After the bazaar we walked up the waterfront which was quite nice and found a restaurant that my dad recommended, which we returned to later that night. It was pretty good and we both enjoyed it, even though I had developed a stomach ache a bit earlier.
That night, neither of us got hardly any sleep – my stomach ache had turned into stomach cramps and a fever, and we were both kept up by a large group who seemed to have booked out almost the entire hotel returned late and rowdy from whatever party they had been at, and considered it a good idea to perform their favourite songs to us.

In the morning, we both awoke a bit worse for wear. My fever had abated but I still wasn’t well, and Tanya wasn’t feeling her best either. We caught a bus via a free transfer to the otogar, but not before I walked into a pharmacy and after communicating my symptoms through the art of mime, purchased some recommended mystery pills.
The bus trip north was a long 6 hours, and we both had a bit of nausea on the trip. We were glad to arrive in Çannakkale in the mid-afternoon.

Sightseeing in Selçuk and Ephesus

The next stop on our Turkish journey was Selçuk, near the east coast in an area rich with history as its right next to the ancient ruined city of Ephesus. We stayed in Selçuk for a couple of nights, and despite the town being geared toward tourism we really enjoyed our time there. You can see the photos we took of Selçuk and Ephesus here.

Arriving at Denizli from Pamukkale at the bus station, we asked one of the bus boys for a bus to Selçuk, and he told us to run after him so we could catch a bus that had left 5 minutes ago. He managed to stop it at some traffic lights across the road from the bus station – much to the delight of the cars stuck behind it, we quickly boarded the bus and were on our way shortly afterwards. The drive west had less interesting scenery than our other journeys – mostly flat farmland, and hills; but like our previous bus journeys with the ‘Pamukkale‘ bus company we received free water, coffee, and soft drinks.
On arrival, we avoided the accommodation ‘touts’ – people who’s job it is to push you into staying at their hotel. But outside the information centre, we confessed to not having anywhere to stay to a group of Turkish men who were sitting around chatting, one of whom had a friend who ran a pansiyon (guest-house). As it was in our guidebook as being OK, so we went with him to check it out. It looked acceptable, and so we took it, but before he left, he passed us his business card for his carpet shop around the corner, and got us to promise to drop by and take a look (no obligation to buy of course)… ahh, so that was his game!
After dropping off our belongings, we grabbed lunch, then walked to the site of one of the ancient wonders of the world – the Temple of Artemis. The site was huge, but a little disappointing, because while you could get an idea of the size of the temple, there was only minimal foundations left along with a single column. The site was free, but as a result it was ravaged with sellers of trinkets and postcards – who we managed to avoid.
Our next stop was the museum, which housed some interesting artifacts from Ephesus, and the Temple of Artemis. After leaving the museum, we walked through the centre of town and saw some tall columns which are what remain of an aqueduct.

We were on our way to see the ruined Basilica of St. John when a few teenage guys asked us if we were going to see the kale (castle in Turkish; pronounced as kalee). We intended to go up there, so I said yes. He then said the way we were going was closed, but down this other way was open. Thinking he was directing me to the entrance, we walked down the path, and soon enough two of the guys caught up to us and walked along with us and chatted with us; they turned out to be Kurdish. I kept my wits about me, but thought they were likely wanting to be our guides to earn some money. As we got further along, I got more apprehensive, as the path turned to dirt, so I refused to go any further. In response, one of the guys ran ahead and showed us the “door” – which was a hole in the fence. They were wanting to show us around the closed site (for a price of course). The vision of being caught by a guard and being put into a Turkish cell came to mind, especially as the Kurdish guys looked like they could easily outrun us and any guards, so we had to turn down their persistent appeals of “Door open, no problem”. I gave them some small change for their trouble though.
Once we got back to the road, we walked up to the real entrance, where what the teenage Kurds said was confirmed – the castle was indeed shut off to the public, but we could still enter St. John’s Basilica.
The Basilica, built in the 6th century over the grave of John the Apostle was one of the grandest basilicas of its time, until it was sacked by the Mongol hoards. Despite being in mostly ruins, it still retained an impressive aura about it, that was at least partially due to the restoration work that had been performed on it. Later on, we grabbed some pides for dinner in town, where we were given some complimentary Turkish tea.

After a sizable breakfast in the morning – complete with figs, we headed down to the otogar to catch a dolmuş to the ancient city of Ephesus. We boarded one no problem, but it only dropped us off at the turnoff to Ephesus – still 1 km walk from the lower entrance. Once we left the dolmuş, we were immediately accosted by a taxi driver who offered to take us to the upper entrance. His pitch was that by taking a taxi, we could walk downhill, and would only have to walk one direction through the ruins… for 15TL. We said it was too much, and made to walk off, so he dropped it to 12 TL. I tried to get him down to 10 TL, and it didn’t work, but seeing the logic in his argument, we took the taxi.
Arriving at the upper entrance, we were shocked at the number of tour groups gathering near the entrance. There were so many just standing around that we had to squeeze past a couple of large groups just to get to the ticket booth. Once inside, we rented a single audio guide to share between us (they had separate ear-pieces), and were on our way.
Ephesus was a cultural and commercial centre during the Greek and Roman eras, and was important in early Christian history. The site itself is huge, although tourists are restricted to almost a single path through it to preserve the ruins as much as possible.
We found the ruins to be not quite as enjoyable as we’d expected – it may have just been the throngs of tourists that spoilt it, but our enjoyment was muted. Having said that, the Library was very impressive, and despite being heavily restored with concrete, the massive Theatre was too. We also liked seeing the ruins of the church of Saint Mary, where Tanya was surprised to see a lizard pop out from a ruined wall.

Once we left Ephesus, we wandered a kilometre and a half along a back-road to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers where we had restricted views of the cave and surrounding catacombs. Its said that back in 250 A.D, seven Christians fled to the cave to hide from persecution, and ended up sleeping for 200 years. When they awoke, they found that the Roman Empire had converted to a Christian Roman Empire.
We grabbed some ice creams at a stall outside the cave; then found our way back to Selçuk via a disused stony road – where we passed a man on a donkey riding the other way.
After resting up at our pansiyon, we headed down to the large old mosque in town – İsa Bey Mosque, which was constructed in the 14th century. It had a large, walled courtyard which was nice to wander, and as we got there in between prayer times we were able to enter the mosque itself. While it was void of many decorations inside, the sheer size of the space made up for it.
As we had some free time after the mosque, we opted to visit the carpet seller who showed us to our accommodation the day before. We decided beforehand on how much we wanted to spend and that we should probably not buy anything. When we turned up, he greeted us warmly, showed us into his shop and served us apple tea. We chatted for a bit before he started showing us carpets, kilims and embroidery – mostly originating from central to eastern Turkey. Nothing really caught my eye, until he showed us one that I liked… and I could tell Tanya liked too. We eventually eliminated the other carpets, even thought there was one large Armenian one that Tanya quite liked, but was too big (and expensive) for us. We weren’t sure we wanted to buy it at first, but after discussing it between ourselves, we decided to go for it. The price had started at 845TL, but after our umming and ahhing, he brought it down to 750TL. I then tried my hand at haggling, and got it down to 670TL, which we shook on.
After handing over the cash, we chatted a bit, and his cousin told us a story of two Texans who he met in Selçuk that looked petrified. He went to ask them if they were OK – they thought he was going to kill them as they seemed afraid of all Muslims, and when asked why they came to Turkey, they couldn’t answer.

Before we left, they wrapped the carpet in a conveniently sized package, so we could fit it into my pack and made it easier to travel to our next destination the next day – Izmir.