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Susan and I got back from two weeks in Turkey late Wednesday (Thursday morning) at 2 am and we’re still recovering today. Wednesday was a travelling marathon, with a ten hour plane ride from Istanbul to New York, a five hour layover, six more hours to San Francisco followed by a late night shuttle ride. We’re now both sick with nasty colds, courtesy of the fellow tourist who wouldn’t cover her mouth and got everyone else sick. After teaching a course at work on Friday my voice is now shot. Not an auspicious way to end a vacation, but otherwise it went well.
When we were planning the trip, we ended up being daunted by the task and instead opted to go with a tour group run by Flo USA. The tour covered over two thousand miles in twelve days, from Ankara to the southern Mediterranean coast, up the eastern coast bordering the Aegean, and winding up in Istanbul. So it was a lot of driving – anywhere from two to five hours a day, interpersed with two to four hours of sight seeing, then overnight in a different hotel. It was a good way to sample a lot of locations in Turkey, but it was tiring. Also somewhat unnerving at times, as the drivers in Turkey are blithely heedless of such things as lane markers. Hence the amount of time spent in the van, plus two somewhat tactless individuals who were unfortunately part of our tour group, were the low part of the trip.
We also missed American coffee – we never did sample authentic Turkish coffee, and when we asked we were given horrid Nescafé to drink. And I don’t think Susan nor I are going to be lifelong fans of Turkish cuisine. Kebabs are okay once in a while, but after trying several regional kebab specialties – which were all variations of meatballs or meat on a stick – we’re now kind of meated out.
The highlight of the tour was the time we spent in Cappadocia and in Antalya. In Cappadocia, we stayed at the Kelebek Pension, one of the famous cave hotels in Göreme. Our suite was carved out of the volcanic rock in the region. We enjoyed staying there, especially since the owner went out of his way to rescue my luggage (it had been delayed in JFK), and dinner in the hotel restaurant was one of the best meals we had in Turkey. As for the reason why tourists go there, the geology in Cappadocia really is out of this world. I tried to capture some of it in photos (Flickr) but you have to be there to really appreciate all the fairy chimneys, volcanic outcroppings, and strange geological formations, as well as all the ancient Christian settlements carved out of volcanic rock.
Antalya was noteworthy for its Archaelogical Museum. The halls were filled with Greco-Roman antiquities collected from nearby Perge and Aspendos, both sites which we had visited earlier. The marble statue were in great condition, fully the equal of anything I’ve seen in the Getty or the British Museum. Better, because we had seen the sites where they were from and could mentally place them in context. As a person who appreciates Greek classical studies, it was quite an experience to go to the excellently preserved theatre in Aspendos, and then later in the day see the statues of the Greek pantheon that once adorned the stage. Antalya is also a resort town. Flo USA upgraded our accomodations in Antalya and we were in the Marmara Antalya hotel for two nights. Definitely stellar accomodations. With the weather cooperating, it was a treat to lounge around poolside in Mediterranean seaside resort surroundings.
There were a lot of other stops on the tour: Sardis, Ephesus, Pergamum, Troy. Most were archaelogically interesting, though by the end we were overwhelmed by the amount of Roman ruins (“oh boy, another marble column!”).
We wound up the trip in Istanbul, which was a bit of a disappointment. The big tourist draws there – the Sultanahmet mosque, the Hagia Sofia, Topkapı and Dolmabahçe palaces – were spectacular and well worth the trip, but after spending a day and a half we no longer regretted that we weren’t spending more time in that city. Perhaps it was also because we were both run down and sick by this point, and I should also mention that within the first half hour of setting out alone in Istanbul along İstiklal street, I was the target of two very determined hustlers offering to be my tour guide and trying to lure me to get drinks and prostitutes; and was stopped by police for walking around with my hands in my pocket. The Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market were definitely overrated attractions – the goods sold there were available at every other tourist stop in Turkey.
All in all it was a great trip. I wish we had seen more things of a Middle Eastern or Islamic flair – Turkey seems to be a country asserting its secularism very strongly (never mind the one morning in Göreme when there were three separate hourly calls to prayer, starting at 4:30 AM) – but the Greco-Roman and early Christian historical places were worth the trip. We didn’t see many other American tourists, mainly Germans and Russians; it seems the number of American visitors to Turkey has sharply dropped off after 9/11, then the bird flu scare and now the latest Kurdish conflict. It’s too bad, because for the most part we felt safe (apart from aforementioned incidents in Istanbul). And yes, the toilets were fine, apart from the irritating 50 Kuruş fee charged at many tourist stops. Our excellent tour guide Yeşim (who had the patience of five kindergarten teachers) asked us to thank her by recommending Turkey as a destination for fellow tourists, and I heartily do so.
