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Venice to Turkey 17, Part 1

Day 17, Kapadokya, May 20, Before Breakfast!

Today we get up at 3:45 AM. Yes, you heard that right! We are on a bus at 4:15 AM! Happily even! The bus drives for about 30 minutes. At about 5 AM, we arrive to see hot air balloons inflating. We are awake and happy because we are going up today! Within 15 more minutes, we’re in a balloon basket with 27 others plus 2 pilots.

Soon we are aloft and soaring over and through hills, valleys and hoodoos. Absolutely beautiful and magical! Another Bucket List Item checked off! Hot Air Balloons over Cappadocia, or the way they spell it in Turkey, Kapadokya! If you pronounce it the way Turkey spells it, you will pronounce it correctly!

The ride lasts an hour and we watch sunrise from the balloon. There are a total of 156 balloons in the air this morning. All of them ascend and descend through the hills and valleys of Cappadocia.

Our pilots even have a selfie video recording us. We all gladly get together and purchase the set of videos that they record!

This is a different experience than other hot air balloons we have been in. The pilots guide us up AND down through the hills, hoodoos and ‘Fairy Castles’ of the area and so do all the other balloons!

We even spot a house built into the rocks, more on that later!

Sunrise is beautiful from the air! This is surely a unique area of the world!

We are told that a lot of hot air balloon pilots from around the world come here to train. And it becomes evidently true as at the end of the flight, our chase truck is parked right where we land and, amazingly, we land right on the trailer!

Then, as the balloon deflates, the pilots hold a champagne party where they mix champagne with pomegranate juice.

Then it’s back to the hotel for breakfast. Yes, I said breakfast! We feel like we’ve been touring all day and we have only got to breakfast! A very good Turkish breakfast, I might add! Then we relax in the room for half an hour and it’s time to board the bus for the rest of the day’s tour!

But I will leave that for the next post….

Venice to Turkey 16

Day 16, Ankara, May 19

Breakfast in the Palace hotel was very good! They redeemed themselves from last night. All kinds of traditional Turkish dishes, olives, cheeses, spreads and breads!

We are in the capital of Turkey, Ankara. It’s the anniversary of Turkey’s founding in 1919 after being freed from the Ottoman Empire after WWI. The weather is quite cool here at 14C. Oz is giving us historical info on the city. Flags and banners are everywhere along with photos of the founder of Turkey and the current president.

We drive to a castle. We visit the Avrupada Zilin museum here. A travel friend poses with a statue! We see artifacts from well before 1000 BC. Amazing uses of metal, stone and colors.

Now it’s back on the bus and we entertain our cameras with sights of the architecture. We learn that the Ottoman Empire failed because they stopped progressing. Europeans developed better technology and better armies.

Next stop is the Mausoleum of Mustafa Kimal Ataturk (Father of the Turks). The mausoleum is interesting and we walk through. Cameras afre totally welcome! There are views of the city from one end. Inside and out there are very lifelike statues of guards on pedestals. Hey wait! That one moved! It turns out the ‘statues’ are live guards! We must be at the Pageant of the Masters! Not! As we are leaving, we are interrupted by the Changing of the Guard where those ‘statues’ come to life! Fun ceremony to watch. Then we are back on the bus.

We now drive for one and a half hours through the farmlands of Golbasi. I’m not sure I thought of Turkey as fertile and beautiful, but here we are!

We drive through Central Anatolya in the middle of Turkey. We see what turns out to be a ‘Salt Lake’ in the distance. Soon we make a roadside stop for lunch and to comply with Turkish law for bus drivers at “Tuz Golu”, the Salt Lake. Food was poor and barely even warm. The health department back home would have a field day with Turkish roadside restaurants.

We know Turkey has good food, sadly, just not where our tour is taking us. The ice cream stand at Tuz Golu at least had good ice cream! This part of Turkey is also known as Asia Minor.

We stop at the entrance to “Saratli”, the Underground City and vendors assault our senses with colorful displays of goods. We walk through them and enter the underground caves. Narrow tunnels with steep up and down steps that are very uneven.

We only spend less than a half hour in the caves but it is enough to experience them. We stop in the local gift shop and look around. We see a sign advertising Natural Wine and we inquire. When the lady finally understands us, she shouts, “Shaddup” or something like that. It almost sounds like she is saying, Shut Up”, only very fast. We taste what she gives us, pouring it from a refilled water bottle, a pinkish liquid, and it tastes like a crude honey mead or grappa. We decline purchasing any. Then we walk back through the vendors and board the bus.

We drive next to ‘New City’, Kapadokya around 4 PM. We know it as Cappadocia, pronounced more like the Turkish spelling! It’s symbol is Fairy Chimneys in front of Tulips and Horses. We arrive at the Avrasya Hotel and are in our room before 6. Part of our group signs up to go four wheeling in the local area but having spent decades as an off road photographer, the allure of that is over. We will take a walk and check out the neighborhood. There are a few stores in the area but no restaurants.

So we eat at the hotel and we are pleasantly surprised as they have a buffet of delicious authentic Turkish food! There is even a full bar in the hotel so we get a glass of wine with dinner. The wine is even a new grape I’ve never tasted and it stands up to the taste test!

Tomorrow will be an early morning so a glass of wine in the room and it’s time for a shower and bed.

Venice to Turkey 15

Day 15, Leave the Ship, May 18

This morning we pack the last items our bags and go to the buffet for breakfast. We have our last decadent morning meal and visit with an Aussie couple from Sydney that we have met several times on the ship. We forgot their names (shame on us) but I will refer to him as the “Arrive Alive” guy. If he reads this, he will know! I grab a couple shots of a mosque right off the side of the ship.

Then it’s to our room to collect our bags and head off the ship. We have elected to handle our own luggage as it is faster. We hire a cab and go to a hotel to be picked up for our next tour. We have to wait in their lobby for a couple hours. It turns out we probably could have walked to this hotel as the ship is right in sight of the hotel.

We are picked up by a black van at 11:30 AM, right on time. The van picks up 6 more people and then brings us to a large tour bus. There are a total of 20 people on our tour. So we will have plenty of room on the bus, being a standard 47 seat bus.

Our tour guide, Oz, is personal and well spoken. Our driver is Akmed. Istanbul officially has 16.5 million people but it is estimated there are 3 million more, undocumented. Gee, where else does that happen? We are headed for Ankara today, the origin of Angora Wool from special goats.

All the flags around Istanbul are in preparation for the celebration of the beginning of the country on May 19, 1919.

Noon in Turkey is not considered 12:00, but instead is when the sun is highest in the sky.

We go across the first bridge to connect continents built in 1973. In a short while, we go through the modern section of Istanbul with modern architecture and a mosque or two thrown in!

Huge flags hang from the walls, some with the image of the president. About 30%of the country likes him.

We stop for lunch at a highway roadside restaurant area. We don’t know the names of what we eat, but I have an eggplant and pepper dish and a bowl of spicy lentil soup.

We head out again and drive 4 hours. Then we stop for 45 minutes as per Turkish law. The law states that tour bus drivers have to take a 45 minute break after driving 4 hours. It also states that drivers cannot drive more than 6 days in a row and then have to take a day off! Then we drive for about two hours to our hotel where we will have dinner.

Not many photos today as the drive is interesting but not overly spectacular. Fun sunset as we come into Ankara!

5.7 million people live in Ankara. Not as many as Istanbul, but still enough to cause traffic jams. We arrive at our hotel, the Meyra Palace Hotel. It sure is palatial! Everything down to the furniture and room lights are shiny and ornate. Crown molding is ornately decorated.

Dinner in the hotel dining room is tasty yet unspectacular. We didn’t recall that meals are a part of the tour. At least it is money not spent! Food we could have at home. Chicken was dry. Salad was undressed. Oh well, can’t have it all. We settle in the room looking forward to tomorrow.

Venice to Turkey 14

Day 14, Istanbul, May 17, Part 1

We arrive in Istanbul today. We don’t dock until noon. The restaurants are all jam packed as everyone sleeps in like we do. So we have what will likely be our last restaurant breakfast.

Then we get off the ship shortly after the ship opens the gangway. We have to walk downstairs through tunnels to get out. The ship has provided special paperwork to help us get out and back into the port.

We find the HOHO Bus as soon as we get out and buy 2 tickets. So today we get the nickel tour of Istanbul. We get off at the Blue Mosque and start to look around.

A local Guide, JJ, approaches us and offers his services and we let him. JJ takes us around and tells us about the mosque. He even leads us through the crowd and shows us how to cut the line without getting into trouble. We check the dress code and Elee buys a shawl to abide by the rules.

The Blue Mosque is spectacular as you will see in the photos. It was built in 1609.

We finish our visit and JJ finds us outside. He takes us to a restaurant area to get a bite to eat when we realize that we have to get back on the bus as it’s getting late. JJ helps us get back to the bus stop quickly and we bid him goodbye as I slip him a €10 note. He was worth it!

Traffic in Istanbul is gnarly and it takes quite some time for the bus to get us back to the port. Once there, we have to walk over a mile through security and tunnels to get back on the ship.

It’s 6 PM by the time we get on the ship. We go online and book a night trip we noticed a couple weeks ago. It turns out there are night river cruises available for a meager €12 each.

We grab a bite to eat in the buffet and head back out to the taxi stand after walking that mile plus to get out. See the next Post to see the trip!

Venice to Turkey 12

Day 12 Kusadasi, May 15

We’re up at 6 AM today for an off ship tour of Ephesus (pronounced effasus) in Kusadasi (pronounced koosh-ahdahsa). Upon finding our tour guide, we are pleased to find it is a small private tour with only 6 people. We had expected a full tour bus of 40-50 people. Our tour guide, Begu (pronounced beg-goo) is cheerful and funny. We are in the Izmir Province of Turkey today.

Today’s tour is to Ephesus, an ancient site of biblical notoriety. Begu gives us lots of historical data of the area and is very entertaining while he does it. We chat a lot in between historical bits and I tell Begu that I make Fruit Wine. “You make Fruit Wine?” He asked excitedly! So he told me he has a friend that has Fruit Wines and at the end of the day’s tour he leads me to a vendor booth and I am given a tasting of about a dozen fruit wines and I purchase a bottle of Black Mulberry Wine! How do you like how they spell the word ‘taxi’? Phonetically correct, I would say!

Here, in Ephesus, like in Rhodes, there is a building built over an important set of ruins under current excavation at the Temple of Hadrian. Temple rooms, living accommodations and important Frescoes and tile art on floors and walls help tell the story of living thousands of years ago! Several signs in the photos to come give more accurate info on the place.

Moving on out of the Temple of Hadrian, an interesting bug points its way down the 90 irregular steps towards the Library of Celsus. The Library of Celsus is an ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, located near the modern town of Selçuk, in the İzmir Province of western Turkey. The building was commissioned by a consul of the Roman Empire, Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, as a funerary monument for his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, and completed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian.

The Library of Celsus is considered an architectural marvel, and is one of the few remaining examples of great libraries of the ancient world located in the Roman Empire. It was the third-largest library in the Greco-Roman world behind only those of Alexandria and Pergamum, and is believed to have held around 12,000 scrolls. Celsus is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus. The interior measured roughly 180 square meters (2,000 square feet).

The interior of the library and its contents were destroyed in a fire that resulted either from an earthquake or a Gothic invasion in 262 CE and the façade by an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century. It lay in ruins for centuries until the façade was re-erected by archaeologists between 1970 and 1978.

The Ichthys Wheel (or Christ Wheel) (last photo in this next group) is an ancient, cryptic Christian symbol from the 2nd to 4th centuries. It was created by superimposing the five Greek letters of Ichthys—the word for fish and an acronym for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”. When overlapped, these letters form an eight-spoked wheel.

The detail in the stone are extraordinary even in the ceilings!

Then we come to the Grand Theater of Ephesus. It is situated just a short walk up Marble Street from the Library of Celsus. Capable of holding up to 25,000 spectators, it was one of the largest in Asia Minor. Construction began in the Hellenistic period (around 250 BC) and it was vastly expanded by the Romans. Beyond theatrical performances and concerts, the space was used for gladiator games and political, social, and religious gatherings. It is the spring and Turkish Red Poppies grow everywhere!

Next we visit a rug factory where weavers spend eight to sixteen months weaving each rug. The colors and designs are fantastic and I’m sorry that photos were not one of my chosen things to do here. Pictured are silkworm cocoons being rolled onto spools. Each cocoon produces about a mile of thread each!

Back on the ship in time for trivia games in Penrose Bar. Tonight we have dinner at the Local Bar. Fish and chips and bar food fits the bill. Then to the theater to see ‘Showtime: Burn the Floor’, a dance cabaret. Now it’s off to bed.