So we had high expectations but so far it has lived up to every one.
We arrived in a town called Çesme on the Western Agean coast. In summer it is apparently quite touristy but we were visiting in the off-season and so it had a nice feel to it. We found a fantastic pension that was about half the price we were paying 10km across the sea in Greece. (A pension is the name given to a type of guesthouse that is more family run with only a few rooms).
The owners were fantastic and served us Chai (tea) that would be the first of many to come. In Turkey, tea is an important part of the day. You have a tea many times during the day, and strangers welcome you over to have a tea with them. It is great way to interact with locals, despite big language barriers.
From Çesme we headed to the nearby large city of Izmir. Four million people live in this city, but it doesnt seem that large in comparison to Ankara or Istanbul. Various Turkish people and tourists told us not to bother with the big cities like Izmir and Ankara, but some of our favourite parts of travelling is not sights as such, but just wandering around watching how local people live and their way of life. That is something that it at its best in big cities where you are catching public transport with only locals (not tourists) and eating at cheap fantastic restaurants where the prices and quality is great as it is geared towards the local market.
Later we headed down to Selcuk, which was a nice little town and a good base to explore the nearby archaelogical site of Ephasus. This was an amazing ancient village from the Roman Empire, complete with an ampitheatre, baths and libaries to name a few.
The library at Ephasus
We also headed to Kusadasi for one day, but this was a pretty horrible tourist town with touts everywhere, pushing you into their shops. In Turkey, the carpet shop is the tourist trap, where they try and get you into their shop to see how they weave their carpets and then sell you one at twice the price for what it is worth. And of course they offer all sorts of services like delivering it back to NZ for us. Not our sort of place, where they pressure you to purchase, so on hearing the word carpet mentioned we quickly move along.
A Caravanseri in Kusadasi
So we caught the train back to Izmir to spend a bit more time there. The trains in Turkey are fantastic but unfortunately there are only a few lines, so to get across to Ankara we had to head back to Izmir. But while we were there this time we tried out a Turkish bath. Here you spend time in a big swimming pool like thing and a sauna. And then you have someone exfoliate you all over then give you a massage. Normally men and women are seperated, but the one we went to was only male masseurs. I didnt totally enjoy my male massuer experience, as he was a bit inappropriate, and Nick came away with grazes because they exfoliated him so hard, but it was a interesting thing to do none-the-less. Maybe we will head to another one in Istanbul that is more professional.
And of course the food has been fatastic in Turkey. Our meat-intake has quadrupled but there is great variety and it is all very reasonably priced.
A common sight in Turkey
No comments:
Post a Comment