Turkey - Pt 1

After many IT problems, our serious blog starts here.

We flew from Brisbane to Singapore to Dubai to Istanbul on 5 May, all uneventful flights. We had one free day in Istanbul, before starting our Insight guided tour. We first visited the New Mosque, one of the many mosques in Istanbul.

We walked across the Galata Bridge and along the wide pedestrian Istiklal Street, lined with shops, cafes, theatres, etc, to Taksim Square. This is a buzzing quarter of the city, with an old restored tram running along the street. We took the tram back and on the way found ourselves surrounded by a student demonstration.




The following day, we left on our tour. It took us first to the lovely little village of Cumalikizik, with traditional wooden houses and cobblestone streets and local women selling their homemade breads, jams and handcrafts.



Next stop was the city of Bursa. We visited the colourful Silk Market, where vendors try to lure you into their stores. The pic below shows some of the beautiful scarves for sale.




In Bursa, we visited the Grand Mosque, notable for its 20 domes and the fact that it has the biggest prayer area of any mosque in Turkey.





In all the mosques, women have to dress appropriately with a head scarf, hence the pic of Gail below.

We also visited the Green Mosque, so named because of the tiles inside it. It has a Mausoleum containing the tomb of the sultan who had the mosque built.





In Bursa, we stayed in a hotel which had a Turkish Bath. Don was adventurous enough to try it, but found it to be very disorganised and overrated. The Turkish Bath building, however, looked quite impressive lit up at night.




We visited or passed several cities mentioned in the New Testament, eg in the letters of St Paul and Revelation (remember the seven cities: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea).

On our tour, we visited a number of archaeological sites, the first of which was the ancient city of Sardis. The pic below shows the gymnasium there. Parts of the walls have been reconstructed.




We continued to Pamukkale, where we saw the ruins of ancient Hieropolis (mentioned in St Paul's writings). The pic below shows the Greco-Roman theatre there.




Pamukkale is famous for its "Cotton Castle", a chalk-white array of limestone terraces with water cascading into scallop-shell basins. Our guide strongly advised us against walking on the slippery terraces - he wanted to get us through the trip in one piece!

We had a night-time swim in the thermal pools at our hotel in Pamukkale, the Pam Thermal. The pic below shows some of the pools which were in scallop-shell basins like the "Cotton Castle".

Our next stop was Ephesus, significant to early Christianity as well as to the ancient world. On a hill near the ancient city, we visited the House of the Virgin Mary, shown in the pic below. This is said to be the last place Mary lived (when John was looking after her, after Jesus died). The evidence is pretty dubious, but it certainly draws crowds of tourists!

We had an interesting visit to a Turkish Carpet Centre, where we enjoyed watching very skilled women weaving beautiful carpets, including ones made of silk. We even saw how they spin the silk thread off the silkworm cocoons. They gave us a free lunch of meat and cheese pita bread and Turkish tea while they tried to make a sale (Don was a bit worried at one point!) 

Finally, we got to the ancient city of Ephesus itself, an amazing place. We walked along the Marble Street, where St Paul and St John once walked, to the incredible Library of Celcus, both in the pic below.

The ancient latrine (public toilets) at Ephesus was interesting, with everyone sitting side-by-side. No toilet paper in those days, just sponges to share, which sat in a trench of running water in front of you. The pic below shows our wonderful tour guide, Saba, in the Latrine! 

We followed in Cleopatra's steps and walked down the Arcadian Way to the huge Amphitheatre of Ephesus. It holds 24,000 people and is still used for concerts today (Michael Jackson and Diana Ross have performed there).

Another archaeological site was Pergamon (called Bergama today). We visited the Acropolis (means "high city"), which included a number of temples and a library, said to have contained 200,000 volumes. In its day it was a competitor with the Great Library of Alexandria. The pic below shows some ruins on the Acropolis. 

Also at Pergamon, we visited the Asklepion ruins, probably the world's first medical centre. We saw treatment pools, which would have contained mud/honey/milk/aromatherapy liquids. Underground tunnels, in the pic below, were used for the "suggestion technique" - they would call through holes above, "You'll be fine!" Some things haven't changed!

Next stop was Homer's legendary city of Troy. We visited the ruins (there had been at least nine cities on the site) and saw an enormous reconstruction of the fabled wooden horse.




Gallipoli and more of Istanbul in the next updates.....