Whirlwind Travels through Turkey

For months I had been traveling amongst the filth and poverty of developing countries and was getting burned out (not to mention I had picked up a cough in China that was still bothering me 2 months later) so needless to say I was more than excited to arrive in Turkey.  The plan was to meet up with 2 friends of mine from California (John and Jaqueline) and travel together for a month.  After traveling alone for so long it was a wonderful treat to be in the company of great friends.

John, Jaqueline and Jamie

Arriving to Istanbul from Nepal (the poorest country in Asia) was a bit of a shock.  Long gone were the $4 hotel rooms and $2 meals.  Turkey was expensive!  Istanbul, a city of over 15 million people, was unique in that it is situated on 2 continents:  Asia and Europe.  For a city of that size I was surprised at how clean it was and how charming and hospitable the Turkish people were. 

Streets of Istanbul

After spending a few days in Istanbul exploring the sights we set out on a whirlwind trip of Turkey (10 cities in 12 days)!  Our first stop was Cappadocia where we stayed in a “cave hotel” and explored the fascinating cave dwellings unique to that area.  We also stopped off to visit one of the many underground cities that housed over 20,000 people at any one time.

Cave dwellings in Cappadocia

Leaving Cappadocia we headed to Konya, to visit the Mevlâna Museum where Rumi’s tomb in located and then continued on to Antalya, a city on the Mediterranean coast.

For the next few days we drove a lot!  Driving along the Mediterranean coast we stopped off at many of the seaside villages including Kemer, Ucagiz, Gocek, Olympos, Cirali, and Oludeniz.  After being on the go for so long we decided that we needed to stay in one place longer than just one night (mainly so we could do our laundry)so we chose to stay at a hotel on the river in Dalyan for two nights.

View from hotel in Dalyan

Leaving Dalyan we headed for Bodrum, on the Aegean Sea and were so excited to visit the castle and the archaeology, but were disappointed when we found out that it was closed on Monday’s, the day we happened to be there.  We continued on up towards Izmir and on the way stopped off to visit Ephesus, an ancient Greek city. For many years it was the second largest city of the Roman Empire.   Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 people in the 1st century BC, making it the second largest city in the world during that time.

Ephesus, the ancient Greek city

We made it to Izmir in time to drop the car off which we had rented in Antalya and caught the bus to the port town of Cesme so we could catch a ferry over to Greece.  Unfortunately we missed the ferry connection that day and had to stay the night in Cesme which actually turned out to be a cute little town.