Turkey Summer 1998

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This page is about my holiday in Turkey. I went there with my sister, Aukje, and we spent a full month traveling. The image below is a clickable map. Each red dot is a link to pictures except Antalya where we entered the country (we didn't stay to take pictures there).

The red line is the route we followed: We took the plane from Schiphol to Antalya. We got a little culture and climate shock when we got of the plane: 40 degrees Celsius and dozens of scary looking taxi drivers. By then, we had figured out that Antalya is not a nice place to be and we asked a taxi driver to get us to the busstation. There we had a pleasant surprise: Turkey's busses are superb. We took the bus to Egridir a small village near a lake. We arrived late at night and we were escorted to a nice little pension by a Turkish boy (there were several waiting at the busstop). As it was totally dark, we had no idea where we were. The next morning, at 5 am, we were woken by the local mosque. I took a photograph of this mosque from the window of our pension. Then we searched for a nice camping, which we found very soon (see photos).

After a few days, we traveled to Pamukale. This is, or probably was, by now (as the locals have destroyed most of the basins to get water for their pools), a major tourist attraction. The main attraction are the strange, beautiful basins and some ancient ruins nearby. It was very hot and damp here so we moved on quickly after we visited the ruins and the basins.

After Pamukale we traveled west towards the coast. On our way we passed Izmir. Originally, we were planning to do some sightseeing there. Unfortunately, Izmir is a very large city (3.000.000 people) and in the summer it is a stinking, hot hell. So upon arrival, we decided to go to Foca a cozy little coastal town. This time it was still light when we arrived. After some searching, we found a camping. Being tired, filthy and sweaty from the hellish bus ride, we were not very happy with what we found (see photos). But the sunset eased our minds and the next day we looked for a pension (having decided that there were no decent campings). While searching we met a girl who worked as a guide on boat tours. After selling us a boat tour, she helped us find a pension. We ended up sleeping in the apartment of an old lady who didn't speak English (see photo). We took the boat tour which turned out to be a highlight of our holiday.

From there we went to Ayvalik (a relatively small distance). Here we found paradise, a small camping for rich people from Istanbul. There was really not a bad thing to say about it. We met again with some Dutch people we met earlier in Pamukale and we spent some nice afternoons together, sipping the local beer and reading. We decided we were now officially on holiday and we ended up spending more than a week here, reading the newspaper, sitting on the beach, etc.

Then we traveled on to Bergama. Bergama has an ancient Greek acropolis with temples and other interesting ruins. Here we met Adam, a Danish guy we would meet again later on. Having seen the ruins, we got rid of common sense and spent 10 hours in a bus. Several people we had met were talking about Cappadocia, as we were only about halfway our full month of planned holiday we decided to go there.

I woke up while driving through a desert (strange experience) just in time to see the sun rise. An hour later we arrived in Cappadocia. Cappadocia is great, it's bizarre, it's beautiful. We took lots of pictures, saw lots of stuff and had a great time, until the last moment because then we ran into some bad luck. As we were preparing to leave for the black sea coast (we were now hooked on traveling), Aukje misstepped and strained her ankle. We ended up in a hospital where some pictures were taken of the ankle. Luckily nothing was broken, but yours truly was now responsible for two backpacks and a tent as Aukje was barely able to walk let alone carry anything.

After spending one more day in Cappadocia we traveled to Safran Bolu, passing Turkey's capital (Ankara) on our way. Turkish city's are hot and crowded in the summer. I'm sure the large city's we passed are worth a visit when the weather cools down but we weren't unhappy about catching the bus from Ankara to Safran Bolu.

We arrived late in the evening and had lots of trouble finding a place for the night. Luckily the people in this area are very friendly and we were able to sleep in a house for a mere 40 million Turkish pounds (about 5$). The owner of the house is in one of the pictures. Due to Aukje's injury we had to slow down a bit but we managed to see most of Safran Bolu anyway. From there we went on to Amasra, which we decided would be our last stop before Istanbul. Having traveled a lot over the past three weeks, we were a little tired and traveling had gotten a little more stressful due to Aukje's injury (camping was now out of the question).

Again we were welcomed by some very friendly people. An old lady, who came to Amasra every year helped us to get a nice cabin at the local hotel. It turned out to be an excellent place to stay (although we had to wage a chemical war against the mosquitos). Amasra is a really nice, quiet town. The beach in the harbor sucks, but you can go to a better beach nearby (see pictures).

Finally we left for Istanbul. Once again we took the night bus We arrived in the morning of what was going to be a very hectic, warm day. Having only two days left we were both very tired and eager to see as much as possible (which is highly conflicting in a city like Istanbul). So we dumped our stuff in a hotel and went on a boat tour trying to relax. The next day we did some serious sightseeing and in the evening we collected our stuff from the hotel and took the subway and subsequent taxi to the airport. Our plain left about 4 AM and we arrived on Schiphol 7 in the morning.

Here are some tips to people planning to go to Turkey like we did:

• Be insured, we needed it and it sure opens doors when you need it.
• Bring travelers cheques. I needed to pay hard cash for Aukje's little injury and bank machines were nowhere to be found.
• Plan where you are going on the first night. We did that on the plane and more or less picked Egridir by hoping it would be nice rather than knowing it would be nice.
• Carry enough cash to manage a few days without banks or postal offices.
• Buy a travel guide, we had both the lonely planet and the rough guide. Both are excellent for locating cheap pensions, good restaurants and most importantly busses to other places.
• Forget about camping, a pension will cost you about 5 dollars max. Besides, campings are hard to find and not that much cheaper. Pensions on the other hand are everywhere.
• Avoid touristic places unless you have a good reason to go there. Touristic places attract a lot of opportunistic Turkish people and dealing with them gets boring after a while. Besides, you'll meet more interesting people outside the touristic areas.
• Don't waste your time at the beach, it's lost time. We spent 6 or 7 days in Ayvalik and while they were pleasant I wouldn't be able to tell you how we filled the time, it's all blurred in my head now. The two days in Bergama or the four days in Cappadocia though are burned in my memory as they were very exciting places to be.
• Book some time for seeing Istanbul, two days is just too short.
• Go see the black coast, it is beautiful and unspoiled.