A Turkish Honeymoon
After many months delay, we finally were able to get all the details worked out and have our delayed honeymoon in Turkey. The timing was fortuitous because this ended up being a babymoon as well, or instead of. 🙂 I’m not sure if that means we get another honeymoon later or not!
We spent 2 weeks in Turkey:
Our original itinerary took us northeast to Trabzon and south to Gaziantep as well as to Istanbul (NW Turkey) and Cappadocia (central Turkey). Due to the time of year and recent political and regional unrest, we changed our route a bit to exclude both of those areas (Gaziantep because of its proximity to Syria, and Trabzon due to weather). We rerouted to include several days in the Izmir region, including visits to Didyma, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Selcuk, and Miletus – all in SW Turkey and the heart of the Asian portion of the Roman Empire.
March 23 – We flew out of Pittsburgh to Chicago, and stayed a night at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. A giant thank you to Kathy and Jim Milam for making that happen. That evening we made reservations at the Merkat a la Planxa restaurant at the Blackstone, so we could enjoy Chef Eric’s cuisine all over again. During the day today, we had to take a detour to a bookstore to buy more guide books. We were so careful to make a list and pack – and the one thing we forgot – the guidebooks. Luckily, we discovered this before we left the US. We were also able to meet up with Jeff’s parents and have lunch with them and do a little shopping at Pea in the Pod for some clothes for Jen.
March 24 – We tried out a new to us breakfast place in the city – Yolk – before heading off to the Field Museum to see the Laceaux Cave Paintings exhibit. 🙂 We flew out of Chicago this evening, through Detroit, on a night flight to Paris. First off, I have to say that the Detroit airport is far nicer than I ever envisioned. I was quite impressed, and would be very happy to fly through there in the future.  The flight to Paris was nice – it wasn’t the most comfortable, but it wasn’t awful. We woke up as we landed in Paris at about 8am local time Monday morning. We had a short layover at the De Gaulle airport before reloading on to our final flight to Istanbul.
March 25 – We landed in Istanbul around 2pm Monday afternoon, local time.  We then had to stand in line for about half an hour to get our VISAs, as you have to buy them onsite in the airport, you don’t preorder/buy them. We checked in to our hotel to drop our luggage and took a short nap before setting off to explore Sultanahmet (old town) in Istanbul. Beautiful. Our hotel was just around the corner from the Hagia Sophia – about a 10 minute walk. The Blue Mosque was just across the courtyard. Both are gorgeous, especially with their nighttime lights on. We had dinner at this marginal touristy restaurant around the corner from our hotel, but we were too tired to think any harder for more exciting food. After walking around for a bit, we found this great little cafe for tea and dessert. I discovered local baklava…and Jeff discovered milk puddings, of many types. I think we ate here once each day we were in Istanbul. 🙂 Jeff also learned all about Turkish tea (chai) – reminds me strongly of Russian tea, including the samovar. *sigh* So good.
March 26Â – We started this day bright and early – ready to start our culinary walking tour at 9am near the New Mosque and the Spice Market. We were early, so we took some time to go inside the New Mosque, before meeting our small tour group. A giant thank you to Claudia (http://seasonalcookinturkey.blogspot.com/Â – our amazing guide) and Istanbul Eats (http://istanbuleats.com/) , through which we found this tour. Money well spent!!
We started with a tour of the Spice Market while we gathered items to eat for a late breakfast – kaymak (Awesome!! water buffalo milk cheese with honey), simits, different salamis, other cheeses, and olives. We also learned all about the different Turkish foods and treats – walnut candle candy, dried veggies,  turkish delight candies, and more. Other foods we were able to try along the way – lentil soup, roasted intestine sandwich (kokoreç), several desserts, pide (Turkish pizza), kofte (Turkish meatballs), chicken pudding, fried kabob, and some Kurdish items (lamb on flatbread) near the end of our tour. We ate ourselves silly – it was all so delicious! We walked back to Sultanhamet with some of our new friends from the group, and made a detour with some of them to see the Basilica Cistern. We ate dinner at what we thought was a great kabob place, but apparently we can’t read and this was a very well done knockoff – except the food wasn’t nearly as good.
And…of course…we stopped for chai and dessert at our new found cafe.
March 27 –Â This was a very early morning – with a 4:45am pick up to make a 6am-something flight to Kayseri (Cappadocia). We flew on Turkish Airlines – excellent! Comfortable seats, great food! Lovely service. Our shuttle took us to our hotel, the Kelebek Cave Hotel, where our tour guide was waiting and ready to start our day. We stopped to eat a light breakfast before heading out. The funny thing here is that, not knowing how exactly our day was going to unfold, we ate our first breakfast at 5am at the airport…followed by the breakfast served on the plane…and lastly by the breakfast at our hotel before we left for our daytrip. As another side note – we both LOVE Turkish breakfasts – it was standard more or less around the country – including a variety of fresh breads and homemade jams, hard boiled eggs, a variety of cheeses, local honey, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and some other fruit…
Once we arrived at our hotel, our guide and driver were already there and ready. They gave us a chance to drop our luggage, enjoy our 3rd breakfast and then we were off. Something we noticed quickly with our guides – they never turned down a chance to enjoy a tea or coffee while we had a break. Jeff and I both loved the tea! We started with a drive through the town with our ultimate destination the Rose Valley for a short hike. There is a ton of agriculture tucked in to every nook and cranny – a few apricot trees here, a small vineyard over there. Farmers are granted permission to maintain crops within the boundaries of this protected area, Â but their crops almost blend in to the landscape. It’s amazing. This broad region around Kayseri has a lot of agriculture. After Rose Valley, we drove to Imagination Valley to enjoy the more unusual rocks, followed by a walk through the Goreme Open Air Museum before lunch in Avanos. I had monti (rather like small ravioli) and Jeff had this local special of meat roasted in a clay pot – which was amazing!! Seriously, we’d love to go back to Turkey just for the food.
After lunch we stopped at a clay pot facility where Jeff got to try his hand at the traditional kick-wheel method of making clay pots. Post kick-wheel demonstration and tour, the tour ends in their gift shop with the expectation that you’re going to buy something. Of course…we did. The Turkish tourism industry is very strong and the locals within the industry stick very tight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guides received kick backs from these facilities for bringing their guests through. Anyhow, we bought a few different things here including my prize – a beautiful hand painted horse plate. Once we returned to our hotel, Jeff and I passed out, slept through dinner and woke up the next morning ready for the next adventure.
March 28 – Day 2 of our Cappadocia tours began with a tour of the Kaymakli Underground City – Charlotte would have LOVED this. Super awesome! 🙂 This was followed by a drive out to the Ihlara Valley for a hike along the Melendiz River. We stopped for tea along the river before stopping ultimately in Belisirma for lunch. This is a somewhat touristy location, so of course there’s a tea house for a pit stop about halfway through the hike. There are a lot of OLD churches carved into the rock here within the valley. The locations of some of these are amazing. The structures themselves are amazing as are the ancient frescoes inside. Wow. We did find out that you can hike most of the 20+km valley so maybe another trip.
After the hike, we drove around to the Selime Monastery. Initially, Jeff wasn’t as keen on stopping here, but once we wondered around for a bit, and a few hundred photos later, Jeff was glad we did. 🙂 We spent almost 2 hours wondering all around the monastery. On our way back to the hotel, we detoured by a local wine shop for a tasting. That evening, we went wondering through town near our hotel, had dinner at Didek (a lovely family restaurant) before retiring for the evening.
March 29 –Â Today started early with a 6:40am flight to Izmir. This was one of our relaxed days so we pondered what to do. Our hotel owner was great and offered to drive us somewhere. After some discussions, we chose to visit the beach. He dropped us off at a little snack stand by the beach and gave us a few hours before he would pick us up. Jeff and I walked a good ways down the beach and in the process, saw far too many stray dogs and an estuary. The estuary was great! I followed some turtles around, and was generally enjoying the plants. We had dinner at our hotel guy’s other hotel’s restaurant (he made the reservations for us), enjoyed a great dinner and crashed hard.
March 30 –Â Day 1 of Izmir region – Our guide Bora met us at the hotel in Selcuk with our driver, which turned out to be the same driver that picked us up from the airport. He was awesome and a local, so he knew all sorts of great places to share. Bora was fantastic as well, originally from Istanbul, and was incredibly patient with our crazy requests such as continuing our journey to see an apiary.
This was a fantastic day all around. We noticed that it was market day in Selcuk, so our first detour was to stop so we could explore the market. This was the first of many moments where Bora turned us loose and enjoyed a break before we started peppering him with questions about what we were looking at. We also drug him through the market a bit with us to help translate so we could chat with vendors, especially the guy selling honey! 🙂 Next stop was the House of Mary – where they believe Jesus’ mother Mary was taken by John the Baptist to live out her years. I’m not a religious person, per se, but you can’t help but be in awe when you see places like this. It’s a small home, but the emotion it evokes from people is amazing. It’s real because they believe.
The next stop was Ephesus – the great Roman city, or rather, the ruins of Ephesus. Ephesus was another wow moment – from the huge amphitheater with the view to the sea (or where the docks used to be), the roads, the chariot tracks in the roads (awesome), the mosaic sidewalks, and it just kept going. The Celsius library – gorgeous! Along the roads while going up hill, there were small structures going across the road – I was excited to know exactly what they were before Bora told us. 🙂 Without the wonders of rubber shoes and cleats for our horses, they needed something to help the horses from slipping while moving uphill. 🙂 There are these marble/stone “grips” all up the hill. Very cool! And who knew the Romans decorated even their sidewalks with mosaics? Granted, this was their Eastern capital city, so it was intended to be grand, but still. Some of the private houses were open for an extra fee that were being excavated. A blast all around to walk through Ephesus. Amazing.
This was all before lunch! 🙂 Lunch was a place where we could get çop sis (“chop shish”), a local specialty. This was followed by a trip to Serençi for some more walking up and down hills and shopping. Serençi is an adorable town wedged into a hillside. We enjoyed the relaxing walk around, did some more souvenir shopping, and generally did the touristy thing. On our drive back to the hotel, courtesy of our guide and driver, we found bees! 🙂 So we stopped randomly on the side of the road and walked down into someone’s orchard to see his bees. The farmer himself turned out to be there, so we had a great conversation – with Bora helping us translate. That was funny in and of itself as Bora was explaining that the farmer spoke a regional dialect that Bora was trying to translate into “real” Turkish so he could translate into English for us. 🙂 What fun! Added to this, Bora is a city guy, and here we are talking agriculture and beekeeping at that so I used my handy dandy dictionary to find some of the unusual terms and generally had fun trying to explain our questions to Bora so he’d understand what we were asking, so he could translate this question that would mean more to the farmer than him, and vice versa. He was very game! 🙂 The farmer explained how they make pine honey – fascinating process. They purposefully infect the pine trees so they drip sap, which the bees collect and process into honey. The farmer commented that uninfected pine trees were useless. 🙂 This is a gorgeous part of the country, again with the orchards and crops tucked into every nook and cranny while appearing so incredibly scenic. After this exciting day – it was back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.
March 31 –Â Day 2 of Izmir region – So, we originally booked a 3 day tour with each of the 3 days outlined and scheduled. We threw that plan out the window within an hour of meeting Bora the day before. With Bora’s suggestions and guidance, we rearranged our schedule, threw out some stuff in order to add other items that were more interesting for us. It was great fun.
Today’s adventure started with the Temple of Artemis – one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. There isn’t much left, only a single column reconstructed from the fragments. However, the ponded water at the site makes for great frog ponds! From there, we took a scenic drive through Kusadesi, a beach front resort town in SW Turkey, before continuing on towards Miletus. We drove past Priene, but didn’t stop for the ruins. We did, however, drive through a huge river delta, currently lots of ag fields, and stopped near Priene so our driver could share a local plant that you can eat. Yeah! I think our guide thought we were nuts, eating random plants off the side of the road. Our driver explained that he used to gather these plants for his mom, and showed us how to trim the stem to get to the edible tender part of the stem. Tasted similar to celery but spicier. Then it was time for Miletus – another great ruin. After Miletus, we drove to Didyma to see the Temple of Apollo – that was fascinating.  We had a late lunch at this little restaurant along the shore of Lake Bafa. Our guide made a point of including Lake Bafa on our tour for my sake – he thought I’d enjoy it, and he was right. Lake Bafa is the home to a population of eels, that the Turks take very seriously. No motorized boats are allowed on the lake. 🙂 Lake Bafa has no obvious outlet to the ocean, yet these eels migrate from the lake, presumably through underground caves/tunnels, to the Atlantic Ocean, where they join our American eels for breeding. How cool!? So, back to this restaurant we stopped at – we sat on the lake shore and I had the best fish I’ve ever had while Jeff ate grilled eel. They had this shallow tank where they put the live eel they fished out of the lake. You chose your eel which they then netted out of the tank, then took the eel to the kitchen to be prepared fresh. I had a whole grilled fish, complete with head, that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with. Our guide insisted that the eyes were the best, but I declined. The rest of the fish – superb!
After lunch, we stopped by a rug place to watch silk get spun – super cool – and then to see their completed rugs. They showed us an absolutely beautiful silk rug – all shades of blue and white/silver and some other colors. It was stunning. And pricey – 100,000 lira (about $50,000). Wow! Later that evening, we had dinner at this little place called Mehmet’s – good food.
April 1 – Day 3 of Izmir region – Today was Pamukkale day. 🙂 We had a 3 hour drive each way to get from our hotel to Pamukkale, but it was worth it. Luckily, our driver had a lead foot so he made quick work of the trip. 🙂 Pamukkale was terrific – the remains of their water transport system above ground. We saw the Necropolis and other ruins of the city, including the travertines, which were better than a loufa sponge. We walked all over the travertines, and up to the theater that was in the process of being restored. Afterwards, Jeff swam in Cleopatra’s pool while I had a snack. On our way back to the hotel, our driver took us on a detour for kokorech at a local roadside stand. Once we were at our hotel, we packed our bags and crashed.
April 2 – Istanbul – Our driver picked us up for one last trip as he drove us back to Izmir to catch our flight to Istanbul. Our plane was delayed so we missed the shuttle for our Bosphorus Cruise which we rescheduled to the next day. We spent this whole day walking around Istanbul. We walked to Beoglu, Istaklal Street to see the shopping and sights, Galata Tower, the Archaeology Museum at the Palace, the Palace gardens and more before stopping for dinner  at Sofayla, a lovely restaurant off Istaklal Street. Per our tradition, we stopped at the end of the evening at our favorite pudding/dessert and tea place near Hagia Sophia.
April 3 –Â Istanbul – We had another fantastic Turkish breakfast at our hotel before heading off to kill some time around Sultanahmet before taking our Bosphorus Cruise. We walked through the Blue Mosque and walked through the Spice Market again for last minute items, souvenirs and snacks. Then it was back to our hotel to catch the shuttle for the cruise. Let me tell you – Turks can drive, especially Istanbul-ies. Driving a shuttle/bus of any kind through the city is seriously stressful as a passenger. I can’t imagine being the driver.
Our half day Bosphorus Cruise was lovely. It started near the Rumeli Fortress and continued north to the Black Sea for a break/walk in Poyrazkoy before turning around and returning us to Kapataç. After departing our cruise, we took the metro a few stops in order to walk to Taksim Square. We stopped in a McDonalds for a drink and fry, just to say we experienced it – and Jeff wanted a copy of the menu. 🙂 We tried a local wet burger – tasty yet messy. The highlight of today was dinner. We found this little restaurant called Hayvore – it’s northern Turkish food, more typical of the Black Sea region – and it was AWESOME! The food is very similar to southern cuisine. Think collard greens, grits and such – just without the vast amounts of pork fat you find in southern cuisine. 🙂
April 4 – This was our last day in Istanbul to squeeze in anything else we thought we could.  So, after having breakfast at our hotel, we went to the Military Museum, skipped the detour to eat more kaymak, and had lunch at this awesome meatball place. We gave away our copy of the Istanbul Eats book to this New Zealand couple. We then walked over to the Hagia Sophia mausoleums but skipped the main part due to time and excessive people. We then went back to the hotel to catch our shuttle to the airport for our flight home, via Amsterdam.
My friends Danielle and Richard picked us up from the airport, helped us drop our bags at our hotel, and then took us into the city for dinner. We didn’t have a ton of time, but we really enjoyed our brief visit to Amsterdam and the time spent with friends. We got to meet their dog Tyson in person, so that was cool too! 🙂 Another little terrier. I do love terriers. Danielle had asked us beforehand what we wanted dinner-wise, and we had responded with whatever is “typical” Dutch food. So…that’s what she found for her. It was great! The highlight was the little pancakes for dessert, but everything was delicious. Once back at our hotel we both crashed and then had a slow morning the next day in preparation for our flight to Chicago.
April 5 – We caught a noon flight to Chicago. Once there, we relaxed for a bit before meeting up with Jeff’s brother Shannon and wife Alice for dinner. We went back to Carnivale – the same restaurant where we had the rehearsal dinner. The food was as fantastic as it was before. After a great dinner, we went back to our hotel and slept some more. We had to get our sleep wherever we could. Those long flights and drives are exhausting! We caught a flight out of Chicago the following day back to Pittsburgh where we rescued my Dad from his 2 weeks with Charlotte. 🙂
There’s our trip – condensed version, as best as I can condense it without only using single words. It was a phenomenal trip – one that we would do again in a heart beat.