Thursday, October 6, 2011

After traveling out of town to Sabiha Gokcen Airport to pick up our rental car (which we did after some delay in connecting with the rental agency’s agent), we headed toward Ankara, Turkey’s capital.  Our first order of business was to fill the gas (diesel) tank of our Ford Focus – to the tune of $106; we’re glad we’re not driving an SUV!  The toll road we traveled on was in great shape: wide, with frequent service areas, and very little traffic.  We could have been anywhere in the United States, -- given the right amount of stimulus money!

Our hotel in Ankara is in the old part of the city on a street so tiny that, despite our spiffy Turkish road map software, our GPS had never heard of it.  By aiming for a nearby museum, we got close enough to be thronged by young boys eager to earn some Turkish lira by helping us park and directing us to the hotel, which they advised was unreachable by car.  With access streets under construction, we parked the car at the base of the Old Town and walked uphill, wandering among the narrow streets within the original city walls until we found the hotel, which had once been an Ottoman home.  At check-in, our host asked what kind of car we were driving and said that we could, indeed, drive up.  We should have listened to the kids.  As Tom was navigating the steep, narrow “streets”, gaining traction and making turns was a nightmare; the manual transmission was an added challenge.  The tires were spinning, the rubber was burning, and we were going nowhere – at least not forward!  We kept sliding back and were lucky that, when we finally made contact with a building behind us, a broken tail light was the only damage.  Except to our nerves and, eventually, to our wallet.

 

We explored the winding streets within the Citadel’s outer walls and then climbed up into the inner fortification to take in the views of the sprawling city below.  Young children were playing atop the walls, making paper airplanes and flying them from the walls, while we watched, terrified that one of them would fall from the great height.  I don’t think I’d ever let a child go out to play here.  They were all over the narrow streets, playing behind downhill-sliding cars, climbing onto trucks that were backing out of tight turns, riding tricycles and playing hopscotch in the middle of the cobbled roads, stopping only to chat us up so they could practice their English and “earn” another lira.

We wandered some more through the old town, visited a market in the square just outside the city walls, and had dinner under leafy cover in the courtyard restaurant of another old Ottoman home.  Lovely…