Kars, Türkiye

Tourists come to Kars mostly to see the Ani ruins, but there’s a bunch of stuff to see in Kars itself. (There’s also the Doğu Ekspresi Kars train, a 26-hour train ride from Ankara to Kars, that draws folks here). We had plans to see the Kars Castle, a couple mosques, and the Kars Cheese museum.

First up was rejigging the rest of the Türkiye leg. The plan after Kars was spend a transit night in Erzurum, then drive four hours to see the Sümela Monastery, stay overnight at a nearby hotel and then fly out of Trabzon. However we found out our hotel near Sümela was closed for the season (despite taking our reservation). According to the hotel folks we’ve talked to in Türkiye, there’s been a lot of cancellations due to the geopolitical situation. So maybe our hotel was originally planning to be open but what with all the cancellations, decided to stay closed until busy season.

Rather than try to rebook in the area and run into the same problem, we just booked into the Hilton in Trabzon for two nights. Trabzon is an hour from the Sümela Monastery and is the more common base town for tourists.

We then went out to sightsee in Kars. It’s a pretty dusty town, so I just wore my hiking gear.

The Kars Castle is free to visit and has great views of the city. It was windy and cold at the top, so we took our pics and headed back down.

We checked out the 14th century Merkez Kümbet mosque (just the outside), and the Taş Köprü (stone bridge) near the castle.

Next we walked ten minutes up Atatürk Cd to Faikbey Cd, the Bloor/Yonge of Kars. Another ten minutes down Faikbey Cd brought us to the Kars Cheese museum. (The marketing folks in Kars have done a great job of prepending the city name to everything).

We thought it was just going to be like a chocolate museum, where it’s more about selling product. But the museum was actually pretty interesting, showing how the various types of Kars cheeses are made. We spent over an hour going through it.

We walked back and had lunch at a random döner place which was okay. Had a coffee and dessert at the busy restaurant across the street from our hotel.

We were feeling lazy and dust-clogged, so just showered and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon. I also had some admin stuff to do. We got ourselves organized for the drive tomorrow. The route will take us north to the Black Sea and then hug the coast until Trabzon. It’s faster than going via Erzurum, plus we’ll get to see new scenery.

Kars, Türkiye

Ani ruins day! One of the highlights I was looking forward to on this trip was the Ani ruins. These are abandoned churches and other structures in the east of end of Türkiye, right on the border of Armenia. Back in its heyday in the 11th century, Ani was a stop along the silk route, and was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The ruins remained off the radar until more recently when they became a UNESCO World Heritage site. Ani is a bit out of the way, and most folks don’t bother making the trek out here. Just the kind of place we like :)

We had breakfast at the hotel, the usual large Turkish breakfast. The cheeses were good, we really liked the Kars Mould Cecil, a mouldy stringy cheese. (Ani is known for its varieties of cheeses).

Then we had to pick up our car rental that we missed yesterday with the flight disruption. We took a taxi to the airport, found the Avis counter, and filled out the paperwork. They had to cancel our reservation and book a new one, which was more expensive as we weren’t booking in advance. Oh well, at least we had our car.

It was a stick shift Fiat Egea, a basic mid-size. We had been upgraded on the previous rental and had got used to the luxury. The Egea felt pretty basic.

I set up my phone mount (no CarPlay here) and we set course for Ani, about 45 minutes away.

We arrived just before noon. There were only five other cars in the parking lot, cool. We were bundled up for the cold (base layer pants, both jackets, toques, scarf, gloves). It was about 3C and pretty windy.

Entrance is through the gates of the old city walls, which are pretty impressive on their own. It reminded us of the old city walls in the Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan.

The ruins are accessed by a broad path, so it’s easy to get around. You can actually see most of the ruins from the entrance, dotting the steppe.

We started clockwise at the Church of the Redeemer. Only half of the dome remains, the rest having crumbled away over time. It’s now supported by shoring, and done in a way that allows pics from one side without any shoring visible.

Next up was my favourite, Tigran Honentz. It’s perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Akhurian River, which is also the border between Türkiye and Armenia. The church is in amazing shape, considering it was built in 1215. I took pics of the exterior from all angles. The inside is just as impressive, with paintings still adorning the walls.

The famous Cathedral was next. We saw it featured in artwork in museums in Armenia. It’s fully under shoring and scaffolding, inside and out. You can see some of the walls buckling, so it’s good that it is being worked on. Not so good for pics though :( Also, the fallen cupola which was in the artwork is now part of the restoration. I had hoped they would have left that as-is, similar to the fallen head at Abu Simbel.

Next we walked up to and around the citadel. There’s a path that leads up to the top, where there’s cool views of the entire site. There’s also views of Kiz Kalesi from the backside of the citadel. It’s the church that sits atop a bend in the river.

There were a handful more ruins along the circuit back to the entrance which were impressive too.

Overall it’s one of the cooler places I’ve seen, I think partially cause of the location on the steppe, the sense of being really remote, and that there was hardly anyone else there. We had every monument to ourselves, and only saw other tourists in the distance. We also had a little dog that kept us company the whole time. It reminded us of one of the dogs that followed us on our trek in Bhutan.

Our gear held up to the cold and biting wind, but after 2.5 hours we were starting to get cold. We got back to the car and drove back to Kars.

We quickly changed from our multiple base layers to city wear, and went out for lunch. It was getting on 3pm, so decided to have a big lunch and skip dinner.

Kars is known for its food. It has a few dishes that are named after the town, like Kars butter and Kars gravyer cheese (just like in Okinawa). In particular I wanted to try Kars goose with bulgur pilaf, and the local version of piti.

We ended up at 1855 Gazi restaurant, which was like stepping back in time into a grand old restaurant, with large wingback chairs and fancy tableware.

We ordered both the goose dish and piti to share. We started with bread, olives, and three mezes, which were excellent.

Then the main courses. The goose is salted and cooked in a tandoor oven, then shredded and served with bulgur, yoghurt and pickled vegetables. Piti is lamb shank cooked with chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers and saffron. It’s then constructed at the table - a thin flatbread is torn into pieces, over which the lamb is shredded and the stew poured. Both were excellent. We got a tea to finish, served with a small cookie.

We were quite full as we walked back home. That was it for our day, a very successful touristing day. Did some laundry, looked through my hundreds of pics of Ani ruins, and updated my blog.

Kars, Türkiye

We had a long transit day to go 1,700 km across the country, from Selçuk in the west to Kars in the east.

We started at 5am at our hotel in Selçuk. We packed up and carried our suitcases down three flights of stairs as quietly as we could.

Dawn was just breaking as we drove to Izmir Airport, about 45 minutes from the hotel. I was cutting it close with gas - it was about 60km to the airport, and the car said we had 80km of gas. I was just hoping the car’s estimate was accurate.

We made it to the airport and filled up the tank. The car rental return location was luckily one of the few signs in English, so we were able to find it without u-turns. The Sixt folks were very efficient going through their checklist.

It wasn’t very busy at departures. We were able to check our carry-on suitcase (so we wouldn’t have to compete for overhead space) but had to remove 3kg to get under the weight limit. So I now had a smaller backpack as carry-on.

Our hotel had prepared breakfast bags to go. We got cappuccinos at the airport and ate our breakfast, which was one of the better bagged ones we’ve had.

We tried out one of the automated massage chairs while waiting, as it was only 1.50 CAD for five minutes. I think it made us feel worse lol.

The flight to Istanbul was short, only 45 minutes. We actually departed about 10 minutes early! We’ve been impressed with all our Turkish Airline flights.

We had a four hour layover in IST. Found some seats with a plug-in so we could keep our phones charged. I caught up in my blog.

We boarded on schedule for the flight to Kars. There weren’t many tourists; just a small group from Korea and another couple. Kars (and all of eastern Türkiye) is not on the usual tourist trail.

The flight went well until the approach to Kars. We circled a couple times (I was watching the flight tracker), which seemed odd cause Kars is not busy with air traffic so it wasn’t like we were waiting for a landing slot.

Then the pilot announced that due to weather conditions in Kars, we were being rerouted to Erzurum. I’ve heard of flights being rerouted midair but it’s the first time it’s happened to Heather or me. Erzurum is about a three-hour drive west of Kars. We actually have a transit stop planned for Erzurum on the way back.

We landed at Erzurum and deplaned. There was a bit of confusion. Heather found a couple other English-speaking tourists (the aforementioned couple and one of the Korean tourists), no one really knew what was next.

Then I got a text from Turkish Airlines “… vehicles for the planned ground transfer to KARS (KSY) Airport will depart in front of the airport exit … “. Somehow very quickly, the airline had arranged for two buses to transport us all to Kars that evening!

There was a bit more confusion as to whether we had to claim our luggage in Erzurum (we did). Heather and I managed to get two seats on the bus across the aisle from each other. And then we were off!

We stopped about an hour outside of Erzurum for a 30 minutes at a roadside restaurant. I had some really good beef stew with rice, and then we rushed back on the bus. I had taken a picture of the license plate so we knew which bus was ours, a lesson I learnt the hard way while backpacking in Central America in my 20s.

The scenery along the way was amazing, mountains and valleys and snow-covered forests. The road itself was clear, just a bit wet. Kars is at 1750m, and the forecast was low of -5C, and high of 4C while we were here. There was a big storm this evening, which caused the flight disruption, but the weather had cleared up by the time we arrived in Kars around 7pm. This is the coldest place we’ll be visiting on this trip.

The buses dropped us off at Kars airport, which was closed. I guess we weren’t getting our rental car this evening, oh well. We bundled into a shared minibus to get into town, 100 TRY each (about 3 CAD).

We were dropped off in front of our hotel. We quickly checked in (the reception commented that we looked very tired), and got to our room. We were pretty beat from the car-plane-plane-bus-minibus adventure to get here. Had a shower and fell asleep.

Selçuk, Türkiye

We had a down day in Selçuk, with nothing planned. We thought about driving back to Kuşadasi to walk along the boardwalk, but there was a 1,800 passenger cruise ship in port from 7am-1pm, and in the afternoon we wanted to pack up for our flight. So instead we just explored a bit more of Selçuk.

İsa Bey Mosque was almost finished with their restorations, but it’s not yet open, so we couldn’t visit :(

We walked across Atatürk Cd, sort of a dividing line between the tourist and local parts of town. There we checked out the remains of the Roman viaduct, beside the main plaza. Also near the plaza was a cool art installation, which creates a shadow of Atatürk when the sun is at a particular angle once a year. (Probably twice, but the sign only had one date).

That covered off the remaining highlights of Selçuk listed in the Lonely Planet. We wandered down the road a bit, and saw what looked to be a street market. Indeed it was a market, and a really extensive one at that! Later I looked it up, it’s the Saturday Market in Selçuk. The farmers’ market part of it was amazing, with really good produce on display. We were offered and tried a new fruit to us, a type of almond, before it becomes a nut. We walked around for almost an hour.

It was getting close to lunch, and we saw a rotisserie chicken place in the market that looked good. We then came to the fish market section, and instead decided to have fish while we were still on the coast. I had battered anchovies, and Heather tried the calamari. Both were excellent. We were able to ask for two teas in Turkish, iki çay.

The sky was clouding over, so we just called it a day after lunch. Plus I had to look through all my pics from the past few days, now that I had my phone back. (We’d been on the go since I picked it up from the repair shop yesterday).

We had dinner at Kybele Gastro restaurant, next door to the hotel. They had live music and it was packed, most of them smoking. It’s been a while since we’ve been in a restaurant with smoking inside. The food was good, and the band was good too, playing traditional Turkish music. Everyone else was in a partying mood but we called it an early night as we had flight in the morning.

Selçuk, Türkiye

We had a relaxing breakfast this morning, the first time in a week that we weren’t on a schedule.

I asked if I could get a pot of tea, and they gave me the Turkish-style teapot. It’s two teapots stacked, the bottom one is boiling water, and the top one very strongly brewed tea. When Turkish tea is served, you pour from both teapots, about a 50-50 mix, depending on how strong you want your tea.

After breakfast, we went out to explore Selçuk. It’s a compact walkable town, with the highlights within a 10-minute radius of the hotel.

First up was the Basilica of Saint John and Ayasuluk Citadel, a combined archaeological site and ticket. Entrance is through the giant 6th century Gate of Persecution, sounding like something out of Princess Bride. They’re actually named after a relief on the door that was thought to be about the persecution of early Christians, but are really from Greek mythology. The gate was under restoration, although the entrance was still usable.

It turns out there’s way more history in Selçuk than just Ephesus. The ‘Saint John’ was John the Apostle, and it’s said that he is buried here. The basilica is now partially restored ruins, but at the time (500 AD) was one of the largest and holiest basilicas in the world.

We continued on to the Ayasuluk Citadel. It’s been restored, and is quite photogenic.

On the grounds was a scale model of the area around Selçuk. In 500 AD, Ephesus Ancient City, the Basilica of St John, and the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), all existed within a half hour walk! The citadel is up high on a hill, but it’s not possible to see Ephesus from the citadel grounds because another hill blocks the view.

Next we checked out the Ephesus Museum. It’s worth a visit. We were glad we had paid for the extra ticket to enter the Terraces at Ephesus yesterday, as it gave more context to some of the artefacts in the museum. The last couple rooms are the best, with large marble statues of gods and the ruling class.

We had lunch at a restaurant near our hotel. We had pre-ordered dinner at our hotel tonight, so didn’t want anything big for lunch. We split a small pizza and salad.

Next we walked over to the Temple of Artemis. Only one column remains; the rest was used as material to construct other buildings in the area, back in the ancient day. We have a great view of the Temple of Artemis from our room, which is pretty cool. It’s the 2nd Wonder of the Ancient World we’ve seen on this trip, we earlier saw the Great Pyramid of Giza. Anyways, it’s not much to look at today, just a pillar with a stork’s nest on top, but the history is cool.

We had a coffee on the way back to the hotel.

We relaxed back at the hotel, while waiting for the iPhone repair folks to text us. At 3pm I sent them a reminder, and they replied saying my phone would be ready within an hour.

We drove back to Kuşadasi and parked at the same Otopark. My phone wasn’t ready yet, so they offered us a coffee while we waited. We sat out on the sidewalk at a small table and sipped our coffee, feeling like locals. About ten minutes later, my phone was ready, good as new! (I don’t think they started working on it until we got there, but whatever).

Heather had the idea to check out the Mavi store to see if they had my jeans. It’s hard to find my favourite style & size in Canada, and the jeans are manufactured here in Türkiye. There was a Mavi store about a ten minute walk along the waterfront, so we headed over.

Kuşadasi has a beautiful boardwalk along the beach. There were no cruise ships in port, so it was just locals out enjoying the beautiful weather.

We found the Mavi store. I was like a kid in a candy store, just like when we found the Onitsuka Tiger store in Taipei. I bought a couple pairs of jeans, Heather got a couple items too. How we’ll actually get this all home is a problem for another day.

We walked back to the Otopark and drove back to our hotel. We rushed to shower and be ready for our dinner at 7:30pm.

Our hotel does dinner on request. It’s the same chef that makes breakfast, we were looking forward to it. We started with some mezes: artichokes, stuffed tomatoes, and a couple tzatzikis, with freshly-made pitas. The main was a spiced beef dish. It was all excellent. For dessert, the chef had made baklava. Mmm good. After we relaxed on our balcony, it was a beautiful evening. It was the weekend and there was live music from a neighbouring restaurant. They were playing traditional Turkish music, which was cool to hear.

Selçuk, Türkiye

We were up early for breakfast, in order to get to Ephesus Ancient City when the gates opened at 8:30am.

It sounded like it was raining as we woke up, and we debated waiting until tomorrow to see the ruins (we’re here in Selçuk for four nights). The forecast said the rain was done for the day (actually, our phones said it wasn’t even raining now), so we decided to continue with the plan to see Ephesus today.

Our hotel kindly arranged for an early breakfast for us. It was a large Turkish breakfast that we rushed through. It was great, and they also had excellent coffee and tea.

We got ourselves together for the ruins. Just as we were leaving, I dropped my iPhone and it fell down the middle of the stairwell, and landed four stories below on the marble floor :( The screen was between cracked and shattered, but still usable. We carried on to Ephesus, and I figured I’d sort out the screen issue after.

Last night I had read up a bit on how to visit Ephesus. The ruins are neatly spread along Curetes Way, a long marble street, which runs north-south. There’s a parking lot on either end. There’s a lot of opinions on the web as to which parking lot is better. We decided on the north one; but after visiting, I really don’t think it makes a difference. The Library of Celsus, the iconic ruin of Ephesus, is about midway between the two parking lots. Some websites suggest it’s better to park at the south / upper lot, cause then it’s a downhill walk, but the change in elevation is only 10m. One advantage of the south / upper lot is that you can see the Library of Celsus in the distance as you walk down Curetes Way. From the north / lower lot you turn around a corner and it’s right there. The Lonely Planet suggests getting a taxi to drive you from one gate back to the other to pick up your car, rather than walk the 1.3km. I honestly don’t know why you would do that, as it would probably take longer than walking, and it’s cool to see it in both directions.

It was just a seven minute drive from our hotel to the north / lower parking lot. There was plenty of parking at 8:40am. We bought our 40 EUR tickets. We rushed to get our pics of the Celsus Library, the iconic monument of Ephesus, before more tourists showed up. There was just an influencer couple, going through multiple takes of their content. It was overcast, which provided nice diffused lighting for our pics.

That completed, we continued down Curetes Way. There were some tour groups starting to trickle in, not a constant flow, so it was easy to see stuff in between groups. Curetes Way is only a couple chariots wide, so when a group goes through they clog up the entire width.

Next we called into the Terrace Houses of Ephesus. It’s a separate ticket, 15 EUR, and well worth it. It’s the former homes of the Ephesus elite, and it’s cool to see the restored frescoes and marble-lined walls and floor mosaics. We spent about 30 minutes going through the houses.

Back on Curetes Way, other highlights we saw included the Temple of Hadrian, Hercules Gates and the 1,400 seat Odeon. The other main attraction at Ephesus, the 25,000 seat Great Theatre, was under renovations and not accessible.

We also went to see the Ephesus Experience Museum, a 20-minute audiovisual show. It’s worth skipping if you’re short of time.

Overall we liked Ephesus, we both really liked the Celsus Library and the Terraced Houses. I liked Ephesus equally to Sagalassos Ancient City.

There was an iPhone repair shop in the port town of Kuşadasi, about a 25 minute drive. It was in the heart of the busy centre, with no parking available. Heather spotted a sign for an Otopark (car park), and we squeezed into an underground parking spot for 200 TRY (about 7 CAD).

We walked back to the iPhone repair shop. The tech person looked like a stereotypical techie. If I saw him and had to guess his occupation, I would guess computer repairs. He gave my phone a quick look, asked if we wanted Apple parts, gave us a quote and said we could get it back tomorrow. Yay! We were in town for two more days so this worked out fine.

We turned off airplane mode on Heather’s phone and exchanged WhatsApp details with the store. We then looked around for lunch. Stumbled across the Thursday market, with produce from surrounding villages. Had a gözleme and ayran at a local restaurant. We had a half day with our parking, so weren’t in a rush.

We extracted our car from the tight parking lot and drove back to our hotel in Selçuk. We cleaned up, dropped off some laundry with the hotel, and headed out for dinner. We chose a place based on Google Maps, it was a bit of dud. Even their chai at the end of the meal was served lukewarm, not even hot enough to dissolve my sugar cube :(

Selçuk, Türkiye

Another day, another Ancient City. (We have another one tomorrow too).

It’s a four drive from Burdur to Selçuk. Aphrodisias Ancient City is at the midpoint, so made a natural stop. Pamukkale and its famous blue travertine pools is also midway, although separated from Aphrodisias by the Denizli mountains, so we had to choose between them.

Years or decades ago it would have been an easy decision to see Pamukkale. However overtourism and strains on the water supply have degraded the site. So we decided to skip Pamukkale and see Aphrodisias instead.

It was a boring drive from Burdur to Aphrodisias, with long stretches of straight roads. We did see several marble quarries, with large blocks of marble cut out for shipping.

We arrived at the site around 12:30, hoping to have a light lunch. However their snack bar just had tea and coffee and packaged snacks :( So we made do with a cappuccino and a Snickers.

There were three buses in the parking lot when we arrived, and they were all just leaving. Presumably the tours knew that there was no food to be had onsite, and were headed out elsewhere for lunch. The bonus was that we had the site mostly to ourselves.

Aphrodisias is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is well-marked and well-maintained, as with most UNESCO sites. (The two sites we saw yesterday, Termessos and Sagalassos, are not World Heritage sites, although both are on the Tentative List).

The ticket booth folks gave us a photocopied map of Aphrodisias. The major attractions are laid out in a circuit, which we followed. It was a beautiful day, about 18C with blue skies.

It took us about 90 minutes to see, ending with yet another theatre. I had hoped that there would be good pics of the rest of the site from the top of the theatre, but big trees blocked the view of all the major ruins :(

We had missed Aphrodisias stadium during the circuit. It’s actually off a tangent path, and wasn’t marked on the photocopied map. I could see this being a common oversight. We doubled back to check it out, as we had already missed the stadium at Perge, and plus the one here at Aphrodisias is supposedly the best preserved stadium of the Ancient World.

The Ancient World in archeology refers to the period from about 3000 BC to the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. We had just seen the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, so I’m not sure how Aphrodisias stadium is considered the best preserved. Citation needed!

Nevertheless, the stadium at Aphrodisias is pretty impressive, one of the highlights of the site. The other highlight for us were the hundreds of marble sarcophagi around the museum. Unfortunately the museum itself was closed for renovations, the Lonely Planet said it’s quite good.

We got back on the road for the two hour drive to Selçuk. This was a much more interesting drive, through the mountains back down to sea level.

Our hotel was expecting us as we arrived. We checked in and carried our luggage up the 3rd floor. We cleaned up and headed out for dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel. It had a beautiful view of the setting sun. We had a sundowner on their patio and the went inside for dinner. We each had a lentil soup and split a leg of lamb. It was mmm good.

Burdur, Türkiye

We were on the road again today, destination Burdur, with a couple ruins to see along the way. We had breakfast at a different bakery, this one closer to our hotel. It was popular, with people lining up out the door to get their freshly-baked simits to go.

We placed our breakfast order, and found an open table. The simits were excellent, as well as a couple pastries Heather picked out to try. Their menu signboard had kahveli, (with coffee), so we asked for a Turkish coffee too.

Got back to the hotel, packed up the car, and started on our way to Termessos Ancient City. It was only an hour away, and most of the drive was escaping the urban sprawl of Antalya.

We exited the highway to the ruins, and paid our entrance fees. It was then a 9.5km drive 1000m uphill to the ruins. This was a fun drive, with switchbacks all the way up. There’s no guardrail, just a steep drop off the edge of the road.

Termessos is still in an unrestored state, with not much in terms of signage. It reminded us of Jordan where there’s too many archaeological sites and not enough archaeologists and/or funding. We just wanted to see the theatre sitting at the top of the hill. The rest of the ancient city is mostly piles of rubble covered in undergrowth, Lara Croft Tomb Raider style.

There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot when we arrived, which boded well. We tried to orient ourselves based on the rough map in the parking lot, it’s not obvious which way to go. (It’s the path well-taken, with the sign that says ‘ruins’).

It’s a steep climb up, passing by the rest of the unrestored ruins. After about 45 minutes we reached the top, and had our first view of the theatre. It’s a pretty cool setting. There was just a group of four other tourists, who were good for scale.

We took our pics and then headed back down to the car. We were passed by a few cars in the opposite direction on our drive down, it was a tight squeeze.

We had a two hour drive ahead of us to get to Sagalassos Ancient City. We stopped for lunch at a random roadside place that had a few cars parked out front. With some help from Google Translate, we ordered a meat and cheese pide (Turkish pizza), and two ayrans (yoghurt drinks). We ended up with two pides, and overate a bit. It was tasty though!

The drive to Sagalassos took us past fruit orchards, cow and sheep pastures, and other small farms. It was a nice snapshot of rural Türkiye. We actually drove through a small farming community on the approach to Sagalassos, with groups of women sipping tea at tables spilling onto the road.

Sagalassos is also at the top of a hill, at around 1700m. We needed a boost so had a Turkish coffee before exploring the ruins.

Sagalassos is amazing, my favourite site so far. Most of the places we had to ourselves. I posted a video of the Antonine Nymphaeum. (Like and subscribe!) The theatre is also really cool, I liked it as much as the one at Termessos. Overall, Sagalassos is one of my favourite Roman Ruins. Baalbek and Jerash are still the top two; this would be the best of the next tier. I thought we might be tired of Ancient Cities at this point, but Sagalassos was impressive.

It was just a 40 minute drive to our hotel in Burdur, a decidedly non-touristy city. The hotel was right in the busy centre. I double-parked in front to unload our luggage, while Heather sorted out where the parking lot was. She then checked us in while I drove around to the parking lot. I got thrown off cause the access is by a road with a Do Not Enter sign, and finally looped around to the front of the hotel again. Turns out the sign would have been better read as Do Not Enter Unless You’re Going To The Hotel Parking Lot. Oh well.

The hotel was a very functional business hotel, with the best rainhead shower we’ve had on the trip. Also the best bathroom lighting.

The hotel folks had given Heather a recommendation for dinner. It was about 500m down the main street. They were super friendly at the restaurant. We both ordered the Burdur şiş (shish), it was tasty, served on really good pitas. It was very busy with locals, who set some speed records for eating. Heather and I are not the faster eaters in the world, but the other tables must turned over three times in the time we were there. They were all seriously quick eaters.

Got back to the hotel and called it a night. Burdur looked like a nice city with a vibe, it’s too bad it was just a transit stop for us.

Antalya, Türkiye

There were a lot of factors that went into the itinerary: public holidays, cruise ship timetables, religious events, seasonal weather, balancing urban / ruins / nature activities. Also, we planned to be in a city with an Aveda salon every 4-5 weeks.

Heather had an appointment with a colourist at 11am, and we had laundry to do as well. Another admin day.

It’s been a challenge to find self-serve laundromats in Türkiye. It’s generally always full service here including ironing and folding. We prefer doing laundry ourselves to avoid any miscommunication (cold wash, no dryer, no ironing), so we were in a bind.

Heather had found a laundromat that, based on reviews, catered to foreigners with our fickle laundry requests. The plan was to drop off the laundry at 9am when they opened, have breakfast nearby, pick up the damp clothes, hang them to dry at the hotel, and then take a taxi to Heather’s colour appt. Easy peasy.

Our plan ran amok before it even began. The laundry people were stuck in traffic (we had WhatsApp’d with them). So we found a nice bakery nearby, had a simit with cream cheese and a cappuccino (both very good), with a bag of dirty laundry on an extra seat.

Back to the laundromat, which was now open. The very helpful and organized laundromat person said they could line-dry our clothes, and we could pick them up this evening, although they might still be damp. That was cool with us, so we had our plan B.

Now we had lots of time. We decided to walk over to the Aveda salon, as it was a beautiful day, and it was just a 45 minutes away.

We had our first glimpse of the ocean in a while (or at least a sea) as we walked along Konyaalti Cd. We were walking faster than Google Maps estimates, and had about ten minutes to kill before Heather’s appt. So we grabbed a Turkish tea (chai) nearby, and got to the salon at 9:59.

The folks at the salon were really friendly. Heather got whisked away for her colouring, and they showed me to the patio and offered me a drink. I had another chai, and used the time to catch up in my blog and search for a lunch restaurant.

Heather came out with her new do. We dropped into the Carrefour near the salon to stock up on some toiletries. (Carrefour has a good selection of western brands).

Then we walked down the street to a grill place I had found. Mostly we were there for the amazing view. Antalya sits on the Gulf of Antalya, with snow-capped mountains surrounding the city. We took our seats on the patio (in the shade), and enjoyed the view and had some steak and lamb.

After lunch we continued walking back towards the hotel. Stopped in at a chocolatier for a coffee and some bonbons. The hit by far was the chocolate-covered orange peel that they offered to us for free while we were ordering. We should have just ordered more of those!

I had now had a tea or coffee at five different places today, and it was only 2pm. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

We relaxed back at the hotel. The laundromat folks texted around 5pm that our clothes were ready. Along the way we did some sightseeing, taking some pics of Hadrian’s Gate. The only other place I wanted to visit in Antalya was its famous museum, but it’s closed for major renovations.

Our clothes were indeed still the same size, phew. We didn’t have motivation for much else today. Plus I had to read up on the two ruins we were going to visit tomorrow, so that we didn’t have a repeat of the Perge theatre incident.

Later I went for a quick bite for dinner (Heather was still full from her lamb skewers at lunch). Walked around and came across Çıtır Balık, which specialized in fish sandwiches. It’s a complicated process to eat there. First you place your order and pay. The cashier gives your name to the host. When a table opens up, the host calls your name to be seated. Then you wait until the kitchen calls your name when your food is ready. Finally, you use the bowl provided with the sandwich at the self-serve salad bar. I had an amazing battered anchovy sandwich. Yummy.

That was it for our Antalya experience. It was a bit of a shock seeing so many tourists here, but we could definitely see why folks are attracted to Antalya.

Antalya, Türkiye

We had a strict schedule today in order to see a couple Roman ruins on our way from Konya to Ankara.

We had another large breakfast. I was starting to get out-large-breakfast’d at this point. Checked out, packed up the car, and were on the road by 10am, right on schedule.

First was a three hour drive to Aspendos Theatre through the mountains (literally). I don’t know our maximum elevation, but both of us had popping ears. Towards the two-hour mark, we went through the 5km long Demirkapı Tunnel. I looked up the route afterwards, and this stretch of the D687 highway is popular with motorcyclists. It’s a very scenic road, and fun to drive.

The weather completely changed after we exited the tunnel. On the mountainous Konya side, it was about 9C, cloudy and raining on-and-off. On the Antalya side, it was a warm 18C, with Mediterranean air and the sun shining.

Both the ruins on our list were just off the D400 highway. First up was Aspendos Theatre. Google took us to a parking lot just by the entrance gates. We looked around for a parking attendant, but apparently it was free parking. Not sure how that happened but we didn’t complain.

Bought our Aspendos tickets, cash only cause their credit card system was down, and entered.

From the ticket booth, there’s a path right into the theatre, at stage level. It’s pretty impressive from the stage, looking up at 7,000 or so limestone seats. We were also lucky that there was only a handful of other tourists there when we arrived. We walked up to the top level for a different vantage point. A couple busloads arrived shortly after, but it still didn’t feel crowded. According to the internet, Aspendos is the best preserved Roman theatre of the ancient world. It’s pretty cool, and I'd say the best of the Roman theatres we’ve seen.

There’s more to Aspendos than just the theatre, but that’s the main attraction. We carried on, stopping for lunch at a family-run roadside place just outside the ruins. They only did gözleme, a Turkish flatbread stuffed with spinach and feta, and they did it well. The gözleme was cooked to order, with older women rolling out the dough, folding in spinach and feta, which the men then cooked it on a metal dome sitting over a fire. We split one gözleme and had a ayran each. The restaurateur seemed happy that we knew what ayran was. It was a nice little spot for lunch, and quick too.

The next Roman ruin, Perge Ancient City, was just another 20 minutes down the D400. This was a little more chaotic at the entrance. First we paid our parking fee (only 30 TRY, about 1 CAD). Then someone else came to our car and collected our park entrance fees (about 25 CAD each).

Once you get past the parking gate and have paid both the parking fee and the entrance fee, there’s no further ‘entrance’. The park isn’t clearly marked, so we weren’t sure where we were until we found signage beside a couple ruins and matched them up with a map of the park.

Now that we knew where we were, we walked back to the Roman Gates and began our tour. The highlights for me were the Hellenistic City Gate with its two huge towers, and the colonnaded streets. It’s a very sprawled set of ruins, it took us about 90 minutes to wander around. Most of the bus tours had already all left for the day (the park closes at 5pm), so we had the site pretty much to ourselves.

Later, I realized we had missed the Perge theatre, which is across the road from the parking entrance. It’s included in the same ticket. We’ll be seeing more theatres later on so it’s not the end of the world.

It was only a 20 minute drive to our hotel in Antalya, just outside the old city walls. The last part was down a narrow alley, squeezing past families sitting on their doorsteps. I WhatsApp’d the hotel (more like an Airbnb) and they came over to check us in, and lowered the chain so we could park in the empty lot across the laneway.

We hauled our suitcases and backpacks up the stairs to our room. We opted for a functional place in Antalya, cause the boutique places in the historic center are also in clubland central.

We showered and then went out for dinner. We’re back on the coast, so tried a fish place. Everything in the historic center is overpriced, although the fish was fresh and cooked perfectly.

We walked back to our hotel through the winding streets. The historic centre here was similar to the hip areas in Athens or Tbilisi. They’re all party towns full of character, hip bars & restaurants, and winding cobblestone alleys. In our younger years we would have just enjoyed the party :)

Konya, Türkiye

Our colds seemed to have regressed, so we took it slow this morning. We didn’t have much planned in any case; just a visit to the Tile Museum, and then the Sema ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes at 7pm. (I’m writing this a couple days later, and we’re feeling much better today).

We finally got on our way just before noon. The walk to the Tile Museum took us through Bedesten Market, which is always interesting.

We then walked up and through Alaaddin Hill Park, and past the mosque on the top. We didn’t step inside as we’re getting a bit out-mosque’d, similar to how we got out-churched in Rome.

The location of the Tile Museum on Google Maps was a large construction site. There were recent photos of inside the museum posted by others, so we figured it was just pinned incorrectly. Sure enough, the museum was actually in the restored Karatay Medresesi (a madrasa is an Islamic school, we’ve seen museums housed in former madrasas in other countries such as Uzbekistan).

The Tile Museum is a small-ish museum but still interesting.

We walked back through Bedesten market and had a tea and pastry filled with tahin. Tahin is made from toasted sesame seeds (as opposed to tahini which is from raw seeds), which I found similar to peanut butter. It was a very busy çay (chai, aka tea) place.

After we wandered around the market a bit more and took lots of pics. We really liked the market here. Konya is generally not part of a Turkey vacation itinerary, so it’s just a working market, not focused on tourist items. In fact, outside of the streets surrounding the Mevlana Museum, we didn’t see any souvenir stores.

We got back to the hotel around 2pm and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

Around 5:45pm we left to walk over to the Mevlana Cultural Centre. As soon as we stepped outside, it started to rain, so we went back and grabbed our umbrellas.

We arrived at the centre just after 6pm, just as the security person had suggested yesterday. On the approach, it didn’t seem very active at all, and I was wondering if there had been some mix up in communications. It turned out we were just super early. Maybe the security person has said doors open at 6pm? Not that we should arrive at 6pm?

We went through security, more like a self-serve security, as there was no-one watching the xray of our bags, nor the metal detector we walked through.

We still weren’t sure we were in the right place though, as we couldn’t see any area large enough to host the ceremony, just lots of craft stalls. We asked around, and were told to go upstairs. There we finally found a ticket booth! We paid our 300 TRY each (about 10 CAD), Turkish lira cash only, and entered.

The ceremony is held in a large bowl theatre, seating about 2,500. We were the first to arrive so had our choice of seats. We went back to the ticket people for their recommendation on seating. We then picked out our seats, between posts D and E, facing the musicians, and about half way up. I guess the choice depends on whether you’re there for religious reasons, or as a tourist. We wanted higher up to get pics of the cloaks whirling.

We waited about an hour, watching other tourists arrive and go through the same decision process as us. Mostly these were tourists who had also done their research, otherwise they would have ended up at the tourist performance promoted by the hotels. There were a couple of bus tours, which surprised me as you can’t get tickets in advance, and usually large packaged tours prefer the certainty of advance tickets.

Anyways it wasn’t crowded at all, maybe 300 attendees. There was no one in front of us in the next two rows, so we had a great view.

The ceremony started right at 7pm. There’s seven parts to the Sema ceremony, we had read up previously so knew what to expect.

It was very cool to see. Some parts did drag on, I had to remember that it was a religious ceremony and not a performance. (It would be like going to a Catholic mass and thinking the Nicene Creed could be shortened).

The whirling part is part five, and generally what you see if you attend a performance for tourists. The other parts, some dance-like movements, some poetry reading, some musical, were all really interesting to see and hear. My favourites were part five (the whirling) and also part four (a circular walk where the dervishes greet each other).

It took just over an hour to complete. We walked back home (it had stopped raining by now), and just ate at the hotel. Overall, attending the Sema ceremony was a really cool experience, I’m glad we were able to be here on a Saturday.

Konya, Türkiye

One of reasons we came to Konya was to see the Whirling Dervishes. It’s been popularized with tourist performances in many cities in Türkiye. The Whirling Dervishes are actually an order of Sufi, a religious practice within Islam. The whirling is a form of meditation. The Whirling Dervishes were founded by the mystic poet Rumi in Konya. The Mevlana Museum that our room overlooks contains the tomb of Rumi, aka Mevlana.

There’s two different performances of the Whirling Dervishes in Konya. One is a tourist one every day at 8pm, and the other is the actual religious ceremony on Saturdays. We wanted to see the real one, after all we had planned to be in Konya on a Saturday specifically to see it. It’s very difficult to find info on the real one on the web, so we figured we’d walk down to the Mevlana Cultural Centre (where the performance is held) and find out.

First things first. Breakfast was excellent at our hotel, a big Turkish spread, including freshly-squeezed orange juice.

We then checked out the Mevlana Museum and tomb of Mevlana, across the road from our hotel. It gets lots of tour groups, mostly Turkish. We had to put on protective booties (plastic bags) over our shoes before we entered. The rooms are very ornate. We had to wait for our turn to take a pic of the tomb.

There’s a structure surrounding the square with each room giving a snippet of Sufism and the Whirling Dervishes. The rooms were originally dorm-like rooms for the dervishes, each about 10’ x 10’, with a small doorway facing the square. There’s good English descriptions. It does get crowded when a tour group files through. I managed to stay in the lull between two groups, so I wasn’t swarmed.

Then we walked down to the Mevlana Cultural Centre. The very helpful security person explained the performance was Saturday at 7pm, lasts about an hour, and we should line up at 6pm. You can’t buy tickets in advance, it’s first-come-first-served at the door.

That sorted out, we walked back towards Bedesten Çarşı (Market). It was Friday and the mosques were busy. There’s a couple mosques that we wanted to check out, but we’ll do that tomorrow. The market was lively. Lots of clothing stores. Heather bought a scarf that she can use as a head covering for mosques. There was a very busy çay (tea) and simit stall, so we ordered a tea and simit and sat on the little chairs to enjoy them.

At 1pm most of the market shut down, as it was Friday (similar to how Sundays have shorter hours in other countries).

We were still a bit peckish, so walked around to a street and found a busy restaurant with Etli Ekmek, the local take on pide (sort of a flatbread pizza). It was yummy, better than the one I had yesterday.

It looked like it might rain any minute, so called it a day. Also, it was a Friday and not much was open in the afternoon.

Later we went out for dinner at a place we looked up on Google Maps. Its specialty was lamb’s head. I tried their kelle-paça çorbasi (soup with head and foot of lamb), and Heather tried their lentil soup. Both were excellent. We also had their tavuk pirzola (grilled chicken thigh with a dry rub), although we were already full from the soups. There were lots of locals that stopped in just for the soup or the lamb’s head. It was a cool place to try.

Konya, Türkiye

It was really quiet in our hotel in Cappadocia, I guess being carved out of rock provides decent sound insulation. The wifi signal was strong but their router lost internet access (and obviously the cellular network didn’t work too well in a cave either), so it was an offline night.

I woke up at 6:45am to see if the balloons made it out. There was high wind and rain forecast for the early morning when we went to bed, so figured the balloon rides would be cancelled. It was indeed rainy and cloudy and miserable, so went back to bed. It was too bad, as the balloons typically fly over our valley, which makes for great pics right from the hotel.

It was a blue sky and sunny when we made it down for breakfast at 9am. The valley was a nice background for another great Turkish breakfast.

We packed up and loaded up the car. First stop was a viewpoint of Love Valley, where the classic rock formations of Cappadocia are found. The weather had changed multiple times since breakfast, and it was slightly raining when we got to the viewpoint. Took some pics which didn’t turn out too well with the grey skies, and carried on our way.

Next stop was Derinkuyu underground city, about 45 minutes towards Konya. Derinkuyu is the largest discovered of several underground cities in the area, used as Christian refuge over the centuries from the Mongols and Ottomans, amongst others. It could supposedly hold up to 20,000 people and their livestock!

We bought our tickets and entered. Red arrows pointed the way down and in; later, blue arrows showed the way out. Derinkuyu goes to 85m deep, I’m not sure how far underground we went, but it was a lot of awkward climbing. Most of the tunnels required us to walk hunched over. There were also tour groups in the narrow tunnels and rooms, clogging it up.

Anyways we didn’t really enjoy it, although we were glad we went there to see it. We also checked out the next door Üzümlü Kilise, a 7th century church in disrepair.

So onto the next stop of the day, Selime Cathedral. It’s a complex of multiple rooms and buildings carved into the side of the rock near Selime. It’s well-marked and maintained, and cool to see. It was busy with tourists, likely on day trips from Cappadocia. We had to wait our turn for pics at the key sites. I didn’t find it as impressive as Derikli Kilise which we saw yesterday, but still worth the stop. Actually I found the view across the valley of the cute town of Selime itself to be more beautiful.

We had lunch at a little doner place just down the road, which we enjoyed. We’ve started ordering ayran as our drink, which is a yoghurt-like drink that reminded us of a salty lassi. It’s a common drink order with locals. The restaurateur broke into a smile when we asked for it. The weather was nice enough at this time that we ate outside on the patio.

We got back in the car for the final stretch of 2.5 hours to Konya. It was mostly a divided highway, two lanes each way, with a speed limit of 110 km/h. The limit drops to 90 around merges, and to 50 when going through towns. Our car mostly knows the speed limits (I’m not sure if it’s reading signs, or it’s a preloaded map), but occasionally would miss an end limit of 50. So we would be doing 50 while other cars and trucks passed us at 90. Eventually we just used our observations to determine the likely limit. There’s photo radar here, so maybe we’ll have a fine when we return the car, oh well.

We arrived at Konya city limits around 5:30pm. We passed through a police checkpoint. They asked to see my license, and by the time I fished it out of my backpack, he had looked up our plates and said “Eric D’Souza? You can go” and waved us through.

City traffic wasn’t too challenging now that I was familiar with the car. The hotel helped us with street parking (got a prime spot right outside the hotel!). The hotel is in an older building with lots of character. Our room overlooks the Mevlana Müzesi, which is one of the top tourist attractions in Konya.

We were tired from the day’s excursions, and long drive. The hotel guy had suggested a full itinerary for us for this evening; we just relaxed in the room. We have two full days here to sightsee :)

Cappadocia, Türkiye

We woke up to sunshine, the first time we’d seen a clear blue sky in Ankara. Had another large breakfast, packed up, and used Uber to get a taxi to the airport.

The Sixt car rental was on the arrivals level, but communicating that to the taxi driver was beyond our ability, so just went to international departures. Went through security to enter the airport, and then found our way down to arrivals. The Sixt folks were efficient, even offered us tea while they completed the paperwork. We are now the proud renters of a Dacia Duster!

All our luggage fit in the back without issue. We’ll be doing some sightseeing on transit days, with all our stuff in the car, and didn’t want luggage visible in the locked car. I don’t think car break-ins are a thing in Türkiye, but we prefer taking less risks.

Got out of the airport parking garage without stalling (it’s been a while since I drove a standard). The narrow ramps and turns was good practice to learn the car. It’s right-hand drive in Türkiye, so we’re now at 10 left-hand and 4 right-hand in our career count of car rentals. It’s a newer car with CarPlay, which made it much easier to use my phone for navigation.

We arrived at our hotel in Cappadocia just before 3pm. It’s built into old caves overlooking a valley, about ten minutes drive from the tourist hub of Göreme. The hotel and the view were both amazing, like out of a fairytale.

It was a perfect day weather-wise, and rain was forecast for tomorrow. So we dropped our bags in our room and headed out for some sightseeing, destination Derikli Kilise (aka Column Church, or Kolonlu Kilise).

We parked in the car lot (100 TRY, about 3 CAD) and headed out. At first I thought Direkli Kilise would just be right there, but it looked like a bit of hike, up and down 100m valleys. We walked down into the first valley towards Üzümlü Kilise. It has some cool painted ceilings, although you can only view them from the gated entrance to the church.

There was a coffee shop beside it, so had a Turkish coffee (in our rush to maximize the good weather, we had skipped lunch), and chatted with the owners on how to get to Direkli Kilise. Their description was different from what I could see on the satellite view of the paths in Google Maps. We decided to follow their directions, as they were local.

They did say the return trip would take 90 minutes (Google said half that). It was 4pm by now, so we figured if we didn’t get to the church in 30 minutes, we’d just turn around. Sunset was at 7:04 so we had plenty of daylight left, but we didn’t want to get lost in the valley after dark.

The path took us through some amazing rock formations. Some of the bushes were in bloom, and the purple and pink flowers really made the scene. We’ve seen a bit in our lives, and this was impressive.

We continued along the dirt trail, taking pictures every step of the way.

We later looked up that we were walking through Rose Valley, supposedly one of the top hikes in the area.

The path took around the edge of a plateau. On Google Maps I could see that Direkli Kilise was just across the valley, and could see the dirt path in satellite view. So we followed the path down into the valley, towards the church.

We finally came up to the front. There’s a metal bridge across what I guess could have been a moat. This leads to a small cave. There’s a shallow staircase from the back, which wraps up and bends to the right. I squeezed up, and popped out into a huge church carved out from the inside of the rock. It was just me and Heather in the church, it was quite amazing. It’s also called Column Church cause there’s four pillars holding up the rock above the church.

Anyways, exited the church and then looked at the satellite view for the best route back to the car. Fifteen minutes later, we were driving back into town. Total round trip hiking from Üzümlü Kilise was about an hour, of which 20 minutes was just taking pics.

We stopped at the Bim in town to get water (that’s a mini market here), and then drove back to the hotel. Someone had nabbed my prime parking spot outside the hotel, so we had to park about 50m down the street.

We were tired and hungry. Decided to go out for dinner and then come back to shower etc.

I WhatsApp’d our hotel guy, and he suggested Narin for dinner, about a ten minute walk. We ate at the very unfashionable hour of 6pm. It was quite good.

That was it for our first half day in Cappadocia, an excellent start.

Ankara, Türkiye

We were still recovering from our colds, so relaxed a bit in our room after another large breakfast.

We got our day under way around 11am. One of the biggest things to see in Ankara is Anıtkabir, a masoleum complex and final resting place of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Türkiye.

It was a nicer day than yesterday (high of 12C) and we hadn’t done much walking the past few days, so decided on the hour-long walk rather than a taxi. We had a good view of Anıtkabir from our room, it didn’t look that far. Also it’s a great way to see a city.

So headed out, Google Maps leading the way. We started off downhill, which was easy. Crossed through a hospital area, across a couple highway interchanges with pedestrian over and underpasses, through a lively university area, and finally a leafy neighbourhood of low-rises. The sidewalks were in good shape, and busy. In particular, the areas around the highway underpasses were really busy with pedestrians, almost like a transit hub.

(I’m still not clear on what the third character is in Anıtkabir, I cut and pasted the name from Wikipedia. It’s ASCII code 305, which the internet says is ‘dz’)

Anyways, we reached Anıtkabir around noon. There was a security check, where we also stored our backpacks. We then continued our walk through the Peace Park to the masoleum complex.

There were lots of tourists here, I’d guess about an 80-20 split between Turkish and foreigners. It’s an important site for Turks. The plaza is massive, 129m x 84m, so it didn’t seem too crowded. We walked around the circumference, and then stepped into the mausoleum itself. It’s impressive on its own, with an 27m high ceiling.

After we walked down the Road of Lions, a 262m long pedestrian walkway, flanked by 12 pairs of lions on both sides. The tiled walkway has a 5cm gap between the tiles, which we found tricky to walk on. Wikipedia says it’s by design to force visitors to take their time, although there is a ‘citation needed’ label on this.

We lucked out and reached the end of the pathway just before 1pm and witnessed the changing of the guard.

We walked back to the plaza and checked out the Independence War Museum in the buildings surrounding the plaza. It has recreations, paintings and historical documents from the War of Independence from 1919-1923.

It was about 2pm by time we got through everything. We had lunch at a bakery/restaurant just outside the gates, which catered to tourists but was pretty good. Their coffee and halva were excellent.

We decided to walk back home, we were able to get most of the way by memory. I napped the rest of the afternoon. We were still full from breakfast and lunch, so just skipped dinner.

Ankara, Türkiye

Breakfast was quite good at our hotel in Ankara, a traditional spread of cheeses, olives, vegetables and baked goods, plus freshly squeezed orange juice, brewed tea, and eggs to order. Also, sour cherry jam :) Heather tried their menemen, (scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers, onions and spices), and said it was one of the best she’s tried, better than the shakshuka from Pasaj, a Turkish brunch place near our home in Toronto.

All the sites we wanted to visit today were within a five minute walk of our hotel. (We still took our umbrellas though). First up was the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, housed in a former bazaar. It’s one of the few museums open on Mondays in Ankara. It was really good, although the volume of archaeological artefacts became a bit overwhelming for me.

We then walked over to Aslanhane Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Ankara (13th century). Heather didn’t have a head covering, so we decided instead to grab lunch first.

We ate at random kebab place, one of the few open on Mondays. We were watching the other tables to figure out the etiquette. The kebab skewers are saved at the table, so that they can tally up the cost after. We finished with Turkish coffees and split a kadayif dolmasi, a dessert made from thin strands of pastry wrapped around a nut filling.

We went back to the hotel to put on extra layers. I had started the day with just a puffy jacket. Now I was maxed out in winter gear, adding on my windbreaker, toque, gloves and neck buff. (It was only 5C with a colder feels-like). Heather also added a long scarf she bought in Athens, which could double as a head covering for mosques.

Properly attired, we ventured back out. The streets around the hotel are a maze of cute little shops and cafés, mixed in with working neighbourhood shops like hardware stores and grocery stores. I posted a pic that I labelled as grains, although I think it’s mostly pulses. (I’d have to talk with the tech folks about why it’s hard to update a caption after posting).

Our hotel was directly opposite the Ankara Castle Gate and Clock Tower, so we explored the citadel area next, with more boutique stores and souvenir shops. We climbed up the Şark Kulesi (East Tower) for great views of the city. We walked a bit further into the citadel, towards the White Fort, but turned around before we got all the way there (the fort is more impressive to look at from a distance).

We walked back out, and went back to Aslanhane Mosque. There was a friendly caretaker who used a translation app to explain a few things about the mosque. We took some pics and gave a small donation.

We wandered a bit more around the maze of streets, and that was it for our day.

Ankara, Türkiye

The Yotel at IST was surprisingly quiet, given the number of guests that must come and go at all hours.

Breakfast was quite good, with a standard buffet, and eggs to order (I only noticed this sign afterwards).

We were quick packing up cause we hardly unpacked anything. Checkout was also easy - we just dropped the passkeys in a box in the lobby and left! I have to say I am very impressed with Yotel.

We were familiar with the airport layout from our walk yesterday. It was still pretty quiet at 9am, there was no lineup for security. The domestic departures is a nicer place to hang out compared to the international terminal.

We were only allowed one checked bag each, so I had to take our carry on suitcase as, well, carry on, and compete for luggage space in the overhead bins. It wasn’t a full flight so we had no issues.

The flight was only 45 minutes, and then we were in Ankara! Our driver had already WhatsApp’d to give his exact waiting spot. It did remind me of flying from Toronto to Ottawa - YOW is much more peaceful and laid back than YYZ. (I’ve only caught a connecting flight in Ottawa, but you still get the airport experience).

Anyways the drive into Ankara was pretty, through hills and valleys. The trees were just starting to bloom. Ankara is the 2nd largest city in Türkiye, about five million people. The airport has good access to the centre by road, only about 30 minutes.

Our hotel was in a restored caravanserai atop a hill, in the historical part of Ankara. Our room wasn’t ready yet (it was only 1pm) so we left our luggage and went for lunch.

We both got a soup, and then split a salad and manti (sort of like dumplings). It was way too much food - the soup itself (chickpeas, lamb, bulgur and yoghurt) could have been a meal.

Our room was ready by the time we finished eating. The room (as well as the whole hotel) has tons of character.

We were still recovering from our colds (although feeling better today), so just relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

I did make a trip to a laundromat, about a five minute drive. Uber is used more as a way to hail a taxi in Ankara - the only payment option in the app is cash. Anyways it is a convenient way to get a cab.

The laundromat folks were really friendly. In their setup, they do all the operating of the machines; I was there more as a supervisor to approve the temperature selection etc.

I figured I had time to get cash from an ATM and buy some water while the clothes were in the washer. It was cool walking down the street, in a part of town that I wouldn’t otherwise have reason to visit as a tourist. Lots of people just going about their everyday lives.

It was a quick washer, by the time I returned, the clothes were done. The laundromat follks double- and triple-checked with me that I didn’t want the clothes dried, before helping me stuff the clothes into my daypack.

A taxi drove by just as I exited. I used Google Maps to show in Turkish where I was going. Five minutes later I was back at the hotel, all my errands completed.

I was lucky too with the weather. It was sunny the whole time I was out. Dark clouds rolled in shortly after I returned, and it rained quite a bit.

We didn’t fancy heading out in the rain, so just ate at the hotel again for dinner. This wasn’t as special as our lunch, although we did a better job of ordering.

The hotel was hosting a fancy dinner for a table of 20 in the central courtyard of the caravanserai. We quietly walked through to the staircase to the 2nd level where the rooms were located, and called it a night.

Istanbul, Türkiye

Another day, another plane. This part of the trip is rather plane-heavy, mostly cause of the return flight to Abu Simbel.

We’re on our way to Türkiye for a three week road trip. There’s not good connections from Cairo to Ankara (where we start our Türkiye road trip), so we have an overnight layover in Istanbul.

The Istanbul airport opened in 2019, and the surrounding hotel infrastructure has yet to catch up. We decided to stay at the Yotel in the airport, rather than try to get into the city.

So our journey today from Le Meridien Cairo Airport to Yotel Istanbul was walk-fly-walk :)

The EgyptAir flight to Istanbul was on another vintage 737. Our ears were popping due to our colds, as well as cause older jets don’t have good cabin pressure.

We lucked out with the immigration line in Istanbul - we must have hit a lull, it took us less than ten minutes to get through. After we retrieved our luggage, we had to visit a couple of Turkish Airlines counters to sort out our flight to Ankara tomorrow. Somehow our tickets showed us as on both the 11am and 1pm flights. They were super helpful, and got us straightened out for the 11am. I wasn’t concerned about getting to Ankara, as the Istanbul-Ankara route is as common as Toronto-Montreal, with flights every hour.

We then checked into the Yotel. We were super impressed with the whole setup. Check-in was quick and easy, the room was really well laid out, had fast wifi, outlets everywhere you’d need them. There was also no pamphlets nor promotional items cluttering up every available surface (my pet peeve in other hotels - I spend the first few minutes in a new hotel gathering all those up and sticking in a drawer).

The only downside with staying at the airport is that food is overpriced and average at best. We walked around both departures and arrivals looking at the dinner options. I like walking around airports when they’re empty like this - maybe it’s from growing up near Pearson.

We weren’t that hungry, so just split a couple fresh sandwiches and a salad. It tasted pretty good, and not too overpriced at 30 EUR.

We actually got in a lot of walking today - over 7.3km!

Cairo, Egypt

We had a free day in Cairo today. I had planned in the extra day in case any of delays on our journey to-and-from Abu Simbel. Plus it was our fourth hotel in four days, so it was nice to relax and spread out our stuff for a couple days.

I did have some museums suggested for the day, but we were both a bit under the weather with the cough/cold that it seems every second person has. So instead we just relaxed all day at the hotel.

We had a bunch of admin things to do anyways - catch up in my blog, wipe down all the desert dust from our suitcases and shoes, post hotel reviews, monthly banking, file government paperwork. Just an average day on vacation lol.

Some random observations

• Almost all my pics have been from my iPhone. Aside from the Acropolis, I’ve only posted four from my camera. My iPhone was capable of taking those four, it’s just that I had my camera in my hand at the time. I don’t carry my camera with me half the time now, but it could get the point where I don’t bring it on vacation at all.


• We’ve also noticed that hotel staff that try to help with our suitcases aren’t familiar at all with two-wheelers. Then we looked at other suitcases on conveyors and they’re almost all four-wheelers. Heather did considerable research at the time on two- vs four-wheels, and the two-wheels are more durable cause the wheels don’t stick out. Except if you don’t know how to wheel it around and end up dragging the fabric everywhere.


• I’ve been able to pay using Apple Pay almost everywhere. The only reason we’ve needed cash is for tips.

Overall not a very exciting day but we needed the down day.

Cairo, Egypt

We had another excellent meal at the New Abu Simbel Hotel. Breakfast was an omelette, cooked and served in a piping hot ceramic dish. Also freshly squeezed mango juice, cheeses, honey crepes, and fresh fruit. Yummy. This was the best chef we’ve had on the trip thus far.

Said goodbye to all the staff and posed in a few pics. Then we zipped off back to Aswan airport for our flight at 2:40pm. I wasn’t sure when I booked if we’d make the flight (there’s a late evening one too) but the very helpful hotel staff had said it was no problem when I was planning back in the summer.

We left at 9am and were at the airport by noon. It was a two-handed drive most of the way, with the wind storm still pretty strong. Sand blew across the road similar to a snow storm, with the occasional sand drift half way across the road. Visibility was poor, but the driver was very familiar with the road and we had no issues.

The Egyptair counter wasn’t yet open, so we grabbed seats in the terminal. The counters opened a couple hours before the flight, we checked in, went through domestic security (water okay, but had to take off our shoes which we hate cause you have to walk in socks).

The EgyptAir agent had said there was a restaurant in the departure area; but it was slim pickings. Had another less than satisfactory airport meal, and waited for our flight.

The flight schedule actually originates in Abu Simbel-Aswan-Cairo. I had read that the Abu Simbel-Aswan leg is often cancelled so we made the three hour drive to Aswan to pick up the flight. Sure enough, the Abu Simbel-Aswan leg was cancelled, likely due to the wind/sand. If I remember, it was also substantially cheaper this way.

We had to use a Cobus (a vintage 2700 model, as opposed to my favourite, the Cobus 3000). We got blasted with sandy wind walking on the tarmac, with us in our cooler weather clothes (it was about 21C, and high of only 19C in Cairo today). Oh well, I needed to launder these clothes anyways.

The plane itself was vintage too, in business class they still had cigarette trays in the armrests!

It took a while for our luggage to show up on the conveyor. We could see it was in Cairo so we weren’t worried.

Then we walked over to the Le Meridien and checked in. We were still full from the amazing meals at the New Abu Simbel, so just had some small bites in the club lounge for dinner.

Abu Simbel, Egypt

It was a well-executed departure from the Mövenpick - we checked out at 9:45am, got a golf cart to the dock, immediately caught the ferry across, and our driver met us about a minute later exactly at 10am. Just like I planned it :)

We settled in for the three-hour drive to Abu Simbel. Our driver was very familiar with the route, he knew where every pothole was and most of the personnel at various security checkpoints along the way.

Years ago (pre-covid) it was a dangerous drive from Aswan to Abu Simbel, and buses travelled in convoys leaving at 4am. It’s no longer dangerous, but there’s still a couple checkpoints.

We passed through mostly a desert landscape. We were upstream of the Aswan High Dam, driving around Lake Nasser. There was the occasional large cotton farm, and an industrial complex that our driver said was a cement factory.

Around half way, we started seeing dozens of buses heading the other way; these were day-trippers to Abu Simbel who left Aswan very early, around 4am. It’s the most common way to visit Abu Simbel, which makes for a long day. It also results in almost all the 2,000-3,000 daily visitors trying to see Abu Simbel at the same time, just after sunrise.

There were also a few trucks on the road who were heading north from Sudan.

We arrived at our hotel, the New Abu Simbel hotel, around 1pm. The owners and staff were Nubian, and the hotel’s design and decor all reflected the Nubian culture.

We were lucky with the weather - it was only a high of 29C today. The week before and after it was reaching up to 38C. There was a wind storm peaking around 2am tonight, so we’d probably get dusty.

The owner was really helpful with planning when I booked back over the summer. We confirmed the itinerary - lunch at 2pm, Abu Simbel around 3:30, boat cruise at 5pm, light and sound show at 7pm, dinner at 8pm. Later we cancelled the boat cruise part cause of the winds.

Lunch was amazing. It was a multiple course meal - soup, tomato salad, bread, chickpea salad, labneh, and then the main we had ordered of beef kofta and rice. Dessert was a honey cake with an Arabic coffee. Mmm good.

We got ourselves together for Abu Simbel, having to dig out our hot weather clothing for the first time on this trip. The wind was picking up, so it was at this point we decided to cancel the boat cruise part.

We got a ride to the ruins in a tuktuk (which on our receipt was called a toktok, but maybe just a transliteration). It’s a flatbed attached to the back of a 3-wheel ATV, with a small bench facing backwards to sit on. It was just a three minute ride.

Bought our tickets at the gate, 750 EGP each (about 20 CAD). It’s then a five minute walk from around the back of the hill containing the temples, for the first view of Abu Simbel!

There’s actually two monuments at Abu Simbel: the Great Temple of Ramesses II, and the Small Temple of Hathor and Nefertari (not to be confused with Nefertiti, another Queen of Ancient Egypt who also has a famous ruin in Luxor).

We walked towards the Great Temple. It was a blue sky for pics, however in the afternoon, the sun is behind the temples. There’s good pics and lighting once you get in the shadow of the temple.

There were maybe 20 other people at the ruins when we arrived, and half of them were just leaving. So we had the ruins pretty much to ourselves. I found myself sometimes waiting for another tourist to show up in my pics to provide scale. Woe is me.

The four statues outside the Great Temple are huge, over 20m tall. Inside, (and I didn’t realize there was an interior until we got here) are eight more statues about 10m tall. There’s a number of rooms going deeper into the temple, with bas reliefs on all surfaces. It’s pretty cool to see.

Next up was the Small Temple, about 100m away. This seemed not as impressive cause we just came from the Great Temple, but it is pretty cool too. The statues in front are about 10m tall. By comparison, the statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the GEM entrance is 11m tall, and it seemed huge at the time. I guess it’s all relative.

We took a bunch more pics of the exterior of both from all possible angles, as the sun dropped in the sky. The park closed at 5pm and sunset was at 6:04pm so we didn’t get full sunset colours.

I WhatsApp’d our hotel and they came by to pick us up in a tuktuk. We relaxed for an hour in our room, feeling pretty dusty from being outside this afternoon. The wind storm wasn’t too bad, just the occasional gust that blew up the sand.

We browsed through our pics, and then went back to Abu Simbel at 6:30pm for the sound-and-light show. There were maybe a half dozen bus tours there as well, who looked like they were booting it back to Aswan after. There was still some colour in the sky so I took some more pics.

The show started at 7pm and was a bit disappointing for us. It used the side of hill as a screen to present the history of the temples and the international effort to save them. It hardly featured the actual temples themselves :( Compared to say the Petra by Night performance which we really enjoyed and highlighted the Treasury, the Abu Simbel show just wasn’t our thing. Most other folks seemed to like though.

The show itself lasted about 40 minutes. The audio was in French (I guess based on the majority of attendees that night); there’s headphones for other languages, but our French is good enough to understand (especially Heather’s) so we just listened to the French.

After our hotel picked us up. I really liked the drive back, with the town coming to life in the cool evening, men sipping tea and families gathered in fluorescent-bathed shops.

Our dinner was ready when we got back (we had pre-ordered when we arrived at 1pm). It was another multiple course meal, everything amazing. The chef here knows his stuff. For my main I tried the tilapia two ways, grilled & fried. The tilapia is fished from Lake Nasser and was super fresh.

We also browsed their collection of Nubian souvenirs, and bought a camel skin drum head, painted with Nubian symbols. Not sure how we’ll get it home, that’s for later to figure out.

We got back to our room, showered to get the dust out, and fell asleep pretty quickly.

Aswan, Egypt

We came back to Egypt for a couple reasons: to see the new Grand Egypt Museum (GEM), and to see Abu Simbel. We decided to see GEM today before our late 10pm flight to Aswan, rather than Friday when we’re here for the full day, cause GEM is busier on the weekend (Fri-Sat).

We had the buffet breakfast at Le Meridien. Typically we prefer more boutique hotels, but every now and then we don’t mind the consistency of a business hotel.

The other guests here are a mix of tourists on package tours, business folks rerouted from the Gulf, and just a handful of independent tourists. We had a similar impression in 2019 too, there’s not many independent tourists.

Anyways, the hotel hosts were circulating around the breakfast tables, chatting with guests. We used the opportunity to ask about the best way to get to GEM (Uber), and nearest ATM (right in the lobby).

We had timed entry tickets to GEM at 11am, which I had purchased over the web. We grabbed an Uber and sped off to GEM, on a new-ish highway (it wasn’t here in 2019) for the whole distance. Took us about 40 minutes.

We were a few minutes early (10:55), and were able to enter the staging area, go through security and get to the entry gate proper. Here we had to line up until exactly 11am, when the scanners started allowing entry for the 11am ticket holders. My little 15L day pack was allowed in, as well as water bottles.

We scanned our tickets (most people just used the ticket from their phone, I had bothered to print ours out at home), and we were in!

The entrance to the museum is really cool, it’s a pyramid-shaped opening in the side. And that was just the start!

Once inside, the 11m tall statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II greets you. Most tour groups stop here for a spiel and it gets crowded. We kept walking to the Grand Stairs. This is also super impressive, with large statues and pillars and other antiquities on display.

We had visited the old museum in 2019, and hadn’t seen most of these artefacts. I suppose they just didn’t have the space to display them back then.

We wandered through the galleries, trying to avoid the groups tours, which wasn’t too hard.

We then went through the King Tutankhamen gallery. This was also amazing, with much more on display than the old museum.

The lighting was really well done throughout GEM, so as to not cause a glare, and to highlight hieroglyphics carved into the stone.

We spent over two hours in the galleries, and it didn’t feel like that at all. We were just browsing; you could easily spend a couple days here if you got into the details. Overall it’s an amazing museum, we were glad we made it here.

For lunch, we did the museum version of shortest lineup. (At work, if you go down to the food courts just after noon, there’s 15-20 minute lineups at most places, and if you’re short on time, you just get lunch from the place with the shortest lineup. Then if someone asks you what you had for lunch, you just answer ‘shortest lineup’). Anyways, we ate at Sandough’s which turned out to be really good.

After lunch we quickly toured through the Khufu Boats Museum. Then we caught an Uber back to the hotel.

Our flight to Aswan was at 10pm, and we had asked the hotel if we could get late checkout at 6pm, which they granted. So we were able to shower and pack up after visiting GEM.

We hung around the lobby area for a couple hours until 8pm, then walked over to the terminal (I’m liking this airport hotel thing!) We went through domestic security before checking our bags; we were allowed into bring water through. There’s supposedly a bunch of fast food places open 24x7 in the terminal, but I guess they’re all in international departures :(

So I got a Mr Noodles from a café for dinner, not terribly nutritious.

It’s only a 45 minute flight to Aswan. We got a shuttle bus from the tarmac to the terminal, and could feel the difference in temperature. It was about 20C, but it felt warm. We ditched our puffy jackets, at least for the next couple days.

It was just our plane load of passengers in an otherwise empty terminal at Aswan. Retrieved our bags, met with our driver (the agent handler also tagged along for the ride). 45 minutes later we were at the Mövenpick dock for the two-minute ferry ride to Elephantine Island. We were picked up in a golf cart to drive us up maybe 100m. So our transit here went walk-plane-car-boat-golf cart.

We had stayed at this same hotel in 2019, it’s the only midrange option in Aswan. It was showing its age back then, and they haven’t made any changes except to double the price. Oh well, we’re just here for the night.

All-in-all, today was a pretty good transit day, considering we started the day at GEM!

Cairo, Egypt

Today was a long transit day, flying from Tbilisi to Cairo via Istanbul. We flew on Turkish Airlines which has really good in-flight entertainment, both 2 1/2 hour flights went by quickly. I started watching the new Naked Gun but switched half way to the final Mission Impossible. Also watched the start of the original Terminator, in which the dystopian future is in 2029! Actually all three had the same plot, the hero prevents AI from taking over the world. Well, enough digression into movie reviews, back to travel.

We last flew through IST (Istanbul airport) a few times right after it opened in 2019. Since then, they’ve monetized their floor space, removing most of the public seating and replacing it with high end stores. It’s no longer a pleasant airport to spend a layover, four hours in our case.

After landing in Cairo right on schedule, it took us a while to get through immigration. Canadians do in fact need to buy a visa-on-arrival for 30 USD, counter to my research. It is a nice visa sticker though. Our luggage was already waiting for us on the conveyor, and there were no issues through customs.

We’re staying at Le Meridien Cairo Airport which has a walkway from the terminal. We are flying to Aswan and back, and will be using the airport four of the six days we’re in Egypt, so the airport hotel made more sense.

Turkish Airlines had a decent hot meal on both flights which covered us for lunch and dinner, so we just settled into our room for the night.

Tbilisi, Georgia

There was a full schedule of events today for the Patriarch’s funeral. It started with a Sunday service at Holy Trinity Cathedral at 9am, mourning bells at noon at all churches in the city, a procession to Sioni Cathedral around 2pm, and a burial ceremony at 4pm.

Sioni Cathedral was just 250m away from our hotel, so we were right in the heart of things. It reminded us of our trip to Mexico City where we could see the Inauguration ceremony from our hotel room balcony. From the breakfast café at our hotel here, we could see both Sioni in front of the hotel, and Holy Trinity across the river.

Tens of thousands of people flocked in from all around the country and abroad to pay their respects. The roads for the procession route and around Sioni were closed to traffic, so it was super quiet at our hotel, with the exception of the occasional police car megaphone.

Almost everything was shut down today. We had hoped to hit the laundromat, but yesterday the owner gave us a big crossed forearms to indicate he was closed today. Instead we just stayed in the hotel and watched the events on TV, just like the rest of the country. It was cool cause we could hear the bells and some religious incantations live, and then with a delay on TV.

There were still thousands of people lined up outside Holy Trinity Cathedral to file past the casket. Around 2pm or so, the procession started. We recognized parts of the route as we had just been there yesterday. We had also randomly stopped in at Sioni Cathedral on Friday - I think shortly after that it was closed to tourists for security reasons.

Eventually the procession reached Sioni. The service continued on into the late afternoon. Pedestrian traffic picked up outside our hotel, from folks dispersing from the procession to Sioni.

Later on we went out for dinner, at Tbileli Bar. They had a limited menu of home cooked food, which was excellent. I had chakapuli with lamb (a Georgian stew) and Heather tried lobio (a Georgian kidney bean stew served with cornbread). Both were hearty and hit the spot.

Tbilisi, Georgia

The sun was shining when we woke up. The city looked quite beautiful from the hotel’s breakfast café on the top floor. We got ourselves together and headed out to sightsee!

We walked randomly around the historic centre, there’s lots of grand old buildings. Took some pics of the Monument of St George in Liberty Square, the gold statue really bright in the sun. The almond trees were blossoming throughout the centre. Walked past the Clock Tower again.

The flower stalls were busy with Georgians buying flowers to honour the Patriarch, lying in state at Holy Trinity Cathedral. Almost everyone was dressed in black; we stood out with our otherwise somewhat neutral clothing.

We had lunch at Khinkali Bar No 1. Their khinkali was excellent, better than yesterday’s. As we were eating, a passing shower poured down. My phone still forecast sunny all day, so we hoped it would end soon. We went next door for a coffee and some Turkish treats, and waited out the rain. Finally it petered out, and we continued on our way to the Art Museum of Georgia.

The museum is home to paintings by Niko Pirosmani, one of the more revered Georgian artists. In particular I wanted to see Fisherman in a Red Shirt.

The middle floor contains Georgian paintings from the 20th century, and I found this the most interesting. However the museum lighting is terrible. The lights are positioned so you always get a reflective glare. We read some reviews after and it’s a very common complaint. (We had the same experience at museums in Yerevan).

On the way back to hotel we searched all the souvenir shops for a mini fisherman in a red shirt. We even stopped back into Meidan Bazar, we were shocked to find completely empty of tourists! We finally found a little fisherman, hopefully it will fit on the key shelf.

We got back to hotel and relaxed until dinner. We ate at Sofiko, another recommendation from the hotel. It was only a five minute walk, but with amazing views of the city. We had a yummy dinner, and then took a bunch of night pics on the way back.

Tbilisi, Georgia

We had a full night’s sleep, which surprised us as we had read lots about how historic Tbilisi is a big party scene, especially in weekends, with bass thumping until 3am (says grumpy old man, who years ago would have been at said clubs).

Later in the afternoon Heather read that Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia died on March 17. He was the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church for the last 50 years. This would be the equivalent of the Pope dying while we were visiting Rome. Bars and nightclubs in Tbilisi are closed until Sunday as part of the national period of mourning, thus the lack of noise at night.

Anyways we were not aware of this as we went out in the drizzle to sightsee. We started with lunch at a nearby khinkali place which was excellent. Khinkalis are the Georgian version of dumplings and are ubiquitous here.

We walked over to Meidan Bazar, a small underground market. It’s designed to look like an old souq, and just for tourists. There’s not much space to walk through, we were lucky there were no tour groups at the time. It’s also a rather short market - less than 50m? We did buy a mini plastic khinkali for our key shelf. Some online guides suggest spending 1-2 hours here, but it only took us 10 minutes to browse.

Next we walked over to see the Clock Tower. This is famous for both being crooked and leaning, as well as the puppet that comes out of the window to clang the bell on the hour. It was a good rainy-day thing to do, as there was hardly anyone else there. We also by chance ended up there at 2:55 so only had to wait a few minutes for the puppet.

We walked down to the Kura River to walk across the Bridge of Peace, a landmark in the city. The tramway to Mother of Georgia is right beside the bridge, so we bought tickets (2 GEL, about 1 CAD, for a reloadable card, and 2 GEL each for a one-way ride on the tramway, cash only). There was no line up at all, we just walked right up and boarded the next car which we had to ourselves.

It’s a quick ride, about two minutes to the top. There’s nice views of the city on the ride up.

At the top we headed for the iconic Mother of Georgia monument. It’s a 20m tall statue overlooking the city. Took a pic, then found the staircase back down to the old city. The best views of the city are from this staircase, better than view from the top.

At the bottom there was a little café which rated highly on Google, so we stopped in for a dessert and coffee. It was a really cosy spot, with vinyl playing in the background.

We got back to our hotel and that’s when we read about the Patriach’s passing.

Our reception recommended kneina for dinner and made a reservation for us. Good thing too, as we got a prime table at a very busy restaurant. The food was excellent, more home style cooking than yesterday. The restaurant is in an old house which has been owned by the same family for several generations. The restaurateur was quite proud of its history and showed us artefacts throughout the restaurant after we ate.

We took a circuitous walk home cause we ate a bit too much, and had another quiet night’s sleep.

Tbilisi, Georgia

We had booked a private transfer from Yerevan to Tbilisi through the hotel. We’ve enjoyed the sightseeing + transfer combos, which we first did between the Baltic capitals. It’s good use of a transit day, plus we get to places that are otherwise a long day trip.

It’s five hours if you drive straight to Tbilisi; with our sightseeing we figure to get to our hotel in about nine hours.

We had the same driver who drove us to Goris. We left a few minutes after 9am under sunny skies, climbing towards Lake Sevan.

We were making good time until our driver tried to accelerate too quickly and did something to the car. The car worked fine at lower revs and speeds, it’s just when he tried to accelerate that it was wonky. I think the car runs on four cylinders for efficiency and only uses all six when needed and something sounded off on a cylinder.

Anyways, we arrived at Sevanavank (Sevana Monastery). It’s a spectacular setting with snow capped mountains in the background, surrounding Lake Sevan. It took us a few minutes to hike up the stairs, we were both winded at the top (possibly also due to the elevation at 1900m).

Took lots of pics. It’s not possible to enter the monastery; however it’s more the setting here that attracts the tourists. We walked up a little hill on a muddy path to get pics with sun in the right direction. In all we spent about 30 minutes here, a bit longer than I had expected.

We got back on the road. In Vanadzor, the only town of size along our trip, our driver stopped at a mechanic shop to have them look at the car. I was surprised that a) a mechanic was immediately available to look at the car and b) he had all the diagnostic tools for our vehicle make (Honda). The mechanic took out one of the fuel injectors, cleaned it and reinserted it. My earlier armchair analysis seemed accurate :) The mechanic was obviously confident about his fix cause he then replaced the engine cover without testing the engine.

We got back on the road, with our driver determined to make up for lost time.

We exited the highway and drove through the small town of Sarahart to get to the Sanahin Monastery Complex. It’s a UNESCO Heritage Site, and it’s amazing. It’s in an unrestored state, and we had each building to ourselves for the most part. My favourite room was the gavit, which was home to a couple pigeons. Every so often a pigeon would fly across the room from one pillar to another, the acoustics amplifying the sound of its wings flapping. It was super cool.

The Church of St. Amenaprkitch itself was also amazing, it’s still an active church.

Duly impressed, we got back on road. We had a quick stop at a convenience store where I bought some freshly made bread with a potato filling. This tided us over as we weren’t stopping for lunch.

Next up was Haghpat Monastery Complex, about 15km away. It’s actually part of the same UNESCO site as Sanahin.

Haghpat has some cool exterior pics, sitting in rolling hills above the valley. It’s in the same unrestored state as Sanahin. It was starting to feel colder, about 3C and a damp mist. Took another bunch of pics.

We also had Akhtala Monastery Fortress on our list for today, but we were getting out-monastery’d, and the access road was in poor condition. So we agreed with our driver to skip Akhtala and just head to Georgia.

The border crossing was really straightforward. We had to think about our previous land border crossing - it was in the Balkans in 2020!

First our driver stopped before the border to purchase auto and medical insurance for himself (I’m guessing a requirement for commercial drivers).

On the Armenia side, we walked through passport control to get an exit stamp while our driver drove through separately.

Then we took the bridge across the Debed River into Georgia. At the Georgian immigration, it was the same deal, we had to walk through, although this time with our luggage. Canadians don’t need a visa to enter Georgia; we just got a stamp and in we were! The customs folks just waved Heather through. I got caught up amidst some other people in immigration and put my luggage through the scanner for customs, although likely I could have just exited like Heather.

Another hour brought us into Tbilisi, a couple hours earlier than expected, about 5pm. Our driver had difficulty navigating the one-way streets in the historic centre, we finally asked him to drop us off about a 50m walk from our hotel.

We checked in and got a couple recommendations for dinner. We ate at Iasamani, a hip restaurant in a cool setting and good food too. We were lucky to get in as walk-ins. Cheese features prominently in Georgian food - I think every dish we ordered contained cheese, some more than others.

Overall a great transit day. The monasteries we saw earlier in the day were really cool, it’s worth coming to Armenia just to see them. There’s way more to see too. If you’re planning a trip and wondering where to go, I’d consider Armenia for sure.