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 It has recreations, paintings and historical documents from the War of Independence from 1919-1923.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.