Trabzon, Türkiye

Google Maps said that the Sümela Monastery got really busy after 10am (presumably when the bus tours roll in), so we planned to get there for 8am when the gates opened. Add in the hour drive from Trabzon to Sümela, and it was an early start for us.

Most cafés don’t open until 9am so we just got in the car and drove, and hoped to pick up some food along the way.

First we drove through Trabzon itself (our hotel is in the suburbs). There wasn’t much traffic at 7am.

We reached Maçka, where the route cuts off the highway into the valley. The road through Maçka was terrible - it looked like they were doing some infrastructure work on either the sewer or water supply, and had torn up the entire road. It was otherwise a bustling little town. We stopped to pick up some fresh simits and tangerines for breakfast.

The drive from Maçka was through a narrow gorge, with barely enough room for a road beside the river, between the steeply rising cliffs on both sides. Another fun drive!

Our research on how to visit Sümela said we’d need to park our car about 4km from the gate and then take a shuttle bus. The first parking lot we reached seemed deserted. So we just carried on up the road. We then reached another parking lot, which had more signs of life. There was someone in a ticket booth, and smoke from a wood-burning stove.

The ticket booth was selling tickets for the shuttle bus. He was having trouble booting up his app to sell us tickets. We were at about 1200m and it was only 5C, so we went back to the car to wait.

A few minutes later, I went back and was able to buy the shuttle tickets, 180 TRY for the two of us (about 6 CAD). He typed in 830 on his calculator, which I interpreted as the time of the first shuttle bus. I guess the gates don’t open at 8am.

We ate our simits and tangerines, which were really good. Another car drove up, and we watched the two tourists go through the same steps we just did (minus the simit and tangerine part).

The shuttle bus drivers started trickling in to start their shift. They all headed to the shed with the wood burning stove to have a çay (tea), have a cigarette, and chit chat with the other drivers. (As an aside, we’ve been surprised at how many people smoke in Türkiye).

A tour bus pulled in around 8:20. This was good, as the shuttle bus doesn’t leave until it’s full, and the four of us certainly weren’t filling it up.

At 8:25 we got out of our warm car to get in line for the shuttle. One of the drivers at the shed motioned to us to come over, and then offered us a çay! That was very nice of him. We had been lamenting in the car while eating that we could have used a çay, and here we were having one :)

We headed to the shuttle bus that was getting ready to go. At 8:35am we started the 4km drive up to the entrance.

At the drop off point, there’s then a bit of a walk up a rough stone pathway to the actual entrance. Various blogs had described it as a 15-20 minute walk; it took us about five. There was still ice and snow on some of the steps, so it was good we wore our hiking shoes.

At the top, we bought our tickets to the monastery (20 EUR, payable in equivalent TRY based on the current exchange rate). We were able to use ApplePay (some reviews we had read said it was cash only).

We still had to walk up about 50 steps up the outside the monastery to get to the entrance. And then we were in! It’s under major conservation, with cables for pulley systems rigged up, and scaffolding and construction walls marring the view. The classic pics weren’t available, but we were still able to get some unobstructed views. We had the place to ourselves for a few minutes, as the other folks from the shuttle were still making their way up.

Some of the terraces and rooms were off-limit, a relatively recent change (just a couple weeks ago, based on Google reviews). The frescoes were all visible to see, we just missed out on other vantage points for pics. It’s also more adventurous to navigate through the maze of pathways and doors and rooms.

Sümela Monastery was founded around 350 AD, built to its current state in the 13th century, and remained active until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. It only became a protected site in the 1970s, and on the UNESCO Tentative List in 2000. In between the 20s and 70s, there was no protection at all for the site :(

The frescoes are pretty cool, especially the upper ones that aren’t graffitied over. There’s also frescoes in great shape inside the main church. We took lots of pics :) Supposedly one of the icons was painted by the Apostle Luke!

I wouldn’t have thought that we would encounter so many things from the New Testament in Türkiye (we also saw the burial spot of John the Apostle in Selçuk), but I guess it’s not that far from Jerusalem.

The bus group fully arrived at the top and they all congregated to hear their guide. With one bus it wasn’t so bad; mid-day with multiple busloads would be crowded and chaotic.

We spent maybe 20 minutes in Sümela Monastery and then headed back down. First we checked out Aya Varvara Kilisesi, the ruins of another church outside the walls of the monastery. It’s not much to look at, but it has a great exterior view of Sümela, clinging to the side of the cliff.

Then we waited about five minutes for the shuttle bus to fill up to take us back down. Got our car in the parking lot, paid our 200 TRY now that the parking lot attendant was there (about 7 CAD), and drove back to our hotel in Trabzon.

We cleaned up and then went downstairs for a large Turkish breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was so-so, but filling.

We were feeling lazy so just relaxed the rest of the day. We fly to Sofia tomorrow, with a six-hour layover in Istanbul, so we packed up our luggage in airplane mode (no liquids in the carry-on). We went off-campus and bought some snacks for breakfast and lunch for tomorrow, as the prices in IST airport are exorbitant.

Later I went down to the restaurant for dinner. I ordered the grilled sea bass and ended up getting grilled salmon. It was still fish I guess, and cooked perfectly, so I didn’t bother to point out. I had wanted to try some fish from the Black Sea (mullet, turbot, anchovies, sardines), but they didn’t have any on the menu.