Come Along Journeys: #1 Western Turkey
- craintravel
- Apr 1, 2020
- 5 min read
In this first of Come Along Journeys, we will be going to western Turkey to try to evoke at least some of the feelings of traveling to a new place! I will be writing in the second person to hopefully help you envision yourself actually there. I have based the narrative on my experiences, but for the sake of flow some events may be combined or altered slightly.
The plane leaves pretty early in the morning from western Europe, but check-in and airport security go pretty quickly. As you arrive at your gate, you realize that there aren't good food options in this area of the airport, so you have to rely at least partially on the snacks that you had planned to consume on the flight.
Once on the plane, you settle into your seat on Corendon Airlines. It's a budget airline, but the seats are okay and the flight is not very full. No entertainment or food is served and you already ate some of the snacks that you had for the plane, but the flight goes by quickly enough that you are not too hungry when you get there.
At the airport in Izmir, you find that no other flights are arriving around the same time, so the lines for passport control are short. You pull out your printed out electronic visas that cost around $50 a piece, but the immigration officer does not even need to see it. Presumably, he has the fact that you have an e-visa in the computer. As you exit after immigration and baggage claim, you try to find with some difficulty the rental car company that your reservation is with. It turns out that that particular company's counter is located in the domestic terminal.
After you get your compact car, you drive to your hotel on the outskirts of Izmir. You are staying at the Wyndham Grand Izmir, because it was highly rated and it included breakfast and generally was less expensive than you expected a nice hotel to be. It turns out that you probably could gotten by without a car, as the hotel has a shuttle to bring you into central Izmir and there are tours available to get to the other places that you wanted to go, but because you are with a group, it was more cost effective to rent a car.
After settling into your hotel, you decide stay close to the hotel for the evening. You walk along a path by the sea and try to find the flamingo sanctuary that you believe you saw on the way to your hotel. As you walk along, you encounter various dogs that will follow you for a while before turning around. The dogs are not threatening or begging for food, in fact they look pretty well kept, but also appear to be strays. You find out later that Turkey, or at least this part of Turkey, tends to take good care of their stray animals.
You are not actually able to find a way to get to the flamingo sanctuary, so you decide to visit the battleship and submarine museum located across the street from the hotel. The ship had been part of the NATO force and clearly had been built in the United States, but there were still many signs in Turkish, in addition to the ones in English. The people who run the museum inform you that you have to be with an organized group in order to enter the ship and the submarine. The tour guide seems good, but unfortunately the entire tour is in Turkish, which you don't understand at all. :( As you go through the various compartments, you realize how cramped everything is on the ship. But it is interesting to see the bridge.
The ship seemed cramped, but the submarine feels downright claustrophobic. All of the spaces are tight, including the living quarters, where bunks are stacked four high with no room at all to even remotely sit up in a bunk.There are small compartments in the wall that presumably were where the submariners kept their personal effects. Perhaps, if you understood Turkish, you would have gained more insight into the practicalities of where the sailors changed clothes or if they ever got any privacy at all. Even without that information, you have a new found appreciation of submariners and their apparent lack of claustrophobia.
After you exit the museum/ship, you cross the dock and onto land and find a nearby restaurant to eat. You settle on Serkan Hamza, which is conveniently located right across from the hotel. There is one waiter among the many, who speaks decent English and he is able to find an English menu. You are unfamiliar with most of the things on the menu, but you decide on a lamb sandwich of sorts, which is pretty good, but there is a lot of bread and not as much meat as you would like.
After dinner, you head back to the hotel for a swim in the pool. The water is fairly cold, but they keep the room quite warm. The floor is heated, so heated that it burns your feet if you stand in one place for too long. After a swim, you head to your room on the eleventh floor, which has an excellent of the sea and of central Izmir.
After a good night's rest, you head down to breakfast. There is a wide selection of food at the buffet, which is always good. Some of the food looks more like desserts, but the freshly squeezed orange juice is refreshing. After breakfast, you head to your car and start your drive to Selcuk. This is the destination that you are most excited about.
It is about an hour's drive to Selcuk, where you first go to the Ephesus Museum in town. It is a pretty small museum, but it explains some of the history of the area and has a gift store where you buy a top for spinning, because it seems fun. Then you head to the main site of the ancient town of Ephesus about two kilometers from the museum.
In front of the entrance of the site are a multitude of shops selling souvenirs and other sundry items, including Genuine Fake Watches.
Immediately upon entering the site, you notice a host of cats wandering around. You remember that in this part of Turkey, they take good care of their strays. There are other people there, but it is not particularly crowded. As you walk further in, you come to the passage to the ancient harbor. The site no longer touches the river that it used to, but the passage is still there.
Next stop is the amphitheater, which is under renovation, but still really good to see. The acoustics in the theater are really good, which still amazes you.
But the highlight of the site is Celsus Library. You lingered in and around the library for quite some time, even trying out your new spinning top in the area.
You continue up the hill to Hadrian's Gate and find a good overlook of the site.
The next stop is the Terraced Houses, which is remarkable. There is a separate entrance fee to get into the Terraced Houses, but the fee is included in many tickets. You get a workout walking up all of the stairs, but you enjoy all of the mosaics and paintings.
After exiting the Terraced Houses, you pull out your bag with food and buy some ice cream, which is sold at a stand near the exit of the houses. You find a spot to eat your lunch
To be continued on Friday with more adventures in Turkey and maybe even a Greek Island.
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