Friday, 4/21: Not an interesting day – we flew from Seattle to JFK, got to the hotel, had dinner, and went to sleep.

Saturday, 4/22 - Sunday 4/23: Only slightly more interesting.  It was raining and cold in NYC when we got up.  We decided to go to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge anyway and spent a pleasant two hours hiking around and watching the occasional bird wander by.  Sort of neat to see a Great White Heron on the marsh with the Empire State Building in the background.  Dropped off the car, got on the plane, and flew for endless hours to Istanbul.  We didn’t have an packed luggage, so we walked to the domestic terminal and got on our plane to Ankara.  Met the tour group (26 of us) and the guide (Aydin), had dinner together, and went to sleep early.  (Turns out to be a major national holiday in Turkey: the celebration of the opening of the first parliament of the Turkish Republic – essentially their Independence Day.  But we arrived after all the parades and so on.)

Monday, 4/24: Bus tour of the city of Ankara with two major stops.  We spent about two hours at the Mausoleum where Kemal Attaturk is buried.  It’s a huge building with a large walkway between reproduction Hittite lions to an immense square that houses the mausoleum and a museum about the founding of modern Turkey.  Then drove to a very impressive (but rather small) museum dedicated to the history of the Anatolian people.  They date back to the Hittites about 2000-1250 BCE.  This (well, a bit south of here) is where writing, agriculture, and monotheism all originated.  Included the items found at the tumulus of Croesus (King Midas) as well as Chatal Huyuk (a major Neolithic site just south of Konya).  Nicely displayed and a good introduction to what we’ll be seeing tomorrow.

Today’s photo is of the symbol of the city of Ankara, which is adapted from a Hittite symbol.  It’s right in the middle of the city.

Monday 4/24 (continued):  After I wrote the last note I spent about an hour trying to get connected to the Internet.  It required meeting with the lady who runs the hotel infrastructure, rebooting the PC (never did figure out why that was needed) and then discovering that you have to specify your room number as four digits, not just three.  Sigh.  Computers are wonderful.

Went out to dinner with the tour group to a place that specializes in “kebabs”.  Of which there were about 60 varieties and when we asked if there were any that included a different combination the answer was “no, but we’ll be glad to make that for you.”  It was quite good, and they supplied us with an unending amount of freshly (very freshly) baked pita (the Turkish word is “pide”).  They ended by giving us all pistachios, sliced apples, and sliced oranges along with hot apple cider (“apple tea”).  A very nice dinner, and quite inexpensive (about $12/person).

Tuesday 4/25: Today we got to see the places where they excavated the Hittite items we saw yesterday in the museum.  It was about a 3 hour drive to Hattuşa, the largest city of the ancient Hittite kingdom.  We started by going to an area outside the city walls where there were drawings on the rocks in two areas.  The first was a scene of a ceremonial procession with a king and queen greeting their corresponding Gods, along with the three children of the Gods.  The Hittites gave women rights and proclamations by the king had to be countersigned by the queen.  The Hittites also were the first (western?) civilization to have a king who could appoint his own successor, although they also had a separate system which appears to represent the people directly whose head was able to overrule the king if needed.  Quite advanced for a civilization that ended in 1250 BCE.

After a lunch break at a nearby restaurant (a wonderful buffet) we went to the main site.  This is a complex surrounded by four miles of walls with 200 towers.  It’s at an altitude of about 3500’ and it was quite cold and very windy. We drove around the inside of the walls, stopping at two different gates.  The first is the Lion’s Gate, so named because of the four lions (two facing in, two facing out).   The second is a long (70’) tunnel called the King’s Gate (guess what was on this one).  Once outside we walked along a path to a set of steep stone steps that leads to the Sphinx gate and back around by a path to the King’s Gate again.

Then down the hill towards the entrance of the park where we went into the largest of the several temples (there are dozens of groups of houses, each with its own temple; this one is just a temple and about the size of any one of the groups itself).  Because all of the structures were made with two layers of stones, then a wooden platform and wood-and-plaster walls, all that remains are the foundation stones.  So you walk over the stones and see things like a green ceremonial stone (which they believe must have come from at least 500 miles away), a set of grooves in the stones used to pipe water around the complex, and a pair of stone altars.

Back in the bus for the three hour drive back to Ankara.  And guess who’s staying at our hotel (the Ankara Hilton) tonight?  Condoleeza Rice and 60 of her closest friends.  They have the top two floors to themselves.  And about half the police force (well, not really) of the city is standing around looking pretty bored.  Actually, on the way in to the city we came across three groups of police in riot gear looking equally bored.  The guide is guessing that they are actually there because today was the ANZAC memorial day at Gallipoli and there is a ceremony at the Gallipoli site but also some happenings in Ankara (since it’s the modern capitol of Turkey).

Today’s photo shows one of the carvings we saw outside of the city walls.  It’s a God (you can tell by the pointed hat; the number of hooks, if you could see them, tell you the God’s rank).  He has his arm around a king, but the only thing that’s left of this part is the staff on the lower right of the God’s robe – these are the staffs of office of the Hittite kings.  The logo on the upper right tells you about the king himself, although I don’t understand the details.  It’s a double-headed eagle with Ionian-style (but about 1000 years earlier) columns indicating this is a Great King.  The entire relief is about human size (6’ or so high) and about 8 or 10 feet off the ground.

P.S.— I think there’s something ironic in the fact that our Secretary of State is staying here tonight.  Immediately next door is the Iranian embassy.  And the address is Tehran Street.  Last night was also funny: the signboard for events in the lobby said there was a meeting of the Turkish-Iranian Society on the ground floor and a meeting of the US Embassy staff on the first floor…

Wednesday April 26. Today was mostly a travel day as we rode the bus from Ankara (the country's capital about centered north-to-south and about 2/3 of the way from east to west) to Bursa in the northwest of the country. It's a six hour drive non-stop, but we stopped twice.

Our first stop was in a town originally called Gordion. It's known for two things. First, it's where Alexander the Great figured out how to undo the Gordian Knot (by cutting it in two -- somehow reminiscent of how a Microsoft product team tends to deal with open computer science research issues). The second is because it houses what's known as the tomb of King Midas. Overall, Turkey has about 2,000 tumuli (burial mounds) of which 80 are close to Gordion. The largest of these stands about 300 feet tall and was thought to contain the remains of King Midas (he was a historical figure, the King of Phrygia). While the contents of the tomb are now in Ankara (we saw them two days ago at the museum there), the tomb itself is impressive for its sheer size. Inside this immense hill (which looks completely natural from the outside, but is actually manmade) there is a wooden tomb which looks for all the world like a log cabin. You reach it by going through a 200 foot long tunnel straight into the hill. (Modern research has shown the tomb ıs probably that of Kıng Mıdas´s father or grandfather.)

The second stop, for lunch, was in a small town (you can tell it's a town because the entry sign has both the name and the population -- a village has just a name, and a city also tells its elevation). As it happened, it was market day, so people from all the surrounding area were there, some to sell their wares and others to buy. It was really quite a site, taking up two city blocks in each direction. Unlike the Arab markets I had visited in Israel, this one is remarkably calm (more like a European market). People walk around, shake hands and chat, and occasionally buty things. There aren't hawkers, they don't bargain, and they are genuinely friendly. We struck up a very broken conversation (my English, Barb's English and Turkish) with a young man who was just starting college but was there to help his father sell grape leaves that had been grown by his uncle. The other thing we saw there was a Mosque dating from about 1200, still in use. We arrived during noon prayers, so we didn't really get to go far inside, but we did get to see the wooden interior. We were told to take a good look so we can compare it with the more recent Mosques we'll be seeing later (1400 and 1600, I believe).

As we drove on after lunch we finally descended from the Anatolian Plateau where Ankara is located at about 3000 feet, to the area nearer the coast. The terrain changed from basically level ground with relatively few trees to beautiful green rolling hills. Finally as we pulled into Bursa we saw some absolutely gorgeous mountains (9,000 ft, I believe) topped with snow. The skiing season ended about three weeks ago, but there's still plenty of snow up there. The part of Bursa where our hotel is located was a major resort in the 1920s because of the hot springs. Now, it's still very green and the springs are still there (there's a bath at the hotel itself).

Today's picture is of a reproduction of a statue originally believed to be of King Midas. The original is in the museum in Ankara but this reproduction is at the town nearest to the site of Gordion. The old belief was that this represented King Midas because there's a myth that he was asked to judge a musical contest between the god Apollo and a mortal. To punish him for his choice of the mortal, Apollo gave him the ears of a donkey, which Midas hid under a turban so only his hairdresser knew about it. The hairdresser was sworn to secret, but decided to dig a hole and tell it the story. The reeds growing around the hole heard him and repeated the story, so that soon everyone in the kingdom knew the story, and King Midas removed the turban.

Thursday 4/27.  Today was a tour of Bursa and a nearby village (Cumalıkızık, pronounced “jumal-uh-kuh-zuk” – notice the (in)famous Turkish “ı”s without dots).  I started my day with a nice 15 minutes in the natural hot spring before breakfast.  It was very enjoyable and relaxing.

Bursa is famous for four sites (in addition to the hot springs and the mountain skiing I mentioned in my previous mail): the Green Mosque (built 1412), the Green Tomb (of an early Ottoman emperor and his children), the main Mosque (built 1399) and the Silk Bazaar (in continuous use for over 600 years).  We visited each, and spent a large amount of time in the main Mosque with a friend of our tour guide, who was learning to teach English in the Turkish school system.  She was very informative, telling us about the reason for the unusually large ornamental fountain (the area was owned by a Jewish woman who sold the land on condition that no Moslem prayers be said in that particular location) in the middle of the Mosque.  We spent time in the Silk Bazaar’s tea garden, enjoying wonderful Turkish tea (brewed in a Samovar) and the magnificent weather.

Cumalıkızık is famous in Turkey for two reasons.  First, with Turkey modernizing so rapidly, it has been losing the traditional small villages so the Turkish government in the early 1990s designated Cumalıkızık as a national historic area and doesn’t permit the area to change appearance.  Second, it was the setting for a well-known (in Turkey) soap opera a couple of years ago.  The village dates back about 500 years with the “new” buildings being about 200 years old.  We walked around the village, up the main street (literally “up” it’s quite steep) taking care to avoid the water running down the middle which is the means used to transport water down to the agricultural fields below the village.  We had lunch in a wonderful old house in the village where they made a specialty of a kind of crepe (made from a dough rolled very thin, not from a batter) filled with meat, cheese, spinach, or potatoes.  We watched the three sisters of the family roll out the dough, fill it, and back it on a traditional convex grill.

Today’s picture is from the cemetary at Cumalıkızık.  Look at the dates on the stone.  It’s not a mistake, and the person didn’t die at the ripe old age of 665.  It’s because Atatürk changed the country’s alphabet from Arabic script to a modified Latin script (they have 29 letters, which includes our 26 except for q, x, and w, but adding ö, ü, ğ, ş, ç, and of course ı).  Same language (actually, he had that cleaned up, too, because a lot of foreign words had crept in so there’s a committee like the one in France that controls the introduction of new words into Turkish), different script.  And in the process he moved them from the Moslem calendar (which has year 0 in our year 622 and is out of sync by 3 years every century) to the Gregorian (our western) calendar.  The result is that gravestones like this record the birth date (before Atatürk’s reforms) and the date of death (after the reform).

Friday, 4/28 . Today was a simple day, driving from Bursa to Istanbul (about 3 hours if you do it direct).  On the way we stopped at İzmir, the modern name for Nicaea.  This is the location where the first and seventh Ecumenical councils were held in the 300s.  It was at the first of these that the “Nicaean Creed” was adopted in an attempt to close a rift between different Christian sects.  It’s also the place where the term “Christians” was used the first time.  We visited the remains of the church where the meeting was held, looked at the ancient city gate (it’s a triple gate, with the inner one built about 300 BCE, the middle one about 0 BCE, and the outer one about 300 CE)..

After Nicaea we drove about an hour to a ferry across a large bay on the Sea of Marmara.  This 30 minute crossing saves about 90 minutes of driving, plus it was nice to get off the bus and feel the fresh air on the Sea.  We boarded the bus again in what is technically a suburb of İstanbul and drove across a bridge over the Bosporus (thus going from Asia Minor into Europe) and to our hotel in the new city part of İstanbul (the city is in three parts: the Asian part on one side of the Bosporus in what we call Asia but which the Turks insist on calling Asia Minor; the old city in Europe where things like the Topkapı palace, the Hagia Sophia church/mosque, and the Grand Bazaar are located; and across the Golden Horn but still in Europe the new city where the modern cultural center is located).

Today’s picture is the exterior of the church at Nicaea.

Saturday, 4/29. Today was a tour of İstanbul.  It was raining lightly in the morning so we started with some indoor things: the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar.  The Spice Bazaar is about one square block in size, shaped like an “L”, completely covered with a full roof, and is just covered with small shops that specialize in – you guessed it – spices.  Saffron (Turkish, Indian, and Iranian), curry, Garram Masala, black pepper, red pepper, white pepper, teas (flavored, unflavored, fruit), candy (especially Turkish Delight – the original version from which Aplets and Cotlets was derived).  The smell is just delightful, the bazaar is busy but very, very clean, and the shopkeepers invite you in but don’t really force themselves on you.

By contrast, the Grand Bazaar is about 3 blocks by 4 blocks large, much noisier, the shopkeepers are much more persistent, and this is just about the only place in Turkey (we’re told) where it is expected that you will bargain/haggle over the price.  The variety of merchandise is much larger: carpets (lots and lots and lots of carpets), silks, cloth, jewelry, antiques, beads, leather goods, restaurants, cafes, and (of course) candy.  It was a fun 90 minutes and reminded me of my first trip to Turkey (in 1971) when we spent two half-days in the bazaar.  At that time it was much noisier and dirtier – the guide later told me that there had been a large fire and much of it had been rebuilt since my visit.

The next stop was 2.5 hours at the Topkapı palace.  This is an incredible complex of buildings that housed 34 of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire for over 500 years (they had earlier capital cities at Bursa and Edirne before settling in İstanbul).  We visited the treasury (much better laid out than in 1971 but with far fewer items on display), an exhibit of the costumes of the Sultans (but because this is the Tulip Festival here they had changed the usual display to one that concentrated on items displaying tulips), portaits of the Sultans, a temporary exhibit on Turkish Baths and barbers, the world’s 3rd largest collection of porcelain, and a collection of European silver.  And we didn’t really get to see everything; it’s an amazing place.  (We did manage to lose one member of the tour, who thought we were meeting at 3:30 when we actually met at 2:30; she got some help and met us at the hotel in the evening.)

On to the Mosque of Suleyman, built in the 1600s and on a large scale.  The architect, Sinan, is considered to be the best architect of mosques ever and he considered this mosque to be his second best (the very best is in Edirne).  It is spacious, with an immense central dome modelled after the Aya Sofiya (which is not very far away and we’ll be seeing later in the tour), with two semi-domes on either side (north and south) and two vertical walls (east and west).  8 gorgeous pillars hold up the dome, and they are arranged at the outer edge of the building so there’s no interruption of the open space.  And magnificent acoustics.

Our final stop of the day was dinner in a restaurant that’s part of the same complex of buildings that contains the Mosque of Suleyman.  It had originally been a reception building for the Sultans, so it was built on a magnificent scale.  We took up about 1/3 of the main room, and had a wonderful dinner of vegetable soup, salad, filo dough filled with meat, and rice pudding.  After dinner we walked back towards the mosque but entered a small cemetary adjacent where the tomb of Suleyman, his wife, and their descendents are buried.  It’s still in active use – and only for people who can prove a direct relation to Suleyman.

We came back to the hotel and decided to go for a walk down the main pedestrian street in this part of the city.  We left just about 7pm as it was starting to get dark and wandered around until about 8:30pm.  The crowds reminded me of New York City (in fact, this part is considered the Times Square of İstanbul).  The population here is officially 10,000,000 but is believed to be closer to 12,000,000.  We walked about a mile along the mall, looking at the small shops and restaurants on either side.  It’s amazingly lively, colorful, interesting, and clean.

Today’s picture is of one of the many stores we saw at the Spice Bazaar.

Sunday, 4/30. Today was a different tour of İstanbul.  We started at the Dolmabaçe Palace, which is the last home of the Ottoman Sultans.  Built in the 1830s, it is in a style very reminiscent of what I saw in Vienna – less ornate than Rococo or Baroque, but more ornate than Victorian architecture.  The thing that is amazing about this palace is that it still contains the original furnishings, paintings, and ornaments.  Unlike, say, the French royalty, the Ottomans were removed from power by losing World War I and asking for permission from the winners to leave in exile – there was no revolution and the people themselves never rebelled or stormed the palace.  This was followed by a war of independence from 1921 to 1923 in which Mustaf Kamal (later Kamal Atatürk) lead the people in a fight against the Allied powers to retain modern Turkey as a single state, but as a republic independent of the Ottoman Empire.  In fact, our tour guide told us that Turkey paid off the last of the Ottoman debts this century.

The palace faces the Bosporus, a 19 mile long stretch of water that connects the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea.  Once the Sultan moved to the Dolmabaçe Palace it became popular to build summer homes along the Bosporus and we boarded a boat to travel up most of its length.  Along the way we saw numerous Yalılar (singular: Yalı) which is the specific Turkish word for these homes..  They sell now for between $1,800,000 and $63,000,000 and are used as private homes, condominiums, restaurants, and schools.  The trip ended within sight of the Black Sea, but we didn’t actually get to the Sea itself.  We had lunch in a small fishing village, then boarded the bus for the 30 minute ride back to İstanbul.

The tour ended with a visit to the modern art museum.  This was quite interesting, concentrating on Turkish art and artists.  There was a temporary exhibit of black and white photographs by a German photographer who was hired by the newly formed Turkish government in the 1930s.  He was asked to document the converstion of Turkey from an Empire to a Republic, and the photographs show the beauty of the countryside, the skyline of İstanbul, and the beginnings of industrialization in the cities.  There was also a delightful 30 minute movie by two Swiss artists (no explanation of why it was there) that I can only describe as the world’s largest Rube Goldberg.  It wasn’t clear what the purpose (if any) of the device was, but it consisted of things like candles which tipped over to light fuses on rockets which propelled a small cart on wheels to push over a ladder which spilled some liquid that weighed down a container which released a lever that let loose a balloon that .... it was a lot of fun trying to guess what would happen next.

Today’s picture is the Dolmabahçe Palace as seen from the Bosporus, with some of the tall buildings of modern İstanbul in the background.

Monday, 5/1. The plan had been to get up at 5am for a balloon ride over Cappadocia, but that was delayed at least a day because of the weather – it was raining pretty heavily.  So instead we drove to the Underground City, a truly fascinating experience.  About 1000 years ago this area was overrun repeatedly by Mongols from the East, Arabs from the south, and Crusaders from the North.  So the people of the area built a vast underground area inside of those pillars I wrote about yesterday.  The city is about 8 stories high (only 5 are open to the public) and there’s a ventilation shaft that runs 40 meters from top to bottom.  They built the city in sections that can be sealed off by rolling huge stones over the connecting tunnels, and the stones have a hole in the center so the defenders and see what’s going on and shoot through them.  The room we entered that had such a stone was entered through a passageway that was only about 5 feet tall, forcing anyone trying to attack to enter bent over, leaving them pretty vulnerable.

Then we drove about 15 minutes to a small town that had a very pretty Greek Orthodox church from the 19^th century, a winery, and was just generally scenic.  While Turkey’s population is about 95% Muslim they are generally very religiously tolerant (the head of the Greek Orthodox church, for example, is located in İstanbul).  But at one point where the tensions were very high between the Greeks and the Turks the two governments undertook a forced exchange of citizens.  About 1,300,000 Turks were resettled in Greece and about 800,000 Greeks moved to Turkey, the majority settling in this area.  For lunch we had a local specialty: meat and vegetables are sealed into a clay pot (without water) with a stopper of bread dough.  This is then baked for 4 to 5 hours and the lunch (called a “kebab” which is the generic term for any main meal consisting of meat) is served by breaking the neck of the clay pot and serving the contents.

After lunch we had a real special treat.  The group we are traveling with donates some percent of their profits to a non-profit organization that funds educational and cultural projects around the world.  One such project was the building of a science lab at a public elementary (grades 1-8) school in the town of Göreme.  We visited the school and got to watch a 2^nd grade class being taught.  Then we asked some of the students to sing a song or two (they had one little boy who loved rap and did an impromptu rap in Turkish complete with dance steps!) and then sang for them (“The Itsy Bitsy Spider”).  We ended with a tour of the science lab (and its PC running Windows….)

The last (almost) stop of the day was at the UNESCO world heritage site at Göreme.  This is an unbelievable area (hence the designation). It’s the area where St. Basil lived in the 370s (he introduced the idea of communal worship into Christianity).  And apparently it was used by monks in the 11^th century to teach priests.  They built over 20 churches in an area about one square mile, all hollowed out of that same rock.  And all decorated with frescoes from different periods between 1000 CE and 1200 CE.  It was fascinating to go from one where the iconoclasts held sway and there were geometric designs (with two figures added later) about 100 feet to another which is just covered with wonderfully detailed pictures of Christ, saints, and old testament scenes.

The reason I say this is the “(almost)” last stop of the day is that we’re about to watch a 45 minute film that was actually made by our tour guide, have dinner, and then go watch the Whirling Dervishes.  I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Today’s picture is of one of the pillars that contains about three churches in Göreme.  You can see the small rectangular openings that serve as doors.  I’m not quite sure how you reached those doors in 1000 – today they have ladders (not visible in the photo because these aren’t the churches open to the public, which are directly behind me in the photo and covered with tourists).

Tuesday, 5/2. Today’s note actually starts last night (Tuesday)..  Most of us went to see the documentary film that our guide (Aydın Kudu) produced.  This was about a tribe that lives close to his own home town near Trabzon on the Black Sea.  They live in a village on the coastal mountain range at about 1200 feet, too high to grow crops.  So they live by raising animals, primarily cattle.  Every summer they decorate their cows and leave the village for a two day hike to the high alpine meadows (the “yayla”) at about 8000 feet.  They spend the summer there with the cattle, and at the beginning of July they have a large festival with the entire tribe coming together to dance, sing, and eat.  Unfortunately, their way of life is beginning to fade out as the young people move to the large cities and now come home only for the festival week.  It was quite a good film, and Aydın has entered it in a number of film festivals (it hasn’t won a prize yet, but it has been shown on a Turkish television station).  It took 4 years to make the film, cost about $20,000, and he has promised to donate all the proceeds of the film to the village.

After dinner we drove to a modern Caravanserai that is used by the local Sufi group for their worship service.  Better known as the Whirling Dervishes, the worship takes the form of a 45 minute service which is divided into 6 parts.  The first two are a musical recitation of parts of the Koran, followed by a long section in which they bow to each other three times and then begin spinning and moving in a circle to a continued musical accompaniment.  During this part the dervishes take a spiritual journey that is in specific stages, starting with receiving the breath of life, then ascending to become one with Allah, and then returning to the world.  This is followed by a short set of prayers and then they leave.  Afterward the leader of the evening’s worship (the leader varies from day to day) came to talk to us for a few minutes before he went to a private area where the worshippers go to meditate after their experience.  It was altogether fascinating – and we learned, rather to our surprise, that there is a fairly active Sufi community in Seattle!

We got back to the hotel around 11pm, and I was awakened today by a telephone call at 5am telling me that yesterday’s hot air balloon trip had been successfully rescheduled and would I please come down as soon as possible.  A bit tired from the late evening, a group of 10 of us went down and were joined by another couple to make a balloonful of 12.  The ride was wonderful, if a bit on the cold side.  For the first 45 minutes it was clear and bright and we enjoyed drifting over the same Cappadocia landscape we’ve been enjoying for the past two days.  Then the fog rolled in, leaving us in a dark cloud.  The balloon operator took us up over the cloud to about 5,800 feet where we had a view of the sun above, a large mountain rising through the clouds, the clouds below, and our own shadow on the clouds.  Quite an impressive sight.  And then we went down.  The bottom of the could was 9 meters above the ground, so nothing was visible until we were just at the tree tops – which we used as a means of breaking our descent.  A balloonist controls two things: altitude and the orientation of the balloon, but not its direction.  So despite his best endeavors we wound up landing in the middle of the main highway (one lane each direction) through the national park.  Fortunately the ground crew arrived within seconds to block some traffic that threatened to hit us, and they got the balloon off the road and onto the siding.  We then clambered out and were driven back to the hotel just in time for breakfast.

The “regular” part of the day started with a “discovery trip” to a carpet factory.  We got a thorough introduction to the technology involved in making handmade Turkish carpets (they are made with a double knot, whereas Persian carpets are made with single knots, and most other carpets are woven and have no knots).  We were then taken to a show room and admired a wide range of carpets including one made with silk using over 2,000 knots per square inch (it requires a magnifying glass to even see the knots; museum quality is considered 1,000 knots per square inch).  We had come fully prepared for this part of the trip – we knew the dimensions of the carpet we want to replace in our living room (6ft x 9ft).  And we ordered two carpets to be delivered within about six weeks: the replacement we expected (wool on wool) and a much smaller carpet (cotton on cotton).  With the help of Aydın the cost of the two carpets came to about 10% less than we had been quoted for the larger one alone.

From there we went to see a few more rock formations and lunch in a cave restaurant.  This was fascinating – the entire restaurant had been carved into the same rocks we’ve been seeing for the last three days.  It was spacious and airy, and the temperature is a constant 65 or so year round.  After lunch we went to see a shop that makes ceramics in the same way by the same family for several hundred years.  While the ceramics are beautiful (they specialize in incredibly delicate coloring in a variety of colors) we managed to resist bringing anything other than pictures home with us.

Finally, we went to the highest point in Cappadocia, a castle built on top of one of the hills.  Some of us climbed up, took a few last pictures, and said farewell to this incredible landscape.

Today’s picture is of a balloon (not ours, but taken from ours) among the rocks of Cappadocia.

Wednesday 5/3. Today was mostly a day of driving: 400 miles from Cappadocia to Antalya..  We stopped three times along the way.  The first was at the ruins of a caravanserai from about 1270.  The Selcuk (English spelling: Seljuk) Turks set up essentially free hotels every 25 miles (one day camel's ride) along the entire Silk Road from China to İstanbul.  Anyone was welcome to stay, free of charge, for up to 3 nights.  But there was a tax on any business transacted there, so there was an accountant at each caravanserai who carefully checked all the merchandise when you entered and when you left.  Not a bad system, really.

The second stop was in the city of Konya, best known now as the home of the Mevlana (also known as Rumi), founder of the Sufi sect (Whirling Dervishes).  We visited the shrine where the Mevlana's tomb is located, which is also the site of the first school for the sect, established in the 1200s.  In addition to the Mevlana's tomb there is also the tomb of his son (who first established the brotherhood that we now call the Sufis) and a number of the early followers of the sect.  The entire shrine is decorated with beautiful calligraphy, and it houses a collection of rare 13th century Qu'rans and other holy books.  Some of these are on display, showing magnificent illumination with incredible detail.

Finally, we stopped for a brief rest at the top of the pass over the Toros (English spelling: Taurus) mountains.  This is at about 6000 feet and it was still covered with patches of snow.  The scenery changes dramatically as you move from the Anatolian plateau (where Ankara and Cappadocia are located) to the Mediterranean coast (where Antalya is located).  You go from basically flat, agricultural fields where they grow wheat and potatoes, to the familiar (to Seattle folks) mountains covered with pine (in this case including several large groves of relatively rare Cedars of Lebannon), to fields of orange trees.

The hotel for the next three nights is a five-star hotel right on the Mediterranean Sea.  We have a private balcony looking over the sea and a nice, large room.  The guide and the previous tour group (we met them in İstanbul) told us that this would be the best food of the trip, and the most relaxing stop.  Sounds good to me.

Cultural Note 1: According to Aydın (our guide) 65% of the US population says they attend a church, synagogue, or mosque, making us the most religious (by that definition) country in the world.  On the other hand, just about every large gas station we've passed or stopped at, as well as several of the restaurants, has a small mosque (called a "Mescit", pronounced "Mes-jit") attached to it.  And the landscape is littered with mosques (with minarets) and mescits.

Cultural Note 2: The Qu'ran apparently simply says that one should dress modestly.  This has been intrepreted differently in different cultures.  In Turkey it's interpreted very widely and differently in different parts of the country.  For the most part men seem to dress pretty much as you'd expect anywhere in the US or Western Europe: anything from business suits to jeans and baseball caps (although we did on rare occasion see men with the traditional baggy pants of the Arab world).  For women it's a very different story.  In some places (like İstanbul) they dress in a complete range from skirts to slacks to long dresses, with or without head scarves. The scarves ranging from brightly colored silks to black, and can cover the head, the head and neck, or the entire head, neck, and face.  In other places (like Cappadocia) the local women tended to wear long dresses and scarves, but not the dark black or covered faces we see in photos from conservative Arab countries.

Today's photo is of the tomb of the Mevlana’s tomb in Konya.  You can see the casket he was buried in (the body is underneath the ground, not in the casket) decorated with the turban and the distinctive elongated skull cap worn by the Sufi sect.  The cap is made of felt and represents a gravestone; the believers feel that death is a reuniting with Allah and therefore a cause for celebration as much as for mourning a loss.

Thursday 5/4. Today was an easy day, spent entirely in the city of Antalya on the Mediterranean coast.  We woke up to gorgeous weather, sunny and warm, giving us a great view from our balcony of the snow-capped mountains across the bay.  Barb and I went out for a 45 minute walk around the bay to get some exercise, then came back to the hotel for breakfast and the group tour of the old city of Antalya..  This is mostly a small area of small streets with typical Turkish houses (two stories with an enclosed courtyard, with the rooms set up so that the men could be separated from the women) and a quaint harbor with a number of small boats for rent mostly for day tours of the area.

We met the bus at the top of the stairs that lead from the harbor to the town (the town is on the top of the cliffs, about 60 feet above the water) and drove out to the Antalya museum.  This is the sister museum of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and won the prestigious Best European Museum award in the late 1990s.  It houses a collection of artifacts dating from the Paleolithic through Roman times, as well as a smaller ethnographic collection (local costumes, Qu’rans with illuminations, etc.)    But the core of the collection is a set of statues over 3 meters (10 feet) tall from the early Roman period, all from the ruins at nearby Perge (guess where we’re going tomorrow).  The statues include large ones of Hercules and Marcellus, and human sized ones including Athena, Artemis, Nemesis, Tyche (Fortuna), and the emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

The last stop of the day was a cooking class.  We went to the outskirts of Antalya and watched as the chef of a small restaurant (who used to be the chef for the President of Turkey in Ankara) showed us how to prepare dishes such as pureed eggplant, fried vegetables, lamb stew, semolina halva, and Turkish coffee.  He gave us samples to try and we’re coming home with the recipes.

We got back to the hotel around 4pm and I went for a swim.  The plan had been to swim in the Mediterranean, but unfortunately it was quite windy which meant there were large waves rolling in to the rocky cliffs and it didn’t look safe.  So I used the pool instead, and then Barb and I went to the hotel’s fitness center for a Turkish Bath.  What a wonderful experience!  I’ve never felt so clean in my life (and the Turks do this once a week).  You start by donning your swim trunks and going to one of the basins in a heated room.  You pour increasingly hot water over yourself until you are beginning to perspire.  Then you lie down on the marble slab in the center of the room, which is heated.  You stay there until you are sweating profusely and then an attendant comes to bathe you.  The first step is to use a special glove which is quite rough and peels off the loose outer skin flakes all over your body.  Then they wash you down with warm water.  Then they take what look like pillow cases, soak them in a soapy water solution, and fan them in the air until they are full of air.  The seal off the end and squeeze the air out of the pillow case, which exudes large quantities of foam all over you.   When you are completely covered in soap foam they scrub you down again, then rinse you with warm water.  Then you go over to the basin again and they pour increasingly cold water over you, wrap you in warm towels and escort you back to the lobby where we were given complimentary tea and plenty of time to relax.  I highly recommend it!

We ended the day by watching the video tape of a Nova episode in which four scientists set out to build a Roman Bath using the tools and techniques the Romans would have used.  They succeeded (sort of; the had a last-minute problem which was solved through the use of silicone sealant) and the bath is still in place outside a small village in Turkey – unfortunately, it’s about 150 kilometers away from the nearest point on our tour, so we won’t get to see it.  It was a lot of fun (we’d actually seen it before when it was broadcast), and is good preparation for tomorrow’s trip to Perge where we’ll see the remains of a real Roman Bath.

Today’s picture is of one of the large statues removed from Perge, with me alongside for comparison purposes.  We’re pretty sure it’s Hercules, although we aren’t completely sure of that.

P.S. – We were almost going to send a different picture.  It’s of the bottom half of a statue of Hercules in front of a picture of the top half.  That’s because the Turks claim the top half was stolen in the 1930s and is now located in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  They are trying to get it repatriated, and in the meantime they are displaying the half they have in front of the picture of the missing half …

Saturday 5/6 Today was a very relaxed day, with planned activities in the morning only.  But what an incredible set of activities!

The day started out less than promising: very grey and drizzle-turning-to-rain.  But we boarded our bus to the ancient city of Aspendos, about 20 minutes away from the hotel.  We’d been told about the theater at Aspendos several times already.  It’s “the best preserved Roman theater in the world.”  But that really doesn’t describe it.  First of all, you need to understand that it is a Roman, not a Greek or Greek-Roman, theater.  Which means that it was engineered and built, not carved out of an existing hillside, in the 2^nd century AD.  The audience area, which seats 15,000, is semi-circular.  The seats (except for the four royal seats which here are at ground level) are long benches with an area dug away underneath so you can pull your feet back to keep the aisle clear.  These face a four story high stage house with beautiful mostly-intact carvings covering the doors.  Above all this (but not surviving) is a wooden structure which looks to have been 10 feet wide and angled out toward the audience, covered with even more carvings, and intended to reflect the sound back to the audience.  But even without this cover the acoustics were incredible.  There is a woman traveling with us who is in the regular chorus of the New York City Opera (that’s sort of the Avis of the opera world – 2^nd best in the US next (door) to the Metropolitan Opera).  She and I both sang a little to test it.  It’s amazing: you don’t feel there’s anything leaving your mouth, but people sitting on the top benches (four stories above you) can hear you perfectly.  Quite a feeling.  And the theater is still in use (in fact, they have the opening concert there on the 11^th of May this year).

Second stop was a short one at a bridge built by the Selcuk Turks around the 1100s and recently reconstructed.  Besides its age, the claim to fame here is the shape.  From below at a small distance it looks almost normal, although it does rise from both ends to meet in a slightly raised point in the middle.  But when you walk on the road across the surface of the bridge you realize what’s odd: the road not only isn’t straight, it has several very sharp changes of direction.  There are 7 arches under the bridge and each seems to be built in a different direction, and the road simply connects them (no curves, just turns).  No one knows why it was built this way – guesses range from attempts to make it easier to defend (but there doesn’t seem to have been anything to defend) to assuming it just reused earlier footings (but there are no remains).

The third and final stop was at Perge.  This is the ruin of a Roman city on a scale I haven’t seen before.  It’s about a 10 minute drive from Aspendos and is contemporary with it (they are both from the period of the Pax Romana).  We started at the stadium, where races (primarily) were held.  Roman stadiums are built to a standard plan, with two linear tracks and seats in a slightly bowed arrangement on either side and the ends.  From there we moved on to the main city itself.  There are two gates (the city expanded over time, but they kept the earlier gate and used the area between the two as a reception area), and then a long road with ponds along it.  The ponds are purely decorative as far as we know – they connect directly to the city’s drainage system, so the water seems to simply flow from one to the next and then down to the drains.  There’s also a very large Roman bath (remember last night’s movie of trying to build one of these) with all three heated rooms (frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium) plus a large athletic field (to work up a sweat before starting your bath) and a gallery.  And a very large agora (outdoor market) with small shops surrounding a central circular structure (believed to be a temple to Mercury who was, amongst other things, the god of merchants).  Quite impressive, especially when you consider that all of the beautiful statues have been removed (we saw many of them yesterday at the museum in Antalya).

Back to the hotel to rest before we go to see scenes from a variety of operas which happens to be playing in the main theater in Antalya tonight.  I’ll write about that tomorrow.

Culture Note 3:  Did you know that the game of Bridge was invented in Turkey (I sure didn’t).  Apparently there were four British diplomats who used to play whist as they rode the ferry down the Bosporus on the way to work every day.  Over time, they modified the rules.  And they named it “Bridge” because it took the place of the bridge over the Bosporus (which wasn’t built until 1974).  The Turkish National Bridge Championship was played yesterday at the convention center connected to our hotel.  And apparently bridge players are pretty compulsive because after the tournament ended there were dozens of people in the hotel lobby playing bridge….

Today’s picture is taken from the top row of seats at the theater at Aspenos.  You can see the other seats, but unfortunately only a small glimpse of the stage building on the far left.  Without a helicopter there’s no way to get a good photo of both the seats and the stage house.

Sunday 5/7. Last night we had an early dinner and got in the bus, heading for the main concert hall in Antalya..  It's a very modern building (I would guess built in the early 1990s), well designed acoustically, nicely lit, seating perhaps 1000, and with a pleasant lobby.  The concert turned out to be by the Antalya State Symphony with soloists from the Antalya State Opera.  They presented a total of six pieces, two for orchestra alone and four with singers (all from the Italian opera repertoire).  Since opera is designed to have the orchestra in a pit with singers on stage this form of concert (with everyone on stage together) always suffers from a balance problem, and this was no exception.  The singers (all Turkish) were a mixed group, with one adequate tenor and one very fine tenor, and good mezzo soprano and baritone, and one good and one questionable soprano.  There were some pitch problems in the orchestra (which is *very* unusual), and some of the singers hadn't memorized the music and were using scores (which is also *very* unusual and makes it hard to get the singers to connect with each other emotionally).  But it was a fun evening, and was certainly a good value at $6.00 per person.  (All the state concerts are subsidized and even full opera tickets are never more than $20 for a good seat.)

Today we covered about 200km from Antalya along the Turkish Riviera (also known as the Turquoise Coast) to a small town named Göcek (pronounced "Goe-jek").  The day was magnificent: clear and sunny, about 68F, with a beautiful deep blue bay outside our hotel room and a good view of the mountains.  We spent about two hours driving through the mountains (it's a national park, and the mountain is one of the three in this part of the world named Mount Olympus).  We had spectacular views down the mountain to the Mediterranean below.

Our only real stop was at the town of Demre, known in ancient times as Myra.  There were two very interesting things to see at Myra.  The first is a set of tombs cut into the wall of the mountains, dating from 300 to 100 BCE.  These are directly adjacent to a Roman Theater (a smaller version of the one we saw yesterday).  There are about 20 tombs visible from this one location, and apparently there are dozens of additional tombs elsewhere in the hills.  The carving outside the tombs is quite impressive, but the contents have long ago been plundered.

The second site here is the Church of St. Nicholas.  Apparently there is a historical Bishop of Myra named Nicholas (he lived around 300 CE) who is the source (after a long set of changes) of our Santa Claus.  As a historical figure he's best known for his behavior at the first Nicaean Council (we were at Nicaea earlier in the trip).  The major discussion at that council was around the question of the nature of Jesus: was he a human being (a prophet) or was he divine?  Apparently one of the bishops made a strong argument for the former and St. Nicholas responded by physically assaulting him.  And there are other stories that indicate this was more his nature than the fat, jolly man we now think of at Christmas.  (By the way, the Catholic church withdrew his sainthood in the 20th century for lack of evidence of his miracles.)

The plan had been to have a quick lunch and drive on to Göcek (about two hours farther on along the coast -- the roads aren't exactly flat, straight, or wide).  But Aydın (our guide) had found out that the regional finals in the oldest continuously practiced sporting competition were being held right outside Myra.  So we drove towards the port to a large open field where they had set up chairs and bleachers and watched an Oil Wrestling competition.  The men cover themselves with olive oil and then wrestle, just as they have since the 1400s.  Well, not quite.  It used to be that a competition went on until one or the other was thrown down, regardless of how long that took.  Now they wrestle for no more than 50 minutes, then (if no one wins) they go into a 10 minute period where a judge awards points for style.  This is accompanied by drums and an announcer who seems to be able to tell what is going on with about 8 simultaneous pairs of wrestlers -- I'm not quite sure how they do that (my Turkish isn't particularly good).

We watched for about 20 minutes (long enough to see one set of matches end and the ceremony marking the start of the next set of matches), then got back in the bus.  We continued about two hours along the coastline with more spectacular mountain-and-water views to the hotel.

Today's picture is from the wall of the restaurant in Demre/Myra where we had our lunch.  It seems to capture perfectly the essence of the town.  At the top is a large symbol which you see absolutely everywhere in Turkey: on the backs of cars and trucks, on walls, in the sidewalk, on bracelets, on doors, and pinned to lapels.  It's called a "nazar" and is supposed to ward off the evil eye.  It dates back at least 2000 years (similar symbols are found all over the Near East).  And you probably know the other symbol -- it's a bit more modern, dating back historically to 300 CE and with this particular image only to the early 20th century.

Monday 5/8. I’ll just tack on a quick note about May 8^th.  It was a very relaxing day.  We left the hotel at 10am for a 45 minute drive to a nearby town.  From there we boarded a boat that took us past some more cave tombs, lots of tall rushes, and out to a beautiful sand beach on the Mediterranean.  This particular beach is where the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, but that happens at night and the area is off limits at that time.  So for our purposes it was just a wonderful short boat trip, a walk along the beach, and (in my case, not Barb’s) a (very) short swim in the ocean.  Then back to the hotel and a longer swim in the pool (it wasn’t so cold and the Mediterranean is unbelievably salty!) and off to find this nice little Internet Café.  It’s 5pm here and the place (two small rooms and a balcony) is jam packed with children, probably of average age 10 years old, mostly playing with Sony Playstation 2 games….

Tuesday 5/9. Today we left our little town of Göcek and continued north along the Mediterranean coast, up into the mountains overlooking the sea.  After a brief stop for pictures we headed inland, continuing north headed for İzmir, the third largest city in Turkey.  Along the way, however, we made a quick stop at two Christian religious sites near the ancient city of Ephesus (we’re going back there tomorrow).

The first site has a fascinating history.  According to the New Testament, as Jesus was being crucified he asked John the Evangelist to take his mother, Mary, into his household.  John agreed, and there ends the story of Mary.  The story of John continues, however.  He is sent to Asia Minor (today: Turkey) to evangelize the new religion.  There’s historical evidence for this (see below).  But it was never clear whether Mary accompanied him or not – she is supposed to have ascended into heaven from a particular spot in Jerusalem, but if she was part of John’s household she would have probably gone to Turkey with him.  And there things stood for almost 2000 years.  But in the 1890s a German woman who had never visited Turkey had dreams of the Virgin Mary and described these to her local priest who later published them in a book.  She gave nearly perfect descriptions of the hills near Ephesus (about one hour drive from İzmir) and it turns out that there was a persistent legend among the locals that Mary had spent her last years in a house atop one of the hills.  A search was undertaken and the foundation of an old house was located that dates from the correct era and the views correspond to those described by the German woman.  After due consideration, the Catholic Church announced that this was, indeed, the last house of the Virgin Mary.  And there’s now a church atop the site, which is what we visited.

The second site has a clearer history.  John came to Ephesus (it was the largest city in Asia Minor/Turkey at the time, with a population of an astounding 250,000) and lived there.  He died there and his tomb is atop a hill just across a small valley from the house of Mary I described above.  Oddly enough, the hill also looks down on the ancient temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (all that’s left today is part of one pillar; the others are in the British Museum and reused to build more recent structures).  When Justinian became the ruler of Rome in the 600s CE, he had a basilica built around the tomb, and we visited the remains of that basilica.  It’s quite large, and many of the very elegant columns are still intact.  The baptismal font (they did full immersion at the time) is also in good order and many of the walls are visible but not complete.

We finished the day by driving into İzmir at rush hour..  We’re staying right downtown in the tallest building in the city (32 floors): the Hilton Hotel.  They have a very nice fitness center so I finally had a chance to get some exercise – I’m afraid that with all the excellent food (Turkish cuisine is considered one of the three finest in the world) and the lack of exercise I’m going to have to work hard to get my weight back under control.  Sigh.

Today’s picture is of the interior of St. John’s Basilica in Ephesus.  The building you see in the background is a Selcuk fortress from the 1200s.

Wednesday 5/10. Today was spent mostly visiting Ephesus..  As I mentioned in my last message, this was the largest city in Asia Minor, with a population of about 250,000.  To help recreate the true experience we invited the passengers on two cruise ships that were docked nearby to join us on our exploration of the ancient city J  We figure there were about 1,000 people there at the same time we were.  The interesting thing was how well the large public spaces of the ancient city absorbed that many people.  It was difficult to find a place for the guide to be heard as he described details that we were seeing, but otherwise it was reasonably comfortable.  Not too surprising, I suppose, given that the theatre alone could hold 24,000 people.  With the variety of languages (many Italians, from the tour boats, plus Germans, Russians, some down-under English, and French), it probably gave us something of the actual experience one would have had in the streets of the ancient cosmopolitan city.

This was, indeed, our first experience of crowds outside the modern cities.  But if you ignored that, the visit was quite interesting and impressive.  Ephesus is built on two levels, connected by a wide street with a gate to prevent carts and chariots from passing through.  The upper city was for the government activities and the houses of the very richest.  The lower city includes the library, the market place (Agora), a large theater (seats 24,000), and a stadium.  It was fun roaming around these areas, admiring the beautiful columns and the remains of the arches, lintels, and pediments.

We also visited the museum of Ephesus, whose major work is a pair of statues of Artemis.  The cult of Artemis (later Diana) took over from the earlier cult of Cybele, the mother goddess whose priests castrated themselves during their worship ceremonies.  The statues of Artemis here are very unusual, with a large number of football shaped objects on her chest (see photo).  There appear to be the following explanations for them:

• They are additional breasts, representing fertility.
• They are bull’s testicles, representing fertility.
• They are grapes, representing fertility.
• They are the the priests’ testicles, representing fertility.

On the way back we stopped at the largest synagogue in the old city of İzmir.  It was purchased from the Greek Orthodox in 1903 when they left to go back to Greece as part of the exchange of citizens I discussed earlier.  They opened the Arc for us and let us see their 5 scrolls of the Torah; the youngest of them is 200 years old!  There are about 1,500 Sephardic Jews (descendents of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492) still in İzmir, but only 5 families are active in this particular synagogue – most of the families have moved to the outskirts of the city, leaving this beautiful building in the center of the city in pretty bad financial condition.

Finally, we returned to İzmir and walked through the bazaar.  Quite fascinating – this is just a set of small streets, not covered, with hundreds of small shops.  A lot of fun, very colorful, and quite interesting.

Today’s photo is the statue of Artemis at Ephesus, from the Ephesus museum.

P.S. – Culture Note 3.  When do you think the first human intercontinental flight took place?  Wrong.  It happened in the 1600s!  Two nights ago we saw a 90 minute film (in Turkish with English subtitles) entitled “İstanbul.Beneath My Wings.”  It tells the story of an Ottoman scientist who heard the story of Icarus and became obsessed with the idea of human flight.  He comes across the diagrams created by Leonardo Da Vinci and convinces the Sultan to allow him to experiment.  The rest of the story is fascinating, the ending isn’t quite what you’d expect, but he does succeed in flying across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia.

Thursday 5/11. (Today’s message written by Barb).

Today we took an optional tour to the ancient site of Pergamum, which is about an hour and a half north of İzmir.  Our tour group of 41 people had thinned down to about 25, attrition resulting from concern about climbing a lot of steps as well as general fatigue.  Because it was quite windy, and expected to get even windier, our guide decided to visit the Acropolis of old Pergamum first.  This city was the capital of one of the successor kingdoms that followed Alexander the Great’s brief reign.  Its last king bequeathed it to Rome upon his death, and it was a major Roman city in Asia Minor for several centuries.  The Acropolis occupies a spectacular site on a very high hill with sweeping views of the surrounding hills and valleys, which include some burial tumuli that have not been excavated.  The present city of Bergama sits in the valley perhaps 600 meters below it.  Unfortunately, when we were there the view was compromised by a certain amount of haze, and our own comfort was compromised by a *very* stiff breeze that blew off a few hats that were not securely tied to their owners’ heads.  The Hellenistic section of the acropolis consisted of a temple to Zeus and Athena, the best parts of which (the friezes from the facades) form the basis of the collection of the Pergamum Museum in Berlin; the location being marked by a few levels of its steps and several graceful pine trees.  There are also some heroes’ tombs and the steepest theater in the world, which was built in the 4^th-5^th century B.C.E. and then enlarged by the Romans.  Above the theatre is the Temple to Trajan, for which the Romans built a platform onto the summit of the hill to make a larger space for the building (rather like Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem). 

After being blown around the summit of the Acropolis for about an hour, we went to the Asklepion, a mental health center of Hellenistic and Roman times.  Asklepios was a god of healing, and people would go there to be evaluated, spend some nights in a peaceful, dark room with the sound of running water, and have their dreams evaluated by the staff onsite.  We saw the ruins of the library which once held books (yes, books—parchment was invented in Pergamum in response to an Egyptian monopoly on papyrus) by Galen, who worked in Pergamum.  There was also a tunnel leading from a round building of unknown purpose to the source of a spring, a “small” theater seating 3500 people (perhaps to celebrate cures) and an area where people could take mud baths.

The Asklepion was followed by lunch at a local restaurant which gave us way more to eat than we really needed, including various kinds of shish kebabs or else spiced meatballs made of veal, which is a red meat here.

Our last stop in Pergamum was at the local museum, where we saw some of the finds from Pergamum and other nearby sites, as well as a model of the Temple of Zeus and the Turkish side of the story of how the German excavator bribed local authorities to let him take the marble friezes from it to Berlin.

After a bus ride back to İzmir, the most intrepid of the group got out at the end of a promenade that goes along the waterfront here and walked 20 minutes back to the hotel.  After sitting on the bus for an hour and a half it was a relief to walk in the sunny, breezy air and watch the activity on the water and along the waterfront.  This evening we saw a National Geographic special about Troy, which we will be seeing tomorrow. 

Today’s picture is a panorama of the theater in Pergamum with the valley in the background.  There are three levels of the theater, of which the lowest is original to the 4^th or 5^th century B.C.E. and the upper levels were added later by the Romans.

Friday 5/12. Today we drove from İzmir to Çanakkale, with stops at a small village (Demircidere) and at the ancient city of Troy.  The day started with us retracing our steps back to Pergamum for 90 minutes and then continuing north on a secondary road to the small village where we’d arranged to have lunch with local families.

This turned out to be quite fascinating.  We were met by the mayor of the village and six of the women.  The men in the village dress in what you’d consider everyday clothes for a small town in the US; but the women dressed up for us in traditional fashion (see today’s photo).  The women bake bread three days a week in one of several community ovens, and today they had baked extra loaves to share with us.  Barb was selected to help take the bread out of the ovens – these ovens are like outdoor pizza ovens, and you remove the loaves using long wooden pallets.  The bread, fresh from the oven, was just wonderful.  The village cooperatively farms many pine trees on the surrounding hillsides to grow pine nuts, which they sell for a living – about 100 tons (metric) per year.

The plan had been for us to break into groups of 6 or 7 and have each group accompany one of the women to their house for the midday meal.  All of the children were at school in the nearby town or they would have joined us (the Turkish government changed policy a year or two back – they had previously paid for each village to have its own small school, but they now bus children to central schools every day).  As it turned out, the woman who met us took us to a small but very neat house which belonged to her husband’s aunt.  The aunt had volunteered to host us (and had made the lunch) but her daughter had her first child three days earlier. Both the daughter and granddaughter were staying in a different room at the house and the grandmother was a bit too busy to handle both 6 visitors and a newborn.

The lunch was excellent: “tarhana” soup (made with fermented wheat and yogurt), beans in a tomato sauce, grape leaves stuffed with rice, and a honey-soaked pastry dessert.  And, by good luck, we were joined by a Belgian journalist who happened to be visiting the village at the same time.  He was doing research for a book he plans to publish next year (in Dutch) about the villages of Turkey’s north west coast.  He acted as our translator, so we were able to learn more about our hosts than we would with sign language and Barb’s limited Turkish.

After lunch it was back on the bus for another 90 minutes until we reached the ancient city of Troy.  We had been warned that there would not be much to see here, and in some sense that is true.  It’s nowhere near as impressive as Perge or Pergamum in terms of the beauty of the remains or the ease of understanding what you are seeing.  But from the little we knew about the history here it was altogether amazing.  According to a documentary made by the BBC in 2004, there are 9 successive cities built at this one site, one on top of the other, over a span of about 4500 years.

The site of Troy, overlooking the Dardenelles (a narrow waterway connecting Europe to Asia Minor), is of great strategic importance.  The latest theory seems to be that Homer’s story of the Trojan War (and the Trojan Horse) is essentially a historical fiction built on a real set of battles that lasted about 200 years.  In the late Bronze Age, there were three major powers in this part of the world: Egypt, Greece, and the Hittites (remember them? We saw their capital two and a half weeks ago).  Troy was allied with the Hittites, who came to defend the city when it was attacked by the Greeks.  Eventually the city of Troy fell and was burned – although it’s unlikely that the story of the Greeks leaving a wooden horse filled with a few good soldiers has any basis in fact.

Today’s picture shows the woman who met us at Demicidere and served us lunch.  You can see some of the house and some of the other guests in the background.

Saturday 5/13. I suppose a day like today has to happen on every tour (or vacation).  Things started off fine as we boarded the bus at the hotel in Çanakkale, except for the unusually large number of (pretty noisy) school children.  It’s mid-May, of course, and school is getting ready to end so it’s prime time for field trips.  We drove the short distance to the waterfront to get the bus on the ferry across the Dardanelles at their narrowest point (1 km wide, with a current of about 3 knots).  It’s a 45 minute crossing and the ferry runs every hour on the hour.  Usually.

What we found was that there was a line of about 20 buses ahead of us, largely filled with (pretty noisy) school children.  So we got off our bus and walked along the waterfront.  We visited the Trojan Horse used in the recent film “Troy” (with Brad Pitt) which is temporarily on display there – more impressive and more realistic (if the original was real, which is in quite some doubt, and if you allow for the fact that up close it looked as though it might be made of the lightweight foamy material that they use for stage sets) than the one that was set up in the 1980s at the actual site of Troy excavations.  Then we walked 10 minutes to the other end of the waterfront.  And then we waited.  And waited.  And after about 90 minutes our bus was finally brought into the loading are where we could wait for the next ferry to dock.  Fortunately they had modified the ferry schedule so they were simply running continuously (there are two ferries) and the wait was only about 35 more minutes.

The wait did give us a glimpse of what it must have been like during World War I at the battle of Gallipoli.  This started by an attempt to bring war ships into the Dardanelles to expel the Ottoman troops from the peninsula and capture the passage from the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara for the Allied forces.  This was stopped when the Ottomans managed to plant mines in the strait a mere 48 hours before the first ship arrived.  So the next attempt was by land.  And our next stop was at the site of this battle.

There’s lots of information to be had about this battle, so I’ll just say that it was sheer bad luck that the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand) troops landed where they did.  Apparently they had planned to land about a mile to the south of what’s now called ANZAC cove – on a nice, smooth, sandy beach.  Instead the strong current (and the fact that it was pitch black that morning at 4:30am) took them too far north and they landed at a smooth beach about 6 feet wide at the base of a set of sheer cliffs.  To compound their bad luck the Ottomans had stationed a mere 160 troops at the top of those cliffs because they expected the attack to come from a different direction.  But they managed to alert their headquarters (and a young commander named Mustafa Kemal, later M. K. Atatürk) who realized the importance of the information and moved the troops to position.  Neither side was able to move the other that day.   Or for the next 8 months.  The eventual death toll was about 85,000 Allied and 115,000 Ottoman troops..

It’s hard to believe that three major battles occurred within sight of this same location: Troy, Gallipoli, and one of the most important battles of the Turkish war of independence at Çanakkale.

But before we were able to get to the visitor center, we were directed by the local police to park about 50 feet away from the main parking lot because of the tremendous number of buses.  And that’s when bad luck item 2 struck.  One of the women got off the bus and walked down the slightly sandy slope which was the only way out from where we’d parked.  She lost her footing, twisted her ankle, and was unable to stand up.  While the rest of us went on to the visitor center our guide called an ambulance, which ultimately took her to the hospital 40 miles away where they found she’d broken both of the bones in her leg just above the ankle.  They put on a cast and she was able to rejoin us (now in a wheelchair) after our visit to the rest of the Gallipoli site and lunch.

After that excitement we got back on the bus for the remaining four hour drive to İstanbul.  The drive was enlivened by a pop quiz that the tourguide gave us to help us recall  the various places we’d been.  Questions included such trivia as “which famous poet was born in Smyrna/Izmir”, “Name one of the two Wonders of the Ancient World that were within the current boundaries of Turkey”, “The Trojan War involved a clash between which two ancient superpowers”, and “What is Turkey’s strongest industry?”  We were the only people on the bus to get all questions correct (or mostly so—in the case of one question we had two possible answers depending upon the interpretation of the last question above).  So, for being the nerdiest tourists on the bus we won a signed edition of the tour book that the guide had been selling.  We’re back in the same hotel we were in 18 days ago (but in a nicer room).  We’ll be spending the rest of our vacation here, leaving on Thursday morning.

Today’s picture is of the Trojan Horse used in the film “Troy” starring Brad Pitt.  It’s on the waterfront at Çanakkale, just a few miles from the excavations of the ancient city of Troy.

P.S. The answers to the above quiz questions are: “Homer”, “Either the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus or the tomb of Mausolus at Helicarnassus”, “The Hittites and the Myceneans”, and “Textiles” (In this case, our first answer was “agriculture”, but knowing that might not be considered an industry, we had textiles as the second answer).

Sunday 5/14. We spent today in İstanbul, on the last full day with the “gang of 40” – most of them return tomorrow (we’re staying on for three more days).  We visited a number of sites that we skipped at the start of our trip, and that was a very good decision by our guide: when we were first in İstanbul it was cold and raining whereas today was absolutely gorgeous, warm, and sunny.

Our first stop was the ancient hippodrome.  All that was easily visible from the square where we stopped was a pair of obelisks – one brought to Constantinople (İstanbul) by the Romans when they established it as the capitol of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.  It came from Egypt, where it had stood since about 1500 B.C.E., in about 330 C.E.  Weighing 80 tons, it was brought by boat and then erected on a marble base built specially for it.  It’s a twin of the Cleopatra’s Needle that stands in Central Park in New York City, and in perfect condition.  The second obelisk was built about 1000 B.C.E. and had been decorated with brass, gold, and silver.  Unfortunately, the 4^th crusade ransacked İstanbul and removed all the decoration from this obelisk, leaving a lump of rock which looks rather moth eaten.

We crossed the square to the Blue Mosque, built in the 1600s, and showing an almost perfect structure.  It has an immense single central dome supported by four gigantic pillars (“elephant legs”) surrounded by 4 perfect semi-circular domes.  It got its name (in English, the Turks call it Sultan Ahmet’s Mosque) from the beautiful blue-and-white tiles on the gallery walls.  We entered by the North door (removing our shoes, putting them in plastic bags, and carried them with us), walked across the mosque’s rug covered floor and exited by the South door (putting our shoes back on).

Walking across a small mall, we came to one of the most important buildings in İstanbul: the Ayasophia (Hagia Sophia).  It was built about 500 C.E. by the Roman emperor Justinian after a rebellion burned down the church that had previously occupied the site.  This is an immense structure, originally built in less than six years, and designed by two mathematicians who were commissioned to work out a way to construct the domed structure.   For almost a thousand years it was the largest church in the world.  And then the Ottomans conquered İstanbul and converted it into a mosque.  This required adding a niche facing Mecca (Southeast), an ablution fountain, and plastering over the frescoes and mosaics to create a surface for painting.  So for about 400 years it stood as an imperial mosque.  (Some say that the Blue Mosque was built just across the street to prove that Moslem architecture surpassed Christian architecture, because the Ayasophia is a domed structure but requires 8 pillars and other supporting structures.)  And then the Ottoman empire was overthrown and replaced by the Republic of Turkey.  Atatürk recognized the importance of a building of this antiquity which was considered holy by two different faiths, so he turned it into a public museum, which is its current status.  After considerable controversy they are removing much of the Moslem art in order to expose and restore the original Byzantine mosaics underneath.

We took the bus back to the hotel, grabbed a sandwich for lunch, and then walked down the street to the Military Museum.  This is not the sort of thing I usually enjoy, but several people told us that the museum itself is interesting, but that we should be absolutely certain to be there at 3pm for the military band.  And that’s not the sort of thing I normally enjoy, either, but they were emphatic that it would be worth the trip.  And it most certainly was.  The museum is what you might expect: arrows, armor, guns, cannons, and so forth.  But well displayed and some of it phenomenally beautiful (mail jackets, horse armor, Sultan’s swords and bows).  And a very interesting section telling the Turkish side of the Armenian massacre and the conflict in Cyprus.

But the high point was, indeed, the military band.  This is called the “Mehter” (pronounced “mech-tar”) and dates back several hundred years – the Western European military band was modeled on this Ottoman band.  A full band consists of 9 players of each instrument (9 has a positive magical connotation), and 6 instruments: small paired kettle drums, bass drums, bells on poles (the players also sing), an instrument resembling a very loud oboe or shaum, cymbals, and a small instrument rather like a trumpet.  Plus one pair of immense drums, like a modern tympani but not capable of being tuned (and traditionally played by sitting on a horse with one drum on either side).  In addition, there are standards bearers and a conductor.  The concert here used a reduced band with only 5 players on each instrument and a concert hall holding about 1000 people (with standing room only).

They start the concert with a slide show for about 5 minutes telling the history, and so forth.  Then the giant screen you’ve been watching slides to the left exposing a cargo-size doorway to the outside garden and the band marches in, playing as they come.  It’s an incredible performance, with a kind of music that’s very percussive and rhythmic but with the oboes and trumpets (and sometimes voices) providing a very clear melody. Not much harmony, and oddly enough the brass was harder to hear than the woodwinds, but quite impressive.  They were in full Ottoman garb, with bright red coats for the singers and instrumental section leaders, dark blue for the rest of the instrumental sections, plus some flag bearers and armored Ottoman soldiers thrown in for visual appeal.  Everyone in the corps had an Ottoman-style mustache, but there were no beards.  And some of the children in the audience danced in place, and several Turks apparently knew the songs and could be seen mouthing the words to the choruses.

Back to the hotel for the farewell dinner. And, as Aydın (our guide) had warned us, an unusual Sunday evening.  Tonight the two leading İstanbul football (soccer) teams are playing their last games.  Not against each other, but away games at two different locations.  But for the first time in many years the national championship winner isn’t already known (neither team had enough points to win the title).  So the national title is being decided, and one local team or the other will win it.  So they are all gathering at Taksim square, just outside our window, to celebrate … and in fact it was decided about 30 minutes ago (Galatasaray—the team from our side of the Golden Horn-- won) and the horns and guns are still going off.  And probably will be going all night…

Today’s photo is the Blue Mosque with the garden that separates it from the Ayasofya.

P.S. Drums have just now been added to the cacophony going on in the streets below.  I haven’t heard anything like this since I was in Rome when Italy won the World Cup semi-final match in that city.

Monday 5/15. Today was a "free day" since the majority of the others returned home today.  There are 12 of us staying on, including the woman who broke her leg (Margaret).  That saga continues.  It was a bad break, affecting both of the bones of the lower leg, just above the ankle.  The local doctors have agreed that she will require surgery and they have also both (independently) refused to sign a medical release allowing her to fly.  She's planning on calling her doctor at home to get his opinion, because she'd rather have surgery at home than here (even though everyone agrees that the medical care here is at US standard, it's certainly better to be where your family and friends are located and where you speak the language!)

My father has a friend, Fikri Ertukel, who was born and raised in Turkey but then came to the US and lived there for 46 years.  Two years ago he and his wife returned to İstanbul to be near to his sister and daughter.  His wife passed away some time in the last year so he lives by himself with a housekeeper and driver (he's 86 and is recovering from a broken leg himself).  He came over to pick us up and give us a driving tour of the part of İstanbul that's in Asia Minor, across the Bosporus from us.

It was a delightful day, driving first parallel to the Bosporus so we could see the Yalı (houses on the Bosporus) that we'd seen on our boat ride almost three weeks ago, this time from the road rather than the river.  We stopped for tea and enjoyed the gorgeous weather and the nice view back across to Europe.  Then we wound through some nicely wooded neighborhoods to his apartment.  This was a wonderful flat with a balcony overlooking the Sea of Marmara and a small beach below, directly across from a marina with a large number of yachts.  His housekeeper served us a wonderful lunch on the balcony.

Then we got back in the car and drove through a shopping district that was reminiscent of what you'd see in any large European city like London or Paris: big stores, lots of people, and some nice apartments interspersed (and even a Starbucks).  It turns out he's decided to move to one of these apartments next month, largely to be even closer to his daughter (but partly because the current apartment constantly reminds him of the last days he spent with his wife).

By this time it was mid-afternoon and he was feeling too tired to face the drive back across the Bosporus and the traffic on the European side, so we dropped him at his flat.  His driver took us back and dropped us at the hotel.  I found the exercise room and (finally) did a bit of running, had a sauna, and decided to relax and write this note.

Today's photo is of Fikri, Barb, and me on the balcony at Fikri's flat.

Tuesday 5/16. Well, this trip is drawing to a close.  Today is our last day touring as a group, and we had a wonderful time.  Now that there are only 12 of us, we’re using a mini-van instead of a bus and we don’t make nearly as much of a crowd as we move around.

We started by taking a short drive along a major highway that runs just outside of the city walls, catching glimpses of them as we went past.  Our first stop was an early Christian church (the Chora Church, built in the 400s C.E.) that was originally just outside the walls.  It was covered with wonderful mosaics and frescoes from the 1100s, towards the end of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire.

From there we went back to the center of the old city, just across from the Blue Mosque.  There’s an entrance to the old cistern that held the city’s water supply after it came in from the system of aqueducts that surrounds İstanbul.  It was restored in 1985 and is referred to locally as “the underground palace”.  It’s hard to imagine – 70m wide by 140m long and about 10m high.  There’s just a small amount of water in it today, to give an idea of what it must have been like.  You walk down a set of stairs to a floor that’s about 2 meters above the bottom of the cistern, and look down at a meter of water.  The artificial lights caused algae to grow, so they put in carp to eat the algae, so you are inside a large aquarium.  And holding up the roof are 332 roman columns that had been simply taken from ruins around the area when the cistern was constructed.  It’s a truly impressive sight – vast open space, dark, with only the lighted columns visible.  Two of the columns are particularly highlighted: they stand atop large marble slabs carved with the head of Medusa, but the slabs are deliberately placed one upside down and the other on its side.  Current theory is that this was done to demonstrate the superiority of the Christians (who built the cistern) over the pagans that preceded them. (Based upon the style and size of the Medusa heads, it is thought that they were taken from the temple to Apollo at Didyma.)

Lunch at a nice hotel built into the Bosphorus city walls and then on to the Archaeology Museum.  The group spent 90 minutes visiting the main building here (there are four buildings).  It’s devoted to Troy and the Roman period.  There’s far too much to discuss, but three things were very special to us. 

1. The Alexander Sarcophagus.  Alexander the Great wasn’t buried inside it, but the outside is decorated with intricately carved scenes, one of which shows a great battle led by Alexander.  The sarcophagus actually belongs to someone who fought in the battle and then was appointed to a position by Alexander, and the purpose of the carvings appears to be to commemorate the times he met with the great Alexander.  Particularly interesting at this time is a reproduction of a small (12” x 12” or so) section of that carving which was displayed alongside it.  The sarcophagus itself is, as we usually see such things today, pure white.  The tile shows the results of a recent scientific analysis where they searched for remains of pigments and discovered that it had originally been painted.  The tile is painted according to the results of that study, and it is stunningly beautiful.
2. The marker from Jerusalem.  Last year we went to Jerusalem and visited the City of David (just across the valley from Jerusalem).  There had been an ancient city there and it had an elaborate water system which was excavated in the late 19^th or early 20^th century.  They found that part of it was a long tunnel under the mountain and it had been built by digging from both ends.  There was a commemorative plaque placed (by the original builders under one of the Judean kings) at the point where the two tunnels connected, describing how they had managed to make them meet.  Don’t ask me how it got to İstanbul, but we had been looking forward to seeing it and there it was.
3. Painted statues.  There is a special exhibit this month at the museum where they show reproductions of a large number of statues from various museums, painted as they would have been originally.  This is in addition to the work done on the Alexander Sarcophagus.  They had placed the painted statues in the wing of the building that holds their own statues (the sarcophagi are in a different wing) so you could compare the painted and unpainted statues from the same periods, side-by-side.  Some of the reproductions (but not many) were actually of items in the museum and these could then be compared with the original directly.

At this point we bid farewell to the tour group and took off on our own.  We went to two more buildings in the museum complex.  One is about the development of the glazed tiles in Turkey and the other is about oriental cultures.  This latter museum had tiles from the Ishtar Gate, a magnificent structure covered with tiles with raised pictures of various animals (predominantly lions) that are painted and glazed.  There were also some cuneiform documents (including an exact copy of the Treaty of Kardesh, first peace treaty ever written out, between a Hittite emperor and an Egyptian pharaoh), and some monolithic stone lions that we particularly admire from the Assyrian and Hittite periods.

We took the city tram across the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn and visited the Jewish Museum.  This is a 3-story synagogue that has been turned into a museum.  The entry floor is a history of the Jews under the Ottoman empire (which welcomed them when they were expelled from Spain in 1492, and then saved thousands during World War II).  The upper floor is the gallery where the women prayed and serves to hold an exhibit about women in Judaism on one side and about famous Turkish Jews on the other.  The lower floor is an ethnographic exhibit with wedding gowns, Kettubim (marriage contracts), and so forth.

A block away from that museum is what our guide tells us is the third oldest subway system in the world.  Built in the 1870s by a French engineer, it has exactly two stops: one at the edge of the Golden Horn where the active port was located, and the other atop the high hill above it where the main shopping district had been located.  The engineer convinced the Sultan that it would help commerce if people didn’t have to climb the hill to do their shopping.  So it was built, but then the local governor didn’t believe that it was safe to use and for three years it was only used to move animals and goods.  Eventually it was opened for human transport.

The upper station is at the lower end of a long pedestrian street (well, mostly pedestrian: there’s a tram that runs along it and for some reason there are occasional taxis or other cars, too) which runs right into Taksim square, where our hotel is located.  We arrived there at about 6:15pm (after a brief stop for a sandwich for dinner) just in time to meet up with a few others from our group who had decided to go to the opera.  We met in the lobby at 7pm for the three block walk through a park to the opera house.  We saw a good performance of Madam Butterfly (for 10 lira each, about $7.50) with Turkish singers and Turkish supertitles.  Then home and to bed.

Today’s picture is of the head of a statue.  On the right you see the original.  On the left, the reproduction with the winged cap added back and paint applied as it would have appeared originally.

Wednesday 5/17. It was a wonderful, relaxing way to end our vacation: a ferry up and down the Bosporus.  We went with four others from the tour group by taxi to the main ferry terminal, directly opposite the New Mosque and the Spice Bazaar.  At 10:35am the “Bosporus Tour” ferry departs, which runs the same route that was used 30 years ago when I first visited İstanbul.  At that time there were no bridges across the Bosporus (now there are two) and this route was the major transportation means for many of the 2,000,000 people living in İstanbul (now there are over 15,000,000).  This ferry runs only twice a day now, mostly for tourists; the rest of the day there are frequent ferries covering smaller routes and serving more isolated communities.

It takes about 2 hours to go from downtown to the last point on the run, a small village 1 km from the opening to the Black Sea.  The village is at the bottom of a hill, and on the top of the hill is the ruin of a crusader castle.  On either side of the ruin is a restricted military area (that’s why the ferry doesn’t go the extra kilometer or two: there are no public areas on the Asia Minor coast of the Black Sea for a long distance).  We got off the ferry and left our companions (who have an average age somewhere near 80) in the village while we followed a small trickle of people up the hill to the castle.  We wandered around for a bit, took some photos, had a leisurely lunch and came back down in time to catch the 3pm departure back to İstanbul.

Today’s picture is of a surprise companion on the cruise from downtown İstanbul to the entrance of the Black Sea.  It was going the other way when it passed us.

P.S – Errata 2: About a week ago I mentioned how much a coincidence it was that there were three important battles within sight of the Dardanelles (Troy, Gallipoli, and Çanakkale).  It’s a little less of a coincidence: Çanakkale is just the name used in Turkish for the World War I battle that we call Gallipoli in English.