En route to one of Turkiye’s most magical places, we stopped in a place a little less magical, but certainly worthy of a stopover…the cosmopolitan capital of Ankara. We were also fortunate to arrive in this thriving city of 5.5 million people on the 100th Anniversary of a date which helped sealed the deal for Turkiye becoming a republic: Victory Day. This meant, lots of flags, lots of Ataturk sound bites, and lots of parades.

Despite its modern vibe, we chose to stay near the historic center of the city so we could appreciate the Ottoman architecture, some behemoth platters of Turkishness and take in the glory of the Ankara Castle first founded in the years BC.

The historic bazaar leading up to the castle was lively and stuffed with lots of fun shopping. The contrast between the historic Ottoman architecture meets modern in the background is striking.

Turkish people seem to drink tea at least 30 times a day (yes, slight exaggeration!) In reality, it’s probably more like 10-12.

Arriving to the castle walls. The giant flags and photos of Ataturk were plastered everywhere. We’re not sure if this was due to Victory Day, or likely just the norm. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the first president of Turkiye from 1923 to 1938 and was implemental in the country’s history following the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in fall 2022. He led the Turkish National Movement, creating modern Turkiye and established Turkish as its official language and made it a more secular nation. 

The puzzle pieced castle walls have been through a LOT. The castle grounds were first founded in the 8th century BC by the Phrygians and rebuilt in 278 BC by the Galatians. The castle underwent several renovations during the Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman eras. Both set of walls were constructed using large quantities of reused masonry. 

What to do with this pesky Roman ruins? And this other builder clearly didn’t know which was up from down in the Latin alphabet.

A group of paraders gather prior to the celebrations

Ho hum…heading through another castle wall. 

Greeting the Ankara skyline atop the castle. Wow, if this walls could talk, they’d have some dirty little secrets!

Mandy, in fact, did not cut off her legs (she wanted to sometimes in the last five months) but this does look a little trippy. 

Heading back down, we encountered many layers of Ottoman architecture. Just incredible. 

It was a pleasant area to stroll around in for a couple hours. 

This is a very elaborate historic Turkish tea maker is called a semaver. As you can see, the water is heated by fire. This open flame and heated contraption is perched on an unsteady table with lots of screaming, flailing children around ?

Tucked away alleyways lead to cafes and galleries.

This man was sitting in a barber chair with a lap full of kittens.

Taking a photo of a photo being made. Opposite of photo bombing?

Loved the muted primary colors on this facade. And the antique shopping was unreal! Not that we could take anything “home” ?

Settling in for what we wanted to be a “light” dinner. ? It’s always fun to go to dinner that offers no menu and see what you get. For the record, vegetarian in Turkiye seems to mean, you don’t eat red meat, but chicken must not be considered meat. What a pile of kebab!!

And yum….the bread! Served piping hot and with dipping options like yogurt with parsley, and spicy chopped tomatoes and peppers.

But the best part of the $15 meal? The fresh foamy Aryan which was astonishingly served from a flowing fountain. Since we’d only had the little blue cup and grocery store bottle variety, this was quite a treat. 

As a reminder, Aryan is a Turkish yogurt drink made of only three ingredients: yogurt, water and salt, which is a popular drink all across the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Healthy, refreshing and SO very yummy!  

Our three star hotel room was $25, but we only paid $10 because we had cash back rewards from Booking.com. They, unlike Airbnb, sure understand the value of customer reward, which is why we’ve started switching to them more and more.

It also included a dazzling city view, AC and windows thick enough NOT to hear the call to prayer for our first time in 30 days and an enormous buffet breakfast after our “light” dinner last night. Needless to say, we’re eating a lot in this country ?

From modern Ankara, we climbed aboard another 3-hour bus bound for Göreme, home of Türkiye’s mega magical destination of Cappadocia. This nearly vacant sweat box featured no windows (that opened) and no A/C, quite opposite from the icebox we glided along from Istanbul to Ankara. However, we did get a friendly bus attendant named Ahmet who adorned us with Google Translate conversation about family, piles of sugary snacks and environmentally friendly two shot water cups, even when we attempted to politely refuse them. After all, we were only a handful of clients and he had to put those Tutku cookies somewhere…

Buying bus tickets in Türkiye has been a bit challenging so far, which we don’t remember from our last visit. The local bus websites exist, are user friendly, and in English. However, when you go to check out, our credit cards wouldn’t work or we needed a Turkish ID number. We finally decided to pay (extra) for FlixBus, a tried and true bus company for the convenience of using our card. 

Also, the email confirmation you receive neglects to inform you that the familiar green and orange FlixBus is actually disguised in blue, white and grey and plastered with the name Kamil Koc. A wee confusing when there is also no departure board information and scores of buses ?. 

Our personal 7-11 courtesy of Flix Bus/Kamil Koc bus chariots. 

Oh…If you could feel the sweat flowing off these two fine gentlemen ?

No wonder they drink so much Aryan here because there is no shortage of salt in this country! Tuz Gölü, or Salt Lake, is southeast of Ankara and is one of the saltiest lakes in the world containing over 32% of salt content. It is also quite large—60×80 kilometers. While the water level rises in winter, in the summer the water accumulated completely evaporates and turns the lake into a dry sheet of salty goodness.

Our route from Istanbul to Göreme. The first ride was 5 hours and the second was 3.5. It was not overly cheap at $32 total per ticket. There is actually a cheaper high speed train option from Istanbul to Ankara but it was shockingly sold out a week prior to our departure, probably because of Victory Day (which we didn’t know about until Ataturk activity started flying in front of our faces!)

August: it’s a wrap! For one month on the outskirts of Istanbul, we ended up being $155 over budget. Although everything was incredibly inexpensive, we splurged on our housing this month, which was well worth it thanks to the pool, sea views and healing we did!