Old Ankara – Day 5

Having had two nights sleep, I think we are finally getting caught up on sleep after the frenetic days just after we arrived in Turkey. Breakfast was scrounged from what was left in the fridge — bread, honey, cheese, cucumbers and coffee.

Phil, Rob, the girls and I went down to the university bus stop and waited for the bus to Siddhiye. As soon as we were off the bus in Ankara, we realized that we had no idea where to get the bus in order to get back. The destination that we had in mind was the Musuem of Anatolian Civilizations. While on the real streets, we could follow the map, but once we entered the narrow market streets, we had to follow our noses. And our noses pointed up. Up, up, up. And we got there.

We enjoyed the museum; I particularly liked the architecture of the old market building that houses the anatolian (Hittie, Roman, Greek and more) treasures. After leaving the museum, we continued out climb to reach the top of the hill. (All the guide books recommend a taxi for the walking up and up.) We made our way into the wall protected old city. We felt like we were in a different place; the buildings were old and the streets were very narrow.

We found our way up to the east “tower”; we walked around on the walls … straight dropoffs high in the air with no railings; it made me nervous with the girls! The views from the top were absolutely amazing, however!

From there, it was all downhill! We stopped in a restaurant for some lunch. We all ordered pita “pizzas” and gozleme, filled pancakes. A huge plate of salad came along with it. Our waitress had to run out to the grocery store to get the drinks that we ordered. The food was great! As we were paying, the electricity came on, and we started to hear all the noisy music; it was much nicer with the power off! The waitress handed us each piece of an amethyst geode.

We continued down the hill. When we got to the Siddhiye bridge, we couldn’t figure out where to catch the university us. We walked up and down the bridge trying to find the bus, but finally gave up and decided to take a dolmus. Thankfully, we were able to hop on one that wasn’t as crowded as the other ones that we saw.

We got off near the gate and went into the grocery store for some groceries, then hiked up the hill despite the storm. None of us got hit by lightning.