The hard program
As we planned our time in Turkey, I had a request: to spend the fortnight leading up to Christmas in a single place. In order to earn our peaceful holiday, we devoted the preceding eleven days to an ambitious road trip that looped around the western half of the country. We drove from the Istanbul airport to Canakkale (renowned for the archeological site of Troy and the Dardanelles), then south through Izmir to Selçuk (where we toured the incredible ancient site at Ephesus), then further south to Bodrum, a resort peninsula that’s apparently insane in the summertime but was sedate and rainy in early December, giving us a needed breather. After four days in Bodrum, we packed up again and drove northeast to Pamukkale, then further north to our last stop before returning to Istanbul, Safranbolu, a historic town awarded UNESCO heritage status for its Ottoman architecture.
I’ll be honest: when we arrived in Safranbolu after ten days on the road and, more to the point, eight straight hours in a Renault Clio (French for ‘clown car’), we were utterly spent. We parked at our guesthouse, did our best to interact with our lovely hosts like regular humans, tumbled down the hill into town for dinner, then trudged back up and collapsed in exhaustion.
The following day at breakfast (which, can I just say, breakfast? Turkey for the win! Breakfast in Turkey appears to be a combination of fresh vegetables, fresh and aged cheeses, olives and eggs), I asked our host where we should spend the day, our only full one in Safranbolu. “I will give you hard program,” he said, nodding vigorously.
“Oh,” I said. Taking a pen, he listed seven stops on the day’s itinerary. When Brian said we’d be back to the guest house in the afternoon, our host looked skeptical.
“Evening,” he said, cocking his head. OH GREAT.
Our first stop was a cave. As I’ve mentioned before, caves are decidedly not my jam. Nonetheless we paid our entry fee (five Turkish lira for the kids; seven each for Brian and me) and climbed the hundreds of stairs to the mouth of the cave, one of the hosts scurrying ahead to flip on the lights. The cave itself was actually quite wonderful, nearly half a kilometer long, well lighted and barely claustrophobic, even for me. (Joe only held my hand during a few dicey sections.)
Along the way, we found a number of bats sleeping inverted.
Next on our list: something called the Crystal Terrace. Now, “terrace” is the word used here in Turkey to translate the massive travertine formations we toured in Pamukkale, so when I saw the name Crystal Terrace, I assumed we were looking at a kind of secondary travertine. Right away, I copped a bad attitude. We’d already seen the best travertine; why did I need to visit a second, inferior one? My attitude worsened as we approached the attraction and passed a house that had been built to appear upside down, exactly the kind of engineered entertainment I loathe. But as it turned out, the Crystal Terrace was simply a glass bottomed observation deck built over a lovely canyon. We paid a nominal fee (I think around 20 Turkish lira for the family) to enjoy the view, then another fee (similarly modest) to descend via steps and boardwalks to the bottom of the canyon.
Helpful advice as we approached the observation deck
(Prancing) scofflaw
Halfway down, we wandered through a “cave cafe” where a man and woman served us Turkish coffee and çay at a small table placed in a carved out rock. To say we were delighted is a deep understatement.
Once down in the bottom of the canyon, we meandered to one edge and out of the canyon; on our left we passed a small stable with two of the resident horses tied to trees outside and two men milling around, engaged in chores. Joe will write a bit more later about his experience with these horses.
In which Joe finagles a horse ride for $1.25
Finally, as we climbed back out of the canyon, we saw an ancient aqueduct in the distance.
Our next stop was the village of Yörük (Turkish for ‘nomad’). We had no idea what to expect as we drove up a narrow gravel incline and the town came into view; here was similar Ottoman era architecture as in Safranbolu but in even more dilapidated repair; it was almost heartbreaking to drive slowly through the narrow streets of Yörük village and see these amazingly tall half-timbered structures, hundreds of years old, in the undeniable process of decaying and eventually, falling down. Shutters hung limply. Doors were rotted. Some buildings had clearly been marked for demolition.
We parked the car and wandered up the street toward sounds of life. Unexpectedly, there was a restaurant doing what appeared to be a brisk lunch business. It was rapidly clear that no one at the restaurant spoke a lick of English and our Turkish, despite two weeks of, erm, let’s call it medium effort, remains underdeveloped. I solved this dilemma by ordering the entire menu: one each of six flavors of gözleme, baklava and çay or ayran for the table. Our waiter seemed initially incredulous but then thought the better of arguing with me – because, how could he? As the food began to appear, steaming gözleme coming out of a long room with a wood-fired oven at the far end, we soon had more plates stacked around the small table than space for each new dish.
Puppy!
Fortunately, we were hungry from our active morning and cheerfully raced to keep up, shoving folded bites of buttery gözleme into our mouths, one after another. I’m proud to say, we ate every bite, save two squares of baklava we brought along for a later snack.
And while the boys were eating the last minced meat gözleme, Brian seated himself near the oven to watch the cooking. Later he told me he had wanted to ask permission to shoot a video but felt it would be rudely intrusive.
A centuries old washroom open to the public
Next up: the chocolate museum. Despite the fact that every stop so far had resulted in a surprise delight, I was mentally dragging my heels about this supposed chocolate museum. I assumed the museum to be an exhibit about chocolate itself, maybe about the history of chocolate or the making of chocolate. And let’s face it: Turkey isn’t exactly famous for chocolate. A chocolate museum in Switzerland, maybe. A chocolate museum in Turkey … hayir teşekkürler. But the hard program said “chocolate museum”. So we pointed our car in a confectionary direction. We entered the chocolate museum through an empty cafe that opened into a high-ceilinged candy store with long glass cases the length of the room. A young man behind the cash register expressed surprise when we asked to pay the modest entry fee to the museum (six Turkish lira each), then escorted us behind the register and into a large, dimly lit room. He proceeded to get into a rather heated argument with an elfin young woman as she literally hopped from foot to foot. Ultimately I realized they were arguing about who had to babysit the Americans. As they argued in Turkish and after my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I looked around. It wasn’t, as I had assumed, a museum about chocolate. It was a museum created from chocolate. All around me were chocolate reproductions of various local buildings, monuments and attractions: a large historic mosque, the nearby bath house, an elaborate government building, Ottoman era architecture, the Crystal Terrace with its upside down house, and even the cave we had visited hours before.
My attitude about caves improves
As we walked through this weird, campy, and frankly delightful room, our guide continued to hop from foot to foot and apologize for her English (which was more than adequate). “I’m so excited,” she said.
“You’re perfect,” we told her.
“I’m nervous,” she said. I squeezed her shoulder and smiled. “Is it OK?” she asked, more than once.
“It’s awesome,” we told her. And you know what? It was. We bought way too much chocolate on the way out the door and continued down the road, back to Safranbolu.
By this time, it was mid afternoon and frankly, spirits were high. We parked across from our last stop, a panoramic site, again paid a modest entrance fee (three Turkish lira each) and walked across a small flagstone terrace to a balustraded lookout.
Safrabolu spread out beneath us with its gleaming mosque and characteristic Ottoman houses, rendered picturesque by distance and haze. We took a moment to enjoy the view before heading back down the steps and into town for Turkish delight of all sorts.
