Turkey Archives • Page 2 of 3 • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

May 3, 2025May 3, 2025

Amazing Cappadocia churches

if you travel to Turkey and decide to go to Cappadocia make sure you visit the historical open air Museum including the best preserved and amazing Cappadocia churches.

Explanation of the various churches carved out of rock

Horse stables for tourist riding adventures in the area

Camel riding at amazing Cappadocia churches — You can ride a camel or a horse around a small area

Yogurt with vegetables — Yogurt on top vegetables and beans

Church explanation — An explanation of the churches

Ancient script on amazing Cappadocia churches — Ancient script probably referring to somebody’s burial and some ancient defacers writing as well

Sitting area — People could sit around here

Carved out of stone and decorated — Amazing carve outs

View from the top — Another view from the top

Gathering place — Another place for people together and sit and eat

Body placement — Another place for bodies

Defaced religious figures — These artwork figures representing religious people were defaced

High up entranceways — They had many tunnels and levels so you could enter at a lower level and then go up through the tunnels which were very difficult to walk through due to height

A dugout complex — Another dugout complex

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Exploring Topkapi palace is a must when visiting Istanbul. This is the palace of the sultans. You need about three hours at least if you want to just walk through slowly and enjoy the different rooms and details. You need a few hours more to study everything.

European style room. Exploring Topkapi — The rooms are extremely ornate and some of them like this one employed European styles

Ornate robe — The robes were extremely ornate

Greeting room — One of the main greeting rooms

Eastern design. Exploring Topkapi — Using mostly eastern designs

Beautiful colors — The colors even on the chair upholstery is amazing

A sultan. Exploring Topkapi — One of the sultans

Lighter colors — A Lighter coordinated design arrangement

Starry night replications? — The ceilings remind me of conglomerations of stars

French designed throne — French designed thrown. You will see a light blue used in the emblem which was also used in France for the royal family

Beautiful calligraphy — Arabic calligraphy is kind of mind blowing

Washing basin — A place for Royals to wash

Eastern design throne — A very eastern designed throne. It doesn’t really look very comfortable though. I hope they used some pillows.

Sultans shoes — Shoes of the sultan and other items

A prophet's letter — A letter supposedly written by Muhammad

Mohammed footprint — This is supposed to be the footprint of Mohammed. He must’ve had extremely gigantic feet. It reminds me of the footprint moldings of the Buddha.

Mohammed's walking stick — Mohammed’s walking stick

Ornate things — The ornateness of everything was incredible

The Palace library. You will notice there is very good lighting here

Beautiful designs — I love the decorations and designs

April 15, 2025April 15, 2025

Beautiful Cappadocia surroundings

if you visit make sure you take in all of the Beautiful Cappadocia surroundings. I went when there was snow on the ground and it was pretty cold which gives it a very different atmosphere from the summertime and the peak tourist season. You can visit anytime and I recommend going when you like the kind of weather and scenery you will find there. Most people will not visit in the winter time but you can get some amazing scenery and photos that few people have.

Hillside living styles — 4000s of years people have been repurposing the hills and the hillsides for different kinds of living styles

Deep snow driving — in the early morning driving was a little challenging in the deep snow

Amazing breakfast — I normally don’t eat much for breakfast and the place I stayed provided an amazing variety for the morning

Valley lifestyle — Most people are now living in the valleys

Interesting dugouts — an amazing way to live

Good pizza — This is kind of a hybrid Italian and Turkish style pizza which was very nice

Turkish beer protected — This is the famous Turkish beer which is very nice and you will see a foil covering on the top to keep it clean which I found to be an interesting way to protect the contents and the can

I had to go visit this Korean restaurant which had very edible food but if you know a lot about Korean food you might want to try some other restaurant

April 4, 2025April 4, 2025

Learning about Hittites

when I was in school somewhere I heard about the Hittites and so while I was learning about The Hittites they didn’t really come into focus until I visited this ancient city and castle in Turkey. The long history of this area is very interesting and I recommend stopping by for a couple hours, hiring one of the guides here, and learning about the people who occupied Hattusa thousands of years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites

Cast explanation — Explanation of the castle

Castle on the hill — Learning about the head tights from the castle, the highest point in the city

Stone Castle — A very extensive stone built complex

Ancient writing — Some ancient writing on the wall

Solar farm — An interesting place for a solar farm

Feature explanation — Explanation of some features

City entranceway — One entranceway to the city

Yet to be excavated — You could see some remnants of ancient buildings which have yet to be completely excavated

Below is Lionsgate because it has lions at the entrance

Restored lion artwork — Some of the artwork has been restored

A formidable lion — What it looked like originally

More foundations — Foundations waiting for further excavation

Underground entrance — An underground entranceway

Looks like a huge jadeite Stone — This huge stone looks very much like jadeite. It was used for ceremonies of some kind

Door foundation — This was a doorway foundation and you can still see the scratch markings where the door impacted the foundation as it opened and closed

Temple explanations — Some temple explanations

City wall rebuilding — Part of the city wall has been rebuilt

Temple entrance — The temple entranceway artwork

Temple entrance explanation — The temple entrance explanation

No city nearby — This place is very remote

March 24, 2025March 24, 2025

Inspecting Topkapi episode 1

By inspecting Topkapi you are looking into the whims and interests of the sultanates of the Ottoman Empire. Save about three hours to walk around this palace and the areas and look very closely at design details. There is a beauty here which is an amalgamation from many different cultures which can’t give you some insight into the thinking of past generations. After I visited I remembered there was a movie “Topkapi” so I went back to see that and it was about a heist in this palace and it’s a kind of an interesting movie. You can see where a famous mission impossible movie scene was copied. I won’t spill the beans. You will just need to watch the movie and enjoy the limited view of the palace until you get a chance to visit.

Explanation of the term "harem" — After you enter the palace and if you start on the left side you will first enter the harem which is an extremely important and beautiful part of the palace. Make sure you understand the meaning of the word “harem” because it is incorrectly construed most of the time.

Inspecting Topkapi door — Beautiful door

Beautiful round decoration on the ceiling with Arabic in the middle

Beautiful window — Very decorative window

The black eunuchs — The eunuchs from Africa

The palace was named ‘Topkapi’ in the 1800s, meaning ‘cannon gate. ‘ Before that, it was simply known as the New Palace. It was commissioned by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1459, soon after he took over Constantinople.

Breakfast offering — This was one of the very simple breakfast offerings which you can see has very distinct and separate elements such as olives, tomatoes, cucumber, cold cuts, pastry and bread

March 21, 2025March 21, 2025

Visit Underground Cappadocia

when you visit underground Cappadocia the first thing you might think is the people were very short, not taller than 3 feet. They built these catacombs by digging in the rock for so many years is probably difficult to determine how many. They made the passages short so any people raiding the area would have to crouch down to get through the passage and that means it would be extremely difficult for them to fight. Try walking through the many levels of carved tunnels and you will come to understand why people left these rock dwellers alone. It’s one of the most interesting living arrangements made by humans.

Staircase to another level — The stairways to other levels are narrow and curve around so enemies could never see what’s in the distance.

Difficult lighting — I really wonder how they would have lighted these tunnels without creating a deadly breathing environment. But maybe the breathing environment was deadly.

Gathering area — There are larger areas where they lived and stayed for longer periods of time and which branch off to different tunnels and levels

Very short passage ways — You can see how difficult it is to get through this place quickly which was probably the purpose of the structure. If you visit you will find yourself getting extremely tired bending down and walking at the same time. These people must’ve been very sturdy

Holes in the walkways — There are holes in the passage ways which the guide explained were used for storing things but also for providing traps for enemies coming through. But can you imagine rotting bodies in those holes? Maybe they had a removal crew.

Grates on the holes — now there are grates over the holes but they are good traps once the grates are removed

Cross-section showing levels — This cross-section shows six or more levels carved inside the limestone rock but they were probably more

Snowing on the roads — Driving back to the hotel in the snow. Yes it snows heavily in Turkey and I hit a lot of of it

Beautiful snowy countryside — But you can see that the snow adds beauty to the countryside

A Turkish beer — The Turkish beer is very tasty and very good after a long day of driving and walking through tunnels and avoiding the large Chinese tour groups

March 20, 2025March 20, 2025

Istanbul interesting stuff

Istanbul interesting stuff is all over the place. Make sure you walk slowly and pay attention to very small things wherever you go. One thing to note is you will enjoy looking at all the different restaurants with food from all over the world. Don’t hesitate to try them out. I found the quality of food and turkey to be extremely good.

Old Temple — a temple in the old bazaar area

A hookah user — a hookah used at a local Turkish coffee shop. It can get pretty noisy with all the bubbling sounds

National Republic Monument — The national Republic Memorial atTaksim

A Christmas tree — Interesting decoration at this time of year, February

A church — a somewhat secluded church dedicated to Saint Anthony of Pauda

Bar Street — an alleyway of bars near Pera palace Hotel. Be a little bit careful here. The bartender put a bowl of peanuts on the table with the beer and no comment. Later he tried to charge me quite a bit of money for the peanuts which I refused to pay.

Unwittingly charged peanuts — These are the peanuts for which I was unwittingly charged

A stew — an interesting meat stew with bread and tea which is normally free but they tried to charge the tourists for tea

A wrap kebab — This was one of my favorites which I always hoped they provided with the light green colored spicy pepper pickles

You can see from the pictures above that they are trying to say the Ottoman ice cream is served in flat layers

Pink tea — I didn’t know there was such a thing as pink tea leaves

Seafood at the port — This was down at a fish restaurant at the fishing port which was fairly expensive and not much seafood. I didn’t think it was worth it

Cat heaven — at the port with all the fish being sold in the open this fellow is in heaven

Model of cable car — This is a model of the old Hill cable car

Dubai chocolate — I didn’t know until I came here that Dubai made chocolate and it is so famous but I was not interested in trying it

Typical food — You will see this is sort of the typical arrangement with some meat or main vegetable dish and then raw vegetables and stuff just put on the side

A view of Istanbul — a view of Istanbul from my favorite coffee shop. They also serve delicious ice cream

Weapon storage — I wonder where they keep the arrival weapons at the airport

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025

Along the Turkey Coast

for the slow traveler I highly recommend traveling south along the Adriatic/mediterranean coastline and visiting all the different little towns and some bigger towns along the turkey coast. There seems to be quite a bit of seafood and interest in scuba diving but I haven’t investigated that very much. But I haven’t really had any bad food in my six weeks travel and I don’t know how the scuba diving is. Try them out and see if they are to your liking.

Campers on the coast — Campers come from all over to enjoy the Adriatic coast and sunsets

Islands along the coast — Some of the islands along the coast are within a 15 minute boat ride and you will need your passport because they are in Greece

Very beautiful coastline — The evenings are very nice with a lot of Oceanside walkways and lights

A typical Turkish meal — This is very typical of a lunch or dinner plate in Turkey. You have the meat with some kind of other vegetable or something, in this case meatballs with eggplant. Then they put raw onion and tomato and maybe a long green pepper

Secondhand sales on the street — A simple backstreet market for people to sell whatever they have collected, quite a bit of it was secondhand

Nice car color — I just liked the color of this car. I think it was a Renault

Often stopping for a Guinness — Of course once in a while ….

Nice green pickles — I love these very sour pickles which seem to be available in many different places including bars and pubs

Beautiful sunset — A beautiful sunset along the Adriatic

Insistent cat — This cat just kept insisting on getting up on me. I put him down on the ground and he came right back up again

Nice dogs — I made friends in many places. These guys were very welcoming

A filling wrap — Just some street food with some vegetable and meat inside. Actually this was quite a big lunch for me.

Spicy green peppers — I bought this jar of pickled green peppers. They are very sour, vinegar and spicy, just my taste

Tantuni Wraps — Tantuni’s create these very delicious wraps

Apollo's temple — The temple to Apollo which was closed due to renovations

Sponge hunters — The story behind sponge hunting

March 11, 2025March 11, 2025

Quaint seaport Ayvilik

Visiting Quaint seaport Ayvilik was my first stop renting a car for a month after spending almost 3 weeks in Istanbul. The Car Rental company did not notice the license plate frame was broken when I rented the car and the license plate on the front fell out and got lost in the small town, my first few days on the road. The people at the small family owned hotel helped me look for the license plate and also called the rental company to ask advice. I went to the police station to report the lost license plate so there would be no problem on the rest of my trip. The police were very nice and patient and they called the rental company and also the traffic police and they confirmed that I could just continue on my trip which I did. I was stopped about eight times for this problem by the traffic police and after explaining the situation each time they let me continue my trip with no problem. This little town is kind of interesting with it small winding cobblestone streets and it was good to get out of the hustle and bustle of Istanbul.

Downtown Street — Narrows cobblestone streets which are made for carts and not cars but people seem to make their way just fine by finding places to move over and let people pass by.

Delicious food — The meat on the skewer was very delicious and the spices were very nice

Traffic light issues — In the photo you will see what irritated me as I was driving. The traffic signals are right over where you stop and so if you pull right up to the crosswalk you can’t see the lights when they change. I don’t really understand why they do this.

Scenic point view — The view from a scenic point on the hill

Goats on the street — Instead of sheep like Scotland you will see mostly goats

Narrow streets — You can see how narrow the streets are with cars going both ways

A relaxed dog — This was a good place for this dog to hang out

Very narrow street — Cars need to navigate these narrow, narrow alleyway like streets

Typical Shop — This is a typical Shop with quantities of what people may need in their homes, especially large bags of nuts

Camping area — There are places for campers to park at local beach sites

A relaxing camper — A camper enjoying the view on the beach

Fixing the fishing net — They have to fix the fishing nets

Dive boat — I’m sure during the high season this dive boat has plenty of customers

Fish restaurant — The highly recommended fish restaurant

Cowboy clothes for kids — Is this what kids aspire to, the American cowboy image?

Low season — I’m sure this is busy in the high season

March 6, 2025March 6, 2025

Short visit to Fethiye

if you pay a Short visit to Fethiye, let’s say one night, you will not be disappointed if you are interested in temples and tombs which are carved out of a Hill. This is a port town and I think that can draw some interest but these tombs are very interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethiye