Weekend in İzmir

Merhaba! 

Friday morning (03/02) at 7:30am, seven of us boarded a plane for İzmir, a city on the western coast of Turkey. We were lucky enough to find cheap tickets - 59TL (about $35) each way, and decided to take the weekend to explore another city! We met at 5am, and we had surprised Akshata with a cake at midnight for her birthday, so we were all dragging! The flight was about an hour, and I think we all slept most of the way. Once we arrived, we crammed the whole group into one cab and headed to our hostel - the Otel Vatan. On the way, we passed a giant bust of Atatürk that had been carved out of the side of a mountain. I wasn't quick enough to take a photo, as my camera was under a pile of 5 people. I think I've mentioned before, but Atatürk is here, there, and everywhere, in Turkey. 


When we arrived at the hostel, we were quite pleased. It was, like the plane tickets, purchased on a low budget, and was better than we'd expected. We had two triple rooms, and the staff was nice enough to let us check in, even though it was only about 9:30am. They even let us have a complementary brunch, in regular Turkish style. Hilarious is the only way to describe the decor. Hallie aptly described it as an "underwater pet planetarium." There was a parrot  in the lobby that screeched continuously, and huge aquariums full of fish all over the first floor. They had created small fake gardens all over the building, full of fake flowers and mushrooms. One even had a flashing light string draped through it. In the breakfast room there were some of the cheesiest wedding chairs (with the 20-layers-of-toule covering) and weird paintings of the seaside and cliche garden scenes. It was weird and cheesy, but we were happy! 

The crew at Selcuk Castle

We spent the morning in the hostel, relaxing and getting oriented, then walked down to the water to have lunch and spend the afternoon. We found a cafe on the water and stopped for some food. The waiter spoke English and kept asking us weird questions. He told Logan that Texas (where Logan's from) was a "sucks place to live." He begged Amy to take a photo of him, so she begrudgingly did. Akshata deemed him untrustworthy as a result of his overly-greased hair, and so, after eating, we moved on. 

We spent the afternoon walking around town, visiting a few sights, like the clock tower, although there aren't many right in İzmir. We stopped in the main square and bought some seed to feed the pigeons. There must have been at least a thousand birds in the square - it was amazing! The little boy in the photo below was playing with the pigeons, feeding and chasing them - it was about the cutest thing I've seen. 

Older men and women (generally) sell the bird seed in the square for 1TL a cup. They were really sweet, albeit persistent. The two women sitting below were just a few of the many seed vendors. 

After walking a bit, we went to the Ethnography museum. It was empty of people, but had some cool displays of, and artifacts from, the social life of the Ottoman Empire. The neatest part was probably the building, there was a huge spiral, marble staircase in a room full of windows. Unfortunately you weren't allowed to climb to the top, but it must have a great view of the city. We stopped for waffles and çay on the way home and headed to the hostel for a nap. We found a great meyhane (a restaurant where you have appetizers, usually fish, and Rakı) for Akshata's birthday dinner in the Levent Marina area of town, called Potiri Meyhane. It was amazing, the menu was prix fix, and they just kept bringing you food. You had to buy the Rakı by the bottle, but with 7 of us that wasn't a problem. Here's a photo of just the first course:

The food was absolutely delicious. My favorite thing, a surprise for me and anyone who knows me, was the stuffed mussel (below). It was SO good, even though I'm not generally a seafood lover. 

There was a table behind us of about 4 older Turkish couples. The restaurant had a live band playing, and toward the end of the night people were getting up and dancing. Two of the men from that table went around our table and got almost all of us to get up and dance with them. They took the flowers from the vases on the tables and gave them to all of us - 5 girls and 2 guys. I'm not sure what dance they were teaching us, but they were so sweet - and once you got into it, it was really fun! Akshata was nice enough to capture me dancing with one of them. 

The man that I was dancing with gave us his card at the end of the night and said that, if we ever came back to İzmir, we should call him, and he and his wife would love to have us over. At the end of the night, the waiters brought our table some complementary Turkish coffee (Türk khavesi). We enjoyed it, then told each others fortunes with the grounds. Akshata told mine, and said that I would most definitely travel to Greece, and that she saw children and decided that this meant that I would end up working with children and making a difference in their lives. I can deal with that!! We were the last group to leave the restaurant, and thanked the wait staff profusely. After a long and wonderful day, we headed back to the hostel and crashed. 


The next day it was up early to travel to Ephesus and the sights near Selcuk. The hostel offered tours of the area. They would drive you to the sights, and you could explore on your own. This worked out for us, because the sights were about an hour and fifteen minutes away, in a place none of us had ever been. It turned out to be a great decision - they brought us to four major sights, and we never would have been able to navigate the area on our own!
We visited Selcuk Castle, the Seven Sleepers, Ephesus, and the Virgin Mary's Final House. 


The ruins at Selcuk castle were actually primarily the ruins of a cathedral, including the resting place of Saint John. Here are the tops of Grecian Ionian pillars from the cathedral, and a photo of the actual Selcuk castle on the hill beyond the ruins. 

Our second stop was the Seven Sleepers. This is the ruins of a worship hall built into the side of a mountain that was supposedly used by seven Christian men trying to avoid persecution. This photo is taken from a hill next to the ruins, but we also were able to climb into the hall. One of the great things about Turkey is that many of the ruins, etc... are really well preserved, but people are still allowed to climb in and on them, unlike many sights in other parts of the world. 

At the Seven Sleepers, there was a little restaurant where we stopped for some Gözleme for lunch. There was a farm adjacent, and so there were chickens and roosters running around everywhere. I know this is ridiculous, but I have this fear of small animals biting my achilles tendon and a very vivid image in my head of me collapsing, like just hitting the pavement, as a result. The chickens kept getting closer and closer, and I was getting more and more nervous. To add to it, Amy was trying to coax them closer to let her take photos of them. Although, shockingly, no one lost their achilles tendon to what had to be the largest rooster in the freaking world, it was certainly a tense few minutes. 


Our next stop was Ephesus, probably the most famous of the sights we saw. It is the uncovered ruins of a settlement in Selcuk. It was incredibly extensive, and is still being excavated. Apparently, the archaeologists believe that, even with all of the work they've done so far, they've still only uncovered about 18% of the ruins that are there.

Here we are in the ruins of the library at Ephesus. I think that this was my favorite part of the city. 

Within the site, there is another museum you can enter where they've built a structure over an excavation project. Inside, there is a huge maze of dwellings, with amazing paintings and mosaics on the floors. You can see some examples in the photo below.

These were apparently the ruins of a gymnasium. I just really liked the photo of the mountains in the background...

Finally, we stopped at the final home of the Virgin Mary. There was a shrine, and people could light candles in honor of their loved ones. There were no photos allowed at the shrine, but I did take a photo of this hilarious bathroom sign of a woman doing the pee dance.

When we arrived back at the hostel, we collected ourselves and headed out for dinner in the youngest area of town - Alsancak ("all-sun-jack"). We had dinner at a really great restaurant, Blanc, then went to a bar on the water for drinks and nargileh. It was a lovely night! 


The next morning we headed back to Alsancak for brunch, and found ourselves in the middle of a women's rights rally. It was to celebrate and remember a Kurdish woman who fell victim to an honor killing by her father about 3 years ago. Men were not allowed to enter (although one of the guys in our group, Will, tried). Here is a photo of all of the men outside of the rally, likely waiting for their wives and daughters. 

It was a beautiful day! We spent the afternoon walking and shopping around Alsancak. We stopped for some coffee, hot chocolate, and sahlep (a steamed milk and spices drink) before picking up our bags and heading to the airport. All in all it was an amazing weekend with great sights, food, experiences and people!


*Thanks to Hallie for letting me steal the group shots from her :)