Category: Turkey

The next stop on our Turkey itinerary was Ephesus, one of the largest and best preserved archeological sites of the Roman Empire. Most notably, it’s home to the ruins of The Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. To afford this visit the time it deserved, we stayed in the nearby town of Selçuk for a couple of nights, in a beautiful small hotel with a pool chosen by Sara (the day we arrived was her birthday, after all!)

We hitched a lift with Sara’s parents in their hire car for the 82km journey from Izmir to Selçuk. This was only our second and by far our longest car journey since leaving London, and emitted 54% more carbon per passenger relative to the four of us travelling by coach. Still, it was well worth it make the most of our time with Helen & Mick.

Selçuk is a lovely little town, founded in 6th century AD. It had just enough local cafes and restaurants to keep us exploring for a couple of days, yet it remained peaceful and was easy to traverse on foot. Its crowning jewel is the ruins of a 15m high Byzantine aquaduct right in the centre of town, built to carry fresh spring water to the surrounding area.

As soon as we arrived, we set up shop in Ejder Restaurant, where we ordered (amongst other things), a huge skewer of succulent grilled chicken. We watched as the owner worked the grill from our table beneath the aquaduct.

But the main reason we were in town was to visit Ephesus. Besides the ruins of The Temple of Artemis, Ephesus is also home to some magnificently restored buildings, such as the Library of Celsus and a 25,000 capacity theatre. Given that Roman theatres were typically built to hold 10% of the city’s population, historians estimate that at its peak Ephesus was home to a quarter of a million Romans!

Although we didn’t quite manage to beat the crowds, we did at least beat the heat of the day. We enjoyed learning about Ephesus’ construction and downfall via Rick Steve’s free audioguide, and wandering around the site wearing our noise cancelling headphones certainly made it easier to follow his instruction to imagine the other tourists wearing togas as the Romans would have done.

Our trip also featured a detour to a huge, covered section of terraced houses. These were clearly for the wealthier residents of Ephesus judging by their size and beautiful mosaics. As well as being a welcome escape from the heat, we had a front-row seat to the painstakingly-slow excavation and restoration process.

By this point the poolside bar was calling us, but we just about managed to squeeze in a trip to Ephesus’ Archeological Museum, partly because it came very highly recommended, and partly because it was on the way to the bar.

With only two nights in Selçuk it felt like it was time to move on almost as soon as we’d arrived. However, we were excited to walk Pamukkale’s travertine terraces, which are coming up in our next post.

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Bonus blog post: thanks to a confusing conversation with Helen, we’ve just realised that no email notifications were sent when we posted Thasos without a car a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!

Our route from Istanbul to Izmir started with a 3 hour high-speed train to Eskişehir departing at sunset, followed by a 10 hour overnight sleeper to Izmir. Unfortunately, the sleeper compartments were fully booked so we were sat upright overnight. The schedule quickly went out the window as the overnight train seemed to spend more time stationary than it did moving, and ended up arriving in Izmir 12 hours later, and 2 hours behind schedule. We were certainly ready to leave the train by this point, and were glad to see Mick and Helen (who had flown on ahead) waiting at the station for us.

We’d intentionally broken our journey to Ephesus in Izmir to visit Kemeraltı Market, and it didn’t disappoint. The market consisted of an absolute maze of covered streets spiralling out from a central caravanserai, which had merged with the surrounding bazaars to produce a captivating mix of shops, cafes, mosques and synagogues.

We loved getting lost while exploring the endless streets and alleys. This is no exaggeration – with the sun shades blocking my phone’s GPS signal, we really were lost most of the time.

We fuelled our market experience by joining the queue that had formed outside Kumrucu Apo, a family-run institution serving freshly cooked sausage, cheese, chilli and gherkin rolls. These were washed down with a refreshing, salty yoghurt-based Ayran drink.

Lunch pudding consisted of a trip to Meşhur Hisarönü Şambalicisi for şambali with kaymak – a semolina cake sandwiched around a layer of clotted cream, smothered in syrup and topped with ground pistachio. This was accompanied by the obligatory tiny glass of Turkish tea, which proved to be the perfect digestif after the sweetness of the desert.

We rounded the day off with a sunset stroll along Izmir’s seafront promenade, stopping for a seafood feast at Veli Usta Körfez Restaurant.

We only spent 24 hours in Izmir, but it was easily enough to fall in love with this city’s labyrinth-like market. Its grit and down-to-earth feel way surpassed that of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, and it was far less touristed too. Still, I’m sure it won’t be the last market we visit (Sara has a bit of a weakness for them), so stay tuned for more bazaar experiences.

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Next stop: Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

We crossed into Turkey by bus – our first ‘proper’ border crossing since leaving the UK. With the border formalities completed in about an hour and a half, we passed fields and fields (and fields, and fields) of sunflowers on the four hours between the border and Istanbul. We were expecting a strong cat showing in Turkey and the count steadily ticked upwards even from the bus window. We also saw lots of minarets and I suggested to Oli that we might like to count these too. Perhaps it’s for the best that he flatly refused!

We were very excited to be in Istanbul for a couple of reasons: it’s a city that’s been high on our list for a while, it marks us crossing into Asia on our overland journey (which feels like a pretty big milestone), and most importantly, my parents were coming to visit! This was much needed – it’s only been a month and we’ve already started telling identical jokes simultaneously. They weren’t even funny when only one of us was telling them, so it was high time for some outside company.

We had a day and a half in Istanbul before my parents arrived, and then one full day together in which we did some serious sightseeing.

Stop 1: Hagia Sophia

Over its 1485-year history, the Hagia Sophia has been a church, a mosque and a museum. Most recently, it was converted back to a mosque in 2020, and this meant that we couldn’t visit all parts of the building that were previously open. Despite this, it was a pretty amazing space.

Stop 2: The Blue Mosque

Our next stop was just across the Sultanahmet Park from the Hagia Sophia: the iconic Sultanahmet Camii, better known as the Blue Mosque.

Sadly, the interior of the Blue Mosque is currently undergoing restoration work and so we didn’t get the full effect of the spectacular interior. None of us could quite work out how Mum managed to take this photo (below right), which seemed to circumvent all the scaffolding across the interior of the dome! I’m assuming she didn’t climb up, but to be honest I wouldn’t rule it out.

Stop 3: Basilica Cistern

We didn’t have the best start when Oli managed to book tickets to visit an entirely different cistern on the extremely confusing website (you do have to wonder how many tourist-attraction cisterns one city really needs) but despite the crowds, this stop was a bit of a highlight. Built in 532 to provide the city with fresh water, it was a cavernous underground space supported by columns that had been salvaged (or pinched) from ancient temples. It was then somehow entirely forgotten and wasn’t rediscovered until 1545. We wandered around the space on raised walkways searching for fish (we didn’t spot any) and admired the art installations set between the columns.

Stop 4: Lunch at Sultanbahti Köftecisi

It was a bit of a challenge in the well touristed area of Sultanahmet to find somewhere decent for lunch, but we were lucky to find Sultanbahti Köftecisi recommended on a blog post. It was tucked away up some stairs and had a reassuringly small menu (normally a good sign) so we ordered nearly all of the dishes on offer. We shared lentil soup, köfte, bean salad, rice and chips, and demolished it all.

Stop 5: Topkapı Palace

Our final sightseeing stop of the day was a biggie – the Topkapı Palace. We could probably have spent all day here exploring the four courts and all of their constituent buildings, containing treasures such as the Spoonmaker’s Diamond (which weighs a casual 86 carats!)

By this point we were seriously flagging, so we kept saying we would stop and then proceeded to explore a whole new part of the palace. It turns out that with four of us, it’s much harder to enforce the only look at two things in each room rule! Our favourite part of all was probably the gorgeous tiles in the Harem.

Stop 6: Dinner at Antiochia

In the evening, we treated ourselves to a delicious meal at Antiochia, where we faced the age-old problem that Dad wanted to order his own food, while Mum, Oli and I all wanted to share (to be fair, it was a meze restaurant). So, we compromised and Dad ordered his own and we all ate it for him. He made a great choice!

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The next day, we parted ways so that Mum and Dad could catch a flight to Izmir. Oli and I were booked onto an overnight train (more on that later), so we had a full day to fill and headed for the Anatolian (Asian) side of the city – we’d visited briefly a few days ago but wanted to explore the Kadıköy and Moda neighbourhoods. It was worth the trip – without any big-hitting tourist sites, there were fewer foreign visitors and it felt much less international and more like a real working city. We really liked the laid back vibe and spent the day wandering, watching ferries, fighting a bull, counting many cats, admiring the street art, riding the tram and stocking up on dinner to eat on the train at the beautiful produce market.