The morning started in a frosty way – but was still and clear today. First stop was the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations which is based on top of the old Ankara citidel. The museum has some of the oldest known artefacts in living history, including wall paintings, jewellery, pottery and textiles from the Anatolian civilisation dating from 7000 BC through to the Hittite era around 900 BC and up to Roman times in 131 BC. There was certainly not enough time to gawk at everything we wanted to see. Our guide Rashid, was fantastic – always giving an interesting anecdote or story about almost every artefact in the museum (without bias) – it made the experience even more pleasurable than usual.
Attaturk Mausoleum
From the museum, we moved to the Attaturk Mausoleum. Gee, the Turks just worship this guy (the founder of the modern Turkey republic). The mausoleum is simply massive – we’ve never seen anything quite on this scale. Some dignitary turned up for something important, so we only had enough time for a quick squizz at the mausoleum. The museum attached is also impressive – simply not enough time to read through everything in detail and ponder the impact Attaturk had on Turkey.
Finally, we got dropped off somewhere half decent for lunch (somewhere in Ankara) – everyone seemed to enjoy the lunch today – made a nice change from the previous two days. We had a couple of meaningless coffee stops, before a long drive to Cappadoccia, where we visited the tomb of the Muslim Sufi philosopher at Haci Bektas. This guy founded a sect of the Muslim religion that about 20% of Turks follow today. It appears more moderate than other Muslim factions. We wandered around the Muslim Tomb (now a museum – hence us white folks were allowed in) and the meeting place and kitchen buildings. The buildings are prepared and shown in a similar manner to how they were used in the 13th century – which is a pleasant change to ruins and using visualisation to connect the dots.
Last stop for the day was the whirling dervishes… we just couldn’t pass this one up.
Whirling Dervishes
We certainly have more appreciation for the religious nature of the dancing guys – and they certainly are skilled to stand up straight after whirling around for so long.
The hotel is not a patch on the previous hotels in Turkey – but it’s clean and comfortable. Dinner filled a gap. Since we haven’t had any photos of us for a couple of days – thought we should put one in for you all.
BsKnee at Hotel