Week Fifty-Eight

We had a word with Mehmet last night about the cruise, and he said we'd be collected from the hotel at 10.00: excellent. We're up and then downstairs ready at 09.55 (Milla at 10.00) - nothing. We wait a bit - nothing. Enquries reveal that Mehmet's out of town - great. So, on the basis that most of the cruises kick off at 10.30, we set off for the harbour on foot to make our own arrangements - better to go for 16 million than not to go at all, especially since we're unsure what (if any) arrangements Mehmet's made.
We're aboard a boat by 10.30, but there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and we don't actually set off for another fifteen minutes (so we could probably have asked around and bargained for a better price). The upper deck on this boat was pretty packed, but we find a line of lilos on the prow and take up station there: we're soon flanked by an English couple and a German girl gone loco with her Turkish man, his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend. And then off we go (avoiding the splashing mud and water from the anchor, right in front of us), more or less simultaneously with a couple of other boats. As we head across wide Fethiye Bay, skirting a line of three islands, the sun gets hotter and brighter, the sky gets bluer and the sea copies it: all of the boats are heading pretty much the same way, so we're like a little convoy.

Ours is a slow boat, a little chugger, but it doesn't need to be anything more - the already pacid Mediterranean is even more placid in the mostly-enclosed bay: there are waves, but only about the size you get on the larger Scottish lochs. The atmosphere on board seems really odd to us - most of the trippers are packagees, and most of their day is spent chatting about what they do back home and exactly what corner of Germany or Northern England they hail from. From the couple next to us, I pick up all the staffroom gossip from some primary school near Manchester. Not to worry - the trip gives us a chance to wear our shorts and swimwear (probably the last chance for ages) without being stoned.

Our first stop is a long flat island, imaginatively called Flat Island (there's a lot of that in this trip - it's like being in the States): one of the Turks and the English guy dive off the side - we use the sedate gangway and discover how cold the water is. Undeterred, Milla wades in and heads for a little rocky island off the shore assuring me (unconvincingly) that the water is warmer further out. We've been talking to an Australian girl who eventually plucks up the courage to wade completely in - with my manhood thus undermined I have to follow, and the water is fucking freezing. That notwithstanding I swim through the shoals of fish, join Milla at the island (we briefly clamber ashore despite the rocks - where is the sand along this coast?) and we swim round the island before returning to the boat where I beg/borrow a bit of suntan lotion.

Next stop, nearby, is lunch (there were expensive pastries and drinks offered earlier, but we brought our own supplies) - the boat moors in a cove by "Dockyard Island" (yep, there's an old Ottoman Dockyard there): this is presumably not for a steady meal, but rather because the crew are serving it. We rotate gently for half an hour before sailing on to our next landing (a little bay with a dog, an extremely unstable pier, giant insects, distant rock tombs and a little pebble beach). A little further there's another stop (we moor offshore again) opposite some indeterminate ruins - only about half the passengers (including Milla but not me) can be bothered swimming out to them and back.

Our penultimate stop also has ruins - baths used by Cleopatra apparently, and definitely Roman. They're mostly flooded and particularly scenic, especially with the backdrop of the sea, the boats and the mountains. Other groups are here (as with most of our stops, especially Flat Island - ours seems to be the fullest, and feels badly overcrowded), as well as a little smallholding (with chickens, ducks and a goat), a few dusty, rusty showers in the bay, and a number of private boats: it's positively crowded.

We finally cross the widest part of the bay (the water's almost choppy here), which takes over an hour - it's beginning to get too chilly to sunbathe, so I go indoors and catch up on some writing. There's a pause for tea (ours is free, after we've been staunchly refusing to pay for any extras all voyage - which I think made us unique) while moored beside Red Island (it's brown): half a dozen brave souls take one last swim, and then we head back to Fethiye as the sun sets behind us, getting in after 18.15. We head into town, pick up some supermarket supplies (including a litre and a half of some strange strawberry drink - hey, it was on offer), fail to find somewhere doing pide and end up eating kebaps in a distinctly local café.

We're back at the hotel by 21.00 and spend the evening just writing, reading and talking. At the end of the third week, our expenditure's settled down to £150/$230 per week after the financial nightmare of Istanbul, so that's cheerful news. Later in the evening/early morning, we hear a very drunk Mehmet clattering around downstairs: after a delay and the sound of a car arriving, we hear his wife (presumably) berating him equally loudly. I guess that's what marriage is all about.

Today we're taking a trip to see a ruined city - seems like the first time in ages! We're packed and out by 09.30 (Milla's up before 08.00!), taking a little local dolmus to the main bus station, where we drop our rucksacks in Left Luggage. Then we set off for the non-adjacent dolmus station (asking directions as we go) and once there we discover our Turkish language skills aren't up to decoding the options available. There seems to be a regular dolmus which'll drop us in a village 5km from the site, or a poor man's rout which includes Tlos and Saklikent Gorge (a ravine 18km long - when we asked at a travel agency yesterday, they said "Do you know the Grand Canyon? It's the same," which I doubt). We opt for the first choice, but since there doesn't seem to be this option at this precise moment we end up on the second tour option - never mind, their first stop is Tlos (about 40km away), so we'll just get out there and stay. On the road out of Fethiye, incidentally, we pass a bus run by a company called "Hamish McTurk" - coupled with a tour boat company called "Hamish McPherson" I think they might be taking the piss.
The road's fairly minor up to the turn-off for Tlos, and then it becomes very minor: we see a couple of large tour buses struggling with the steep, winding road. We spot the ex-Lycian city (or Lycian ex-city) from the road - a hilltop castle, under which the cliffs are riddled with rock tombs. Arguments start when we stop ("one hour"), from a couple of Germans who only want to see the Gorge: we just get off and give the driver some money, and get our student third-price tickets at the gate. Although dating back to 2000BC, we read on the sign, most of the extant ruins (except the tombs) are Roman and Byzantine, except on the acropolis where there's nothing left except an Ottoman castle converted to a 19th century palace by a local governor.

We walk along the side of the stadium on the hill's lower slopes (actually, it's more of a stadium-shaped hole with fields inside, and a tractor during our visit), and wander about some of the more obscure chunks of broken masonry before heading for the summit. The path takes us past half a dozen rock tombs on this side of the hill and a number of Lycian tall sarcophagi (there's one in downtown Fethiye as well). At about this point (45 minutes) the minibus driver beeps his horn - presumably everyone else has seen enough of Tlos: we ignore him and carry on to the castle. To be honest, it's pretty dull - modern square ruins with a Turkish flag at the very top, and a parade ground: quite fun to scramble around, but not hugely interesting in themselves. From the castle, you can see all the way down the nearby river valley to the Mediterranean.

We've spotted a theatre from the hill, but first we want to see the rock tombs all the way down the steep side of the hill: after a couple of false starts we find a little path. There are some great tombs (basically hollow rooms, sometimes double rooms, sometimes with inscriptions, and sometimes with pseudo-columns: ie. carved, rather than separate pieces of stonework) all the way down the cliffs. The tortuous and slippery path (all the paths are slippery here - something to do with the type of rock) follows them down: Milla's vociferously unhappy about it, especially when I leave her behind at one point. Better is to come nearer the bottom, where a rickety ladder and narrow ledge lead to an excellent tomb with columns and reliefs. I think this is Bellerophon's tomb - I always thought he was mythical but apparently he was Lycian, from Tlos). Impressed, we clamber back up and head for the theatre (via a coffee at one of the little cafés where the bus stopped).

On the way we pass some of the foundations of (presumably) the stadium seats, now used to house occasional solitary cows, and a sign to a church and baths (we'll leave these for after the theatre) and a number of local women selling mostly honey. And then we're at the theatre, and it's magnificent (though a bit tricky to get in and around). It hasn't seen much (if any) exavation or restoration, but unlike the stadium is largely intact. The stage has pretty much collapsed, but all the pieces seem to be lying where they fell so it's quite easy to figure out what it looked like. As well as a lot of inscriptions (in Greek letters, like those around the rock tombs) and reliefs on marble, there are a number of granite columns on which the finishing is as sharp was the day it was carved. There are a couple of other tourists, but they soon leave and we're alone to climb up and around (alone, that is, except for lizards, a couple of squirrels and a curious goat which came to see who we were).

After admiring the hill and other ruins from the distance, we clamber back down and go to check out the church and baths. The church is disappointing - one of those overgrown clutters of stonework which leaves you wondering whether you've actually seen it or not. The baths, on the other hand, are quite superb - mainly because of the curved row of windows looking out over the valley from the (?)frigidarium. They're even more impressive when see from below, because you can see that the entire southern half is built on huge foundations: probably the best baths we've seen so far. We gaze out the windows for a while, looking at the Lycian sarcophagi (and bits of sarcophagi) strewn around the neighbouring slopes, and then decide that it's time to head back. Tlos gets 4/10 on the ruins scale - the principal site was average (ie. around the old acropolis), but the theatre and baths were excellent.

We're only a couple of minutes down the hill when a minibus stops for us - it's an empty school bus, rather than a dolmus, but for a slightly inflated fare the driver takes us down to the village at the junction. We have an ice-cream there while waiting, and then hop on the first passing dolmus: this is presumably the one that would have dropped us here - considering the hill/climb, it was a good thing we caught the direct option. The bus winds through half a dozen outlying villages on the way back to Fethiye and then drops us near the bus station. We ask around at the various offices and opt for Metro's offering on the basis that a.) they were slightly cheaper and b.) we know they're one of the big pan-Turkey companies which run large luxury coaches.
After having a tea and watching the world go by as we wait (the Metro option isn't for an hour), we collect our rucksacks, wait a little bit more, and discover that this particular Metro service is a little 30-seat midibus - ah. That would be why it was cheaper. Still, at least it has a (small) luggage compartment, so we don't have to share the somewhat cramped seats with our rucksacks. As usual for our point-to-point trips, night has fallen by the time we leave and in the darkness as we pull out of Fethiye, the police wave us down. They walk through the bus looking at IDs/passports - I explain that mine is in my rucksack, and they skip me. Everyone else's papers get taken, presumably checked, and then returned: the bus starts again, but only for 150m or so, when it parks at a petrol station and someone spends 15 minutes washing it with a big squeegee and a hose. Presumably it was something the police said - "Your papers seem to be in order, but give the bus a wash." Hm.
And so we set off again, past the Tlos turning and up into the mountains: this way, avoiding the coast, is apparently quicker (both options are available, on different buses obviously), but from what we can see, the scenery's crap. The most interesting bits of the trip are a couple of quarries.

We eventually reach Antalya (population 510,000) after an age, and find a local bus into the centre (the centre's called Kaleici): this bus conventiently drops us at the clock tower - convenient because it's on the little Lonely Planet map. We're interrupted before we set off, though, by a guy working for the Ozman Pension - since that's in the area we're looking for, ie. the area with cheap pensions/hotels, we go with him. Conversation reveals his place won't drop below 20 million (80 million in season, apparently - certainly the cobbled old streets we're walking through give the impression of a pretty expensive resort). We part company, and he suggests a place called "Lazer" which will apparently do 15 million: we rapidly become totally lost in the twisting maze of streets, but there are plenty of little hotels and pensions to choose from.
Our first choice is closed for the night (it's about 23.00); our second offers us a fairly smelly room; the third (which seems to be run by a French couple) won't go cheap enough - an unseen woman keeps screeching "vingt million" from a side room); the fourth only has a room the size of a large shoe-box, and it's smelly too; the fifth doesn't seem to hae any obvious drawbacks, so we stop there. Another factor in this decision is that my shoulders are a bit sunburned from our boat-trip, so carrying the rucksack is a bit of a pain. Of course, on opening the bathroom door we discover there's a bit of a smell in this place too - seems to be an Antalya thing.

Continuing our lazy trend of Bodrum and Fethiye, I get up at 10.00 (and write); Milla gets up at 11.00. We head out shortly after (looking for coffee) and towards the shore - pretty quickly we reach a large lush park where local school kids are rehearsing their marching band (that'll be for the approaching National/Independence Day). We also find a terrace with coffee, overlooking the deep blue bay and the mountains beyond. We relax there for a bit before setting out to see what there is in Antalya.

After walking along the coast a little (the Mediterranean's at the bottom of dramatic cliffs), we circle an old Ottoman tower which we don't seem to be able to get inside, then skirt the start of the upmarket old town/marina, and strike inland along the long (but definitely not straight) Hesapci Sokak. We spot the Lazer Pension (it looks nice enough, with a little courtyard) and then some textile (kilim) shoes which take Milla's fancy, and then come to an old and truncated-looking minaret. It's the Kesik Minare ("Cut Minaret") and stands at the corner of a block of ruins surrounded by metal railings. Investigation reveals a couple of missing railings round the back, so we're in.
The ruins were originally a Roman temple (you can see the original layout) which was later converted into a church - it has all the hallmarks, including a curved eastern end and surrounding walls (newer and joined to the Roman stuff). The contrast of the inner Roman columns and the later (closer, supporting arches) Roman-Christian ones gives an interesting geometric asymetry. Finally there's a ruined mosque in one corner, hence the minaret. A local man accosts us, irritated, but only because he's showing a German around the site (presumably for money). Ho, ho.

We press up Hesapci Sokak to where it meets broad, new Ataturk Caddesi at an old, partially restored Roman gate. The gate (built to mark a visit by Hadrian) has some nice stonework, is several feet lower than current street level, and has deep grooves in the flagstones from centuries' cart transport. It's also flanked by two towers - one Roman and one Selcuk/Ottoman. Suddenly we're out of the old town and back in real civilisation: there's traffic, and tram-lines (no trams visible), and traffic lights (Turkish modern ones have little countdown times, so you can see how long you have to wait/cross), and an internet place on the other side of the road. We cross, price some internet options (there are several, all under 1 million/$0.60 per hour), and find a little restaurant for pide - it's a bit overpriced, but we get a free salad with it.

Still skirting the old town (it's a little bay - the new town, much higher up, sprawls south and west in an L-shape around it), we pass the bazaar (we'll save that for later too) and enter the area of more western-style shops. Milla's still looking for a contact lens, and expensive European Antalya may be the place to find it - or not. As we've found before, despite the large number of opticians they're all selling either unconvincing coloured lenses, or disposables. The few who even understand the concept of longer-term lenses say they'll have to get them from Istanbul, so there would be a delay longer than we're staying here. Even worse, while examining her glasses to determine her prescription, one of the shops manages to put a nick on one of her lenses. Deciding to postpone contact lens shopping until Ankara, we nip into Tourist Information but it also turns out to be useless (and difficult to spot).

It's about 15.00 and we reckon we no longer have time to visit the Archaeological Museum (it's miles away, probably closes at 17.00, and might be good), so instead we meander along the cliff-top park overlooking the sea and old town/marina, and look for a way down. After the dramatic, mythological Ataturk statue (some of them are very unconvincing as real-life representations), we find a little lane which leads sharply down through the interleaved layers of walls (facing both inland and the harbour) to an expensive little up-market resort of handicraft gift shops in old Selcuk and (mainly) Ottoman houses. At the water's edge, it turns into a fairly dull marina but the flanking cliffs, steep walls, blue sea and distant mountains (across the wide bay) give it a very dramatic feel. There's a nice little mosque (raised on stilts), but otherwise nothing specific worth seeing.

Back up the hill, at the top corner of the old town near where the bus dropped us, we look in on the Tekeli Mehmet Pasa mosque (pretty dull - not worth removing our shoes for), have a better look at the clock tower (even duller) and walk around the Grooved Minaret (Yivli Minare). Antalya's main landmark (it's on most of the postcards), it's . . . well, it's a minaret with grooves up the sides (ie. it's fluted): it's also still part of a mosque, so we can't get inside to climb it. Directly opposite is an old medrese (religious school), which we can get inside - it's all little arty crafts stuff (made, doubtless, by "artisans"), but we get a free little cup of genuine sherbet, from genuine hibiscus, which is nice (though a bit herbal).
We finally head through the bazaar (a good mix of stuff, ie. not just clothes, souvenirs and carpets), where Milla looks for and haggles over the same portable ashtrays (with blue lucky eye motif) that we saw in Fethiye, but she can't get them for as good a price here. We put in some internet time (the guy running it likes me - that keeps happening to both of us: we must be likeable people, despite what you would think), and then return to the pension. Milla washes her hair and we both decide we don't like the place - they lock up really early, and our room virtually looks onto (and is thus looked onto from) the street.

With internet affordable here, and good shopping, and good weather, we've decided to stay another day (mainly so I can get some stuff on the web - at the moment my site is still back in Istanbul!). We're not going to stay in this pension, though, so we pack our bags, stow them at reception and head straight out to the Lazer Pension: this is much more like it - terraces, foliage-covered courtyard, bar, kitchen facilities, other travellers (mostly Japanese, including at least one long-timer - it features highly in the main Japanese guidebook). Unfortunately, they're asking 20 million, and it takes prolonged negotiation to get it down to 15: still, their coffee's reasonably priced so we sit and have one before collecting our bags and moving them to our new wood-panelled room (with dangerously sloping roof in the bathroom).
The rest of the morning's easy - I spend 3 hours at the internet place while Milla potters around the room sorting stuff and starting to wash clothes. At about 13.00 I collect her and then we head for the Archaeological Museum: it's a good thing we left plenty of time to do it since a.) it's miles out, especially in the sun (we detoured into another contact lens place en route) and b.) it turns out to be excellent. It also turns out to be 6 million each ($4), and that's the student price! Oh well - worryingly, it starts off with all the labelling in Turkish, but quickly changes to bilingual signs and good, detailed explanatory wall panels. The most surprising thing about the early sections (it's chronologically laid out) is that the Bronze Age Antalyans apparently bujried their dead in big pottery jars, which is distinctly pythonesque ("Go on, in you get", "But I'm not dead yet", and so on).

After a good room of pottery (there's a sudden historical break in black Athenian ware because they boycotted its import after the Pelopennesian War), there are two magnificent halls of Classical statuary. Perhaps about fifty pieces in all, there were too many good ones to detail but (for me) highlights were a poignant Nemesis, three quite sexy Muses, and a good Artemis: for Milla, there were good ones of a dancer and of Hermes. Off to one side of these galleries is a room of fairly recent icons and half a dozen bones of St. Nicholas (there were spaces in the box for more, so the others must have been nicked at some point): Saint Nick, before becoming Santa, was bishop of nearby Patara.

There's some okay gold and silverware, a courtyard more interesting for its wall-climbing lizards than most of the stuff, and a few very poor mosaics (after what we've seen). Then there are a couple more galleries of marble stuff found at Perge - well-preserved friezes and statues from the theatre facade, and very impressive sarcophagi from the necropolis (including a sad little one for a dog called Stefanus). By this point (over two hours), they're hurrying us out so they can close, so we kinda rush through less-interesting rooms of coins and some more recent ethnographic stuff - but still, well worth the visit and quite unexpected in upmarket but soulless and bland resort Antalya.

Since we're over at this side of the bay, we have a quick look down at the pebble beach (nothing doing there), have a couple of ice-lollies, and then catch the antique tram back to the centre - there only seems to be a single line, and only a couple of trams running on it (there's a passing place), which explains why we hadn't seen any trams up to this point.

After a visit to a cobbler (Milla's other sandal had problems today - the guy kinda fixes it, but not well, and then asks a silly amount of money which Milla rightly refuses to pay - do they think we're dumb tourists?), we split - I go back to the internet place and Milla does some shopping and prices some Turkish baths. She joins me after an hour or so and we have a beer and some food, and then she goes back to the pension to finish washing this morning's clothes. I join her there at 21.15 or 21/30 and, despite my intentions, didn't go back for a last internet session (the guy there's really funny: he charges a random amount based on whether he likes the person or not - his highest quote, not taken up, was 3 million to a loud Dutchman).

We had intended visiting Perge from here, but both agree that all the best stuff is now in the Antalya Museum so, instead, tomorrow we'll head inland to the religious centre of Konya.

We get up, I pack (some of Milla's clothes, hung outside, are still damp), we have a coffee together (the last of our supply from Bucharest) while watching the pension staff water the borders and trees, and then I stow my rucksack ehind the bar and hit the internet place one last time (I haven't done as many words as I wanted, since there were photos to put on as well). Milla joins me some hours later - she's picked up a free little lucky eye badge from a shoe-shiner she befriended on the way, to compensate from him having initially guessed that she was Belgian - and we go to visit a little museum which we spotted yesterday. It's in a restored Ottoman house and consists of mannequins in traditional costumes which are a lot less interesting than the restored layout and decor. At the back is a second building, an old Orthodox Church (St. George), also partially restored (to look like a building/hall, rather than a church). There's better ceramics on display here than anywhere else we've seen in Turkey, including Istanbul: the Canakkale ware is very impressive and I'm very taken with a couple of mugs/cups in the shape of camels. In the gallery is a collection of century-old photographs of Turks in traditional costumes, most of which are simply silly. As usual we leave after (lunchtime) closing time and they lock the door behind us.

We look around some of the traditional Ottoman/Selcuk streets, and then do a last shopping trip in Antalya, getting out money and buying film - it's slightly cheaper here than I've seen elsewhere. I spot a sign in a travel agency advertising "Demre, Myra, Kekova by Yatch" - I don't know what a yatch is, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to travel on one. Then we have a disastrous lunch exercise - we search for a pide place for half an hour, then it takes half an hour for our order to arrive, takes us half an hour to eat, and is pretty revolting. We're ordered a "Mixed (Karisik)" pide, and it doesn't have a minced meat base as our previous ones did - Milla starts an argument with the staff (at least partially because we had to wait so long). I keep out of it, learning only the lesson that if we order something vague like "mixed" we should ask what's in it first: naturally I get into trouble later for not backing her up - hey, ho.

We hit the pension/hotel, have a cigarette, collect our bags and trudge up to where we've been told the dolmus to the airport leaves from (the pension has dinky little photocopied maps). It's easy to find, but is one of our worst rides yet - at one point there are 23 people and two large rucksacks onboard a little transit van: a dozen people are standing and I'm one of them (the roof isn't high enough), trying to guard my rucksack - people keep sitting on it. Even better, the dolmus drops us on the opposite side of a busy dual carriageway rom the new bus station (Turkey is all new bus stations - it's obviously a recent transport revolution). We get into the terminal building at 14.55, find a desk with a bus leaving at 15.00, buy our tickets (with 1 million "student" discount each) and are only just sitting down as it pulls away. Antalya, fading away behind us, gets 4/10: after seeing the few sites and the museum, there's nothing to do except shop - but the weather and the shopping are both good, and the old town's pretty enough.

This is one of our longest trips (we supposedly get in at 20.00), so we've opted to start much earlier than we usually do - hopefully this will also make finding accommodation easier when we get to Konya. Another advantage is that we get to see some scenery (good, because this journey's partly through Turkey's lakes region). Our first real stop (for 15 minutes) is at the largish city of Isparta at about 17.00 - the previously 80%-empty bus fills with students (it's the end of the week, after all), almost all with a modern look (leather jackets and tank tops). This is reassuring, since we were afraid that conservative Konya would be all headscarves.
We pass through mountains, thicker vegetation than we've seen elsewhere in Turkey (even a forest, of sorts), and shortly after Isparta come to the little lakeside village of Egirdir: if we'd gone faster up to this point, Egirdir was a possible rest-stop on my list. It's a pleasant little town, half on the mainland and half on the causeway-linked island of Yesilada, but it has a heavy military presence (a big base on the outskirts) and lots of guys jogging in formation with guns: possibly they're just practising for National/Independence Day, or the election. The bus follows the deep blue lakeside for a while after Egirdir, and then turns further inland as night falls. When 20.00 comes we're only at Beysehir, and eventually reach Konya's new (again) bus station at 21.15. It's a unique approach for Turkey: over the hills you come, and see all the lights of Konya (which is therefore presumably flat) before you.

The bus station's in the outskirts, amid new and partially finished blocks (all Turkish cities are ringed with half-built blocks - the population must be booming and/or urbanising), but it doesn't take us long to find a microbus to the centre and then twenty minutes to find a hotel amid empty and desolate streets: no nightlife in Konya, apparently, or at least not in this area. Also, despite the students on the coach, we've seen no women not in headscarves. We arrive just before an older Australian couple who were on the same coach in (I'm surprised - they seem quite organised), and I'm sure we pay much less than them (they're settled too quickly to have had a decent negotiation). Mind you, we settle for a tiny room with no facilities: still, we're only here for one night, and the terrace has good views across to the Mevlana Museum, our main reason for being here.

We get up and use as few of the hotel's facilities as possible - the squat toilets aren't an issue (squat toilets are normal - only in en-suite rooms do you get western-style toilets), but the long and dirty trough which comprises the washing facilities/sink is a new feature. After leaving our rucksacks by reception, we head out into fairly chilly Konya at an early hour: it's supposed to be a particularly conservative Islamic city and certainly our headscarf indicator kicks straight in at 100%. It takes a fair amount of walking before we spot a woman with hair! Another thing we notice fairly instantly is that the deserted streets and metal shutters which typified this area last night have magically turned into bustling bazaar (mostly shoes in the streets around the hotel) - rather than being in the middle of nowhere as we first thought, it seems we're pretty much at the centre of town . . . it's just that "town" apparently closes by 22.00. Hey-ho.

We strike east for the Mevlana Museum: Mevlana (or Celaleddin Rumi) was a big religious figure who wrote lots and founded the Whirling Dervishes. He and his Iranian sufi Semsi arrived here as refugees from the Mongols in the mid-1200s (a tough time for Islam, with Mongols on one side and Crusaders still hanging around on the other). The current museum was a school (medresi) built around Mevlana's tomb (topped with a tall but chubby turquoise tower in the middle of the complex). After a coffee facing the Selim Mosque (a chunky Ottoman mosque outside the door of the complex) we join the queue (there's a queue!) of tour groups, families, school classes and so on, fork out our money and go inside.

First up is a little courtyard, with a fountain and a gift shop, and then is the main building: even though it's a state-run museum now, it's still a holy place, so we have to take off our shoes (and pop them into one of the little plastic bags provided, to carry round) and step inside (where the stink of sweaty feet is even worse than in most mosques). Inside, where all the clocks are stopped at 10.12 (dunno why), the first sight is a whole bunch of coffins draped in green, with turbans on top. They're all pretty similar (and all facing east, for no known reason), but Mevlana's is easy to spot: it's the one under the huge dome, with all the jewels and decoration around it - and the one everyone's getting their photo taken in front of. After that is a room with a dance floor and some good bits hung around the walls (a great calligraphic carpet), and then a room of relics: the Beard of Mohammed; the robes of Mevlana (he had a nice green one); and a collection of Korans and editions of Mevlana's works.

In other buildings of the complex are paintings, scenes (with mannequins) of everyday Dervish life, and some ceramics, but nothing of much interest. We wander out and round the back looking for a good photo (the one we got's at the top of this page), find a restaurant in a craft complex and have a coffee overlooking the back of the site. Our waiter tells us that's where the Dervishes will be performing tonight - I guess Konya's a bit of a one-theme town (or city - population over 750,000), an impression confirmed by Mevlana Street, the Otel Mevlana, and so on. Actually it's not, since it's at least 4,000 years old, was Roman Iconium and was the capital of the Seljuk Turks (presumably why Mevlana and Semsi came here).
Before leaving the subject of Mevlana (he has a circumflex over the first "a" - a letter which, together with a circumflexed "u", seems unique to Konya),I should mention his famous Seven Pieces of Advice (available as T_shirts, postcards, bookmarks, posters, etc., etc.). The most quoted is "Either exist as you are, or be as you look", which is wonderfully Zen. Unfortunately, closer examination of the other language versions reveals a more accurate translation of "Be as you seem, or seem as you are" which is back down at the pithy banal level of the rest of his stuff ("In patience, be as the ocean" - I mean, honestly).

As for us, we hit Tourist Information (currently operating out of a backstreet tiny office while their big central building is being refurbished): the guy there gives us a map, and tries to sell us tickets to tonight's dervish show for $15 each. Wehead back to the bazaar area, passing the usual election crap (posters, strings of banners, vans with loudspeakers, etc.) - it seems out of place in Konya: earlier we saw one group of kids throwing stones at a passing campaign bus - excellent! There's a nice Ottomoan mosque (Aziz) by the bazaar, with ornately-balconied minarets (never seen that before), though even here in Konya the call to prayer is all done with loudspeakers. A little man shows us the inside and points out interesting details: he turns out to be the cousin of the man in Tourist Information, and also tries to sell us tickets for the dervishes tonight (he can get us seats at the front). Actually, it's quite tempting - it sounds like a council-organised end-of-season special and warm-up for the Mevlana Festival in December: after our bumming around on the coast, however, we're feeling under time pressure - if we get to Ankara a day late, then the Hittite Museum will be closed (Monday). Perhaps we'll come back later, we tell him.

We wander past a number of other mosques and stop at the little boring one containing Semsi's tomb: as well as the coffin facing east (why is that?), there's another surprise here - people are praying and meditating towards his coffin. In fact there's a little area where the prayer mats face towards his coffin instead of towards Mecca - very odd! After that, we head for the Alaettin Hill (at the west end of the centre: the Mevlana Museum's at the east end), stopping in at the Ceramics Museum en route. There's not a lot inside: black Athenian, Roman red and 12th/13th century Selcuk turquoise stuff, but nothing special - the highlights are the great geometric tiled interior of the dome (another former medrese), and the impressive Arab/Selcuk ornate stone entrance gate.

On the hill, there's one bit of wall from the old Seljuk palace (under a modernist concrete tent), but otherwise the hill is notable only for its views (Konya's quite dull to look at, apart from all the minarets) and the huge Alaettin Mosque: it's just a big hall, really, but out the back is a maussoleum housing a dozen Selcuk sultans. Down the west side of the hill is another museum/ex-medrese: it's called the Medrese of the Slender Minaret though, after a lightning strike 100 years ago, the Stumpy Minaret would be more appropriate. This is a stone- and wood-work musum, and the Selcuk stonework is (frankly) not nearly as good as Greek or Roman (or even Byzantine) stuff: oddly, for muslims, there are a lot of animals depicted ("aslan" is apparently Turkish for lion, by the way) and they've inherited elements and styles from everywhere the Turks went (ie. everywhere). There are seated Buddhist figures, Assyrian and Persian animals in profile, double-headed Imperial eagles, alchemical symbolism and some very Orthodox angels, lions - oh, and a flying horse! That last was a particular surprise.

As the light begins to fade, we head south for some meandering (Lonely Planet's map doesn't seem 100% accurate) via the "Crystalline" medrese (locked behind a metal gate, but comprising a nice open courtyard which we can see) and further south to the Sahip Ata Mosque. Although possessing a fantastic ornate gate, the mosque itself is a 1970s-style large hall with some ruined store rooms round the back. Just down the same street is the Archaeoligical Museum, but it seems closed by the time we get there. We head back east instead, through the back of the bazaar, to collect our bags from the hotel. Catching a minibus to the bus station proves a little more tricket (it's Saturday evening, and some kind of pre-election rally just took place in the centre), and on reaching the bus station (a fairly hellish ride in a packed dolmus - again) we discover the various companies have a fixed (too high) price to Ankara. Ah well.

Our coach, another No Smoking (bad) and No Mobile Phones (good) affair, has the usual segregated seating (they only put single women next to other women: interestingly, in dolmuses, the passengers automatically re-arrange themselves every time they stop so solo female travellers only sit next to other women). It shows Mission Impossible 2 which, like The Mask, doesn't suffer at all from being dubbed into Turkish. As we head into the night, we discuss our day and, rather tragically, discover that we both actually wanted to fork out the money and go and see the original, Konya Dervishes tonight (a fairly unique opportunity), even if it meant slipping days in Ankara. Goddamn. This, we agree, has been our first really bad decision, since it leaves something not done in Turkey which we'll both want to come back for in some later year. Pah.
Strange, religious Konya, overflowing with mosques, medreses and museums - well, I quite liked it so it gets 6/10.

Ankara, a few hours alter, turns out to have a bus station almost as busy and big as the one in Istanbul - still, it's fairly easy to find a local dolmus to Ulus (the old town district of cheap hotels, near the Archaeoligical Museum) and once there a little negotation (we check two hotels) gets us an okay room for 15 million ($9/£6). Nothing fancy, but we're only here for a couple of days . . .

We wake after a cold night in Ankara - the coldest so far, though I remain convinced that it's a damn sight warmer than Scotland. I start another notebook, though since I'm still a few days behind, will keep the back (admin) section of the other going for a bit (eg. to Film 50, and maybe the next £1000). Anyway, we dump our bags and go outside - it's a cold day as well: nippy is the best word, a first in Turkey so far, doubtless because we're so far inland. Earlier this year we spent some time watching the weather reports, and Ankara gets bloody cold during winter proper.

After a coffee stop over the road, first up (and up is right - it's at the top of the steep hill at the centre of Old Ankara) is the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations (formerly the famous Hittite Museum): we pass the barely-recognisable remnants of a Roman Theatre on the way. This is the main reason for anyone to visit Ankara (it's quite expensive, by the way). Impressively, it starts with Paleolithic and Neanderthal remains (Neanderthal seem to have lived across Anatolia) and then moves onto neolithic (c. 10,000BC - 4,000BC here) with the excavation finds from Catal-Hoyuk (which we didn't visit from Konya). With hive-like houses, entered from holes in the roof, the settlement dates back at least as far as 6,500BC (carbon-14 dating; and there are older, deeper layers with nothing carbon-testable): they had wall-paintings in red and black on plaster, which have a definite continuation-of-cave-painting feel. Inside they hung large stone bulls' heads on the wall, produced some fantastic obsidian tools (no metal yet); one of the wall paintings records a nearby volcanic eruption and shows the little town, and mountain spewing fire.

Once they figured out metal-working, the exhibits hot up from Chalcolithic (stone and copper) and Bronze Age periods (3,000BC - 2,000BC, contemporary with ancient Troy). There are the "sun disk" metal pieces, and plenty of metal stags (designed to be mounted on wooden poles), metal weapons, ornamental pieces and so on: this was when Gordion (remember Alexander?) dates to. Also there are still lots of paleolithic-type female figures, apparently all Mother Goddesses though a number seem fairly pornographic in nature. About this point in history (and the museum) there's a sudden change, as Assyrian trade hit the area - the north Mesopotamians were well ahead of Anatolia (they'd had writing for 1,000 years) and flooded the area with their mass-produced pottery and other household objects, incidentally massively influencing the local cultures. The museum has a good collection (with some translations, thankfully) of local cuneiform tablets: an interesting one records a loan - interest is charged at 5% (simple) per month, which seems quite steep (about credit card levels!).

The Assyrian-influenced settlements (radiating from Kultepe, Roman Caesarea, modern Kaiseri) were top from 1950-1750BC, when the Hittites (like the Assyrians, not indigenous) took over as the primary culture. From 1400-1200 they unified to form the Hittite Empire, and then dwindled away under the onslaughts of Greeks and Assyrians - they were finally wiped out about 700BC. A third of the museum is given over to Hittite material, and most of that is the orthostats (relief panels) from Kargamis (dating variously from 950-850, and from 760-740). It's all very blocky, carved in deep relief, with blank areas often filled in with dots or curls, in the style which I've always (apparently inaccurately) described as Assyrian. An interesting note is that, although you normally see Hittite stuff carved from basalt, the arrangement at Kargamis alternated with limestone (much more eroded) to give a black-panel-white-panel effect. Apart from the orthostats and a couple of equally monolithic statues, most Hittite stuff is quite dull except for their pairs of pottery bulls (that'll be a weather god of some sort).

We break again (second time) and watch some jets doing a fifteen-minute air display over us (we don't know if it was a special occasion or if they were practicing for Republic/Independence Day next week), and also watch the museum staff eating their lunch - despite its size, there's nowhere in the museum for visitors to buy food. And then it's back in for the post-Hittite civilisations, starting with the Phrygians - they ended up here from the Balkans and had their capital in nearby Gordion (where they invented the knot): they were the ones with King Midas. They buried their dead in tumuli, with grave objects, were big on the Kybele cult, and are best survived by some great jewellery and amazingly well-preserved juniper, boxwood and yew wooden artefacts. Otherwise their stuff is quite similar to Greek. They were annexed by Persia in 550BC, after becoming part of Lydia.
The museum's last major "local" collection (though none of them since chalcolithic times have really been "Anatolian" civilisations) is that of the Urartians (I'd never heard of them either). Descendents of the non-Indo-European Hurrians, who were the Hittites' eastern neighbours, they got a little empire going for a while, staunchly resisted the ASsyrians and were apparently wiped out by Medes and Scythians who presumably crossed the Caucasus to get to them. Naturally mineral-rich, they left a lot of great (and modern-looking) metal items behind them (brooches, clamps, even table legs!). The Persians, who gradually took over all of Anatolia by 500BC or so, are mysteriously omitted entirely from the collection, but there is a Hellenistic/Roman Classical wing downstairs. Rather than compete with the Classical sculpture collection in Istanbul, they've gone for little items - jewellery, coins, glassware, ivory pieces and some fantastic metal statuettes. The Classical wing is actually one of the best, if only because they've chosen to display so few (but all very good) pieces.
Finally there's a little section on Ankaran finds, which is like a summary of the rest of the museum ecept with stuff dug up locally and extending to more recent times. Close to the Phrygian capital, serving as the capital of the Roman province of Galatia, and close to the Seljuk capital at Konya, it's also quite a good little set. Other highlights of the museum were the building itself (an Ottoman caravanserai/mall) and the American woman in a little tour group who asked "Ottoman? That was after Constantine, right?".

It took us about five hours to go round and by the time we're finished, Milla's definitely feeling unwell - as she points out, we haven't actually eaten anything for about 24 hours: my metabolism is fine with this, but hers definitely isn't. We look around in the vicinity of the museum, but she's not feeling bad enough to pay those prices, so we return to the Ulus area and find a little eatery/lokanta and both of us eat reasonably well for less than the cost of one small portion up the hill. After we've finished we carry on exploring the area, which is pretty run-down: there's a lot of derelict and semi-derelict housing - old wooden buildings mostly). There's a bazaar of clothes stalls (almost deserted) and a couple of full dolmus stations (they look like where minibuses come to die).
We return to the "Otel", after deciding that we'll have to stay in Ankara another day if we want to see Ataturk's Mausoleum and the small handful of other stuff (eg. Roman remains) which we've identified. Our room of last night has been given to someone else during our absence (after all, we said we were leaving), as are all the equivalent rooms: the guy shows us a larger room with a higher price, which he also reduces to 15 million once we start walking away. It's fine, though we later discover it only has an en-suite shower - the toilet's round the hall, and there's a connecting window! We discover it's easy to have a conversation from our little shower room with anyone using the toilet - ah well.

Up a hill to the south (this part of Ankara is all little hills, very close to each other), we find a long mosque with some Roman ruins behind - just ruins: there are a couple of walls they seem to be working on. Just down (the other side) from there is a column erected to mark the visit of Emperor Julianus (don't actually remember him but his column has a large stork's nest on top, so he's doing some good now),and further down is a large complex of Roman Baths. Only the foundations remain now, and they're mostly a sprawl of hypocaust flooring - obviously were pretty popular, considering their size: probably mostly during the chilly winter months. There's an attached palaestra, a stretch of street and a nondescript Byzantine tomb. The place closes around us (they shut the gate before we leave!) even though the clocks went back earlier today and the place should still be open for 45 minutes after we quit. No matter - we figure out how to open the gate and from there we cross Ulus via a large equestrian statue of Ataturk (with soldiers in various poses around the base) and find an open supermarket with our best prices in Turkey yet! Laden down with bags, we return to our room and . . . well, actually that was it for the day: Milla still wasn't feeling right and went to bed; I stayed up writing.