Turkey Part 1

After such a long vacation I will now blog about... another vacation! My good friend Adaline is working as a nanny in Turkey for a few months. It is only a short 3 hour flight from Frankfurt to Turkey so I decided to go visit for a week.

Even though it is a short flight, there was a lot of train / bus / flight / cab action to get to Ankara, Turkey so it ended up being quite a long travel day. When I arrived mid afternoon, Adaline was at the train station to pick me up! We dropped off my luggage and headed to my first Turkish basketball game! Here is Adaline, Stephanie, and the girls outside the stadium. (Adaline is holding Aliah, all you can see of Lexis is one foot hanging out of the stroller).

Basketball game in action! We went to the game because Troy (married to Stephanie, father of the girls, and employer of Adaline) is playing in the game! 

Sadly they did not win, but it was still fun.

The baby got lots of attention for the pink ear protection. It was very loud at the game. 

Which made it even more impressive that 4-year-old Lexis 

slept through the whole thing, still in the stroller.

After the game, we followed the team to where they were eating dinner: Kebabistan. 

The outside seemed a little shady but it was very nice inside.

Here is the massive amount of flat bread that came with the kebabs Adaline and I ordered.

My favorite part- all the chairs had Kebabistan carved into them!

Kebab!

After we were done eating we got a nice surprise, the owner of the basketball team paid for our dinner! He came over and we thanked him. Then we had a long car drive to Konya. We got home pretty late but it was a good first day in Turkey!

Here is Adaline the next day ready for our big outing. She is outside the front door of the very nice condo complex.

 Here is the condo from the outside. 

We walked 'into town' to do a little shopping and grab some lunch. We were on the very edge of Konya so we were not very close to downtown. Adaline wanted food that did not resemble a kebab so we took a chance on Pizza Mario.

Coming from someone who just spent a week in Rome dining on some pretty delicious pizza, I was a little disappointed in Pizza Mario. Adaline, who has been living on Turkish food for a month, was thrilled.

We walked by the world's saddest playground.

We went into the 'AVM' building on the left.

I bought 24 silicon cupcake holders! It cost me a grand total of $7 American dollars.

Adaline contemplated buying this hamburger soap dispenser.

No Adaline + Allison outing is complete without baked goods. Turkish cookies from a bakery.

We ate them in a gazebo in a park. Turkish city planners are all about gazebos, every single park we passed had at least 20 of them. You can see three others in the background!

This is what most of Konya looks like from where we were. Lots and lots of apartments. 

Not super scenic, but people were very friendly and the city feels safe.

The next day Stephanie gave us a ride to the neighboring village Sille. We stopped to get gas (the only thing that is actually expensive in Turkey) and the gas attendants gave us all this hot beverage. This is a kind of traditional drink in Turkey, however ours smelled like diesel so we politely accepted and disposed of them down the street a ways. Adaline was the bravest and gave it a try before we dumped them; the verdict was not good.

The scenic village of Sille! This is actually a tourist destination but it was a Monday in February so it was a bit dead. Lots of the shops were closed.

We went to this Greek Orthodox church which had been very nicely remodeled with a visitor center. The visitor center was closed but the church was open.  

Click Here for more info about Sille.

There was a nice guard working at the church who took our picture for us.

After the church we wandered up to the big attraction: the cave churches. There are no signs or interpretive information about the caves, you kind of just hike up the hillside.

We really didn't have much to go on but there are patches of fading frescoes and it feels old. The area has a lot of history so it is conceivable that it is very old.

View of the town from the caves.

We only wandered through a couple caves but there were actually a lot more in the hillside. Some easy to get to, some looked like more of a climb. We just went to the easy access ones. 

It was still a bit ambiguous what the cave church rules were.

We saw a turkey in Turkey!

Climbing in caves makes you hungry! We went to this restaurant for a late lunch.

No English on the menu (unlike Europe, most people in Turkey do not speak English!). I ordered the thing that said 'kebab' and this is what I got. It was actually incredibly delicious. Chicken, mushrooms, and peppers stir fried in oil and spices- it even had melted cheese on top! (Melted cheese is not a very Turkish thing). Adaline ordered something that did not say kebab (she didn't know what she was ordering either) and she pretty much got the same thing but with beef instead of chicken. It is still unclear if we got what we ordered or if the staff took initiative to give us something they thought we would like. Either way we were happy.

The restaurant was decorated in almost an old west kind of way.

It had a nice homey feel to it.

Outside the restaurant with our leftovers. They even packaged 

up our bread basket and put extra in!

Another reason to go to Sille was the handmade pottery. Here is Adaline trying to decide what to get. This was a nice little shop that made the pottery right there. We saw a guy working the pottery wheel and a lady painting the pottery.

A wall of Turkish plates to choose from.

Here is the plate I bought my mom... Surprise mom! It was actually a tough decision since there were lots of beautiful options. Normally I would keep it a surprise but it feels

incomplete not to post my big purchase.

Stay tuned next week for the exciting conclusion of my trip to Turkey! Then you will see foreign adventures like a trip to the grocery store and pictures of Adaline working!