Time travel in Turkey
Ancient ruins like stepping into a fairy tale
No trip to Turkey is complete without visiting magical Cappadocia, the majestic ancient ruins of Ephesus and the metropolis of Izmir.
Cappadocia is otherworldly, like stepping into a fairy tale. Its lunar landscape is best appreciated at sunrise from a hot-air balloon, drifting over fairy chimneys and fertile valleys of orchards and vineyards.
A few places like Goreme are Disneyesque, its Flintstones streets lined with ATV and scooter rentals (kids love it of course). But you can walk to other villages, find endless caves and rock-climbing opportunities bereft of tourists. And you can scramble around these shootup conical chimneys, some as high as 40 metres, the result of wind and rain action and eruptions of now extinct volcanoes. All that volcanic action also resulted in a rich soil where grapes thrive.
Our guide told us that Cappadocians kept pigeons for their guano, which was used to fertilize their fields, and it too proved to be the perfect primer for grapes. Add to that mix the nearby Red River and no wonder there are excellent wine-tasting experiences here, but that’s another story.
Unbelievably, many Cappadocians lived a troglodyte lifestyle up until the end of the 20 th century. Some villages were completely abandoned in1960s-70s due to erosion, and cave dwellers moved to town. Today, signature cave dwellings have been chiselled out of the soft rock into some gorgeous boutique hotels.
The fabulous Argos Hotel, built on the site of an ancient monastery, overlooks the fertile Pigeon
Valley and directly below is a huge terraced garden where most of the restaurant’s vegetables and herbs are grown. Some of its subterranean rooms come with swimming pools! While you may hear from your spacious balcony pigeons cooing and nightingales singing, the Argos also has a mosque, so bring earplugs.
Going back further, Cappadocia’s medieval residents also carved out churches and monasteries and decorated the walls with Byzantine frescoes. Some of the finest and largest
collections are found in inside the Göreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
There are several ways to travel from Cappadocia to Izmir and Ephesus, but the most convenient is to fly from Kayseri (Erkilet Airport) back to Istanbul and board another plane—it took about half a day. And domestic flights are cheap.
The first thing you notice driving into Izmir is the head of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of modern Turkey, carved into a
mountainside. Atatark’s image is everywhere. (It was Ataturk who in the 1930s turned the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from a place of worship into a museum where everyone can visit.)
After checking into the Park Inn by Radisson Izmir we strolled the seaside promenade called the Kordon, and across the street outdoor bars and cafes to the Konak Pier, which were once waterfront warehouses designed by Gustave Eiffel.
The province of Izmir is Turkey’s California. First stop was the sea-
side town of Urla, which has been an important wine, olive and fig zone since 3,000 BC. Urla has many squares lined with coffee houses and you notice right away that hardly anyone wears a veil: “Infidel Izmir” has more relaxed attitudes and more non-observant Muslims than other parts of Turkey.
We drove down the peninsula hugging the Aegean Coast to Alacati, with its narrow, cobbled streets, whitewashed buildings with blueand-green wooden shutters housing upscale shops and restaurants and the charming Beyevi Hotel. Nowadays a steady breeze has established Alacati as one of the world’s top windsurfing destinations, along with being an upscale seaside resort.
Onward — through pine forests dotted with Cypresses and scatters of private homes, the cobalt blue Aegean Sea and untouched golden sand beaches — to the ancient city of Ephesus. Incredibly, only about 15 to 20 per cent of these Roman ruins, ranked among the greatest of archaeological sites worldwide, has been excavated!
We strolled its stone plazas and stately temples, the Library of Celsus’ skeletal remains, which once contained a quarter of a million books.
■ The writer was a guest of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey. No one from that organization read or approved of this article before publication.