Turkey

On this page I have collected my guides to Turkey, from Istanbul to Trabzon and Mardin. They cover routes, ancient cities, villages and museums, with opening hours, ticket prices, directions and, for some routes, GPS coordinates.

In Istanbul I wrote about Balat, the old quarter on the Golden Horn with its colorful houses and vintage cafes, and about the three main parks of the Tulip Festival: Emirgan, Göztepe and Gülhane. The Aegean coast around Izmir has its own group of articles: a day in Izmir with the Kemeraltı Bazaar, the historic elevator and the evening ferry, the ancient city of Ephesus with its summer night opening, the Pergamon Acropolis and the town of Bergama below it, the towns of Alaçatı and Urla, the scarecrow village of Barbaros and a selection of five day trips from Izmir.

Further south, Marmaris is the starting point for a day on the Bozburun peninsula with ancient Amos, Selimiye and Bozburun, and for a motorbike day trip to Datça. In Dalyan I took the river boat to the Kaunos rock tombs, and near Fethiye lies Tlos, an ancient Lycian city with rock-cut tombs.

In the east, Southeastern Anatolia is a bus route through Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa and Mardin, with a separate guide to each city: the Zeugma Mosaic Museum and the Copper Bazaar in Gaziantep, the sacred lake Balıklı Göl in Şanlıurfa, the old town of Mardin with its views over Mesopotamia. For Konya there is a guide to sixteen places and a detailed article on the Mevlana Museum with Rumi’s tomb. From Trabzon I visited the Sumela Monastery, built into a cliff above the valley, and in the village of Kuyucak near Isparta I met the sunrise in the lavender fields.