Our 2nd week in Turkey

After 4 nights at Ormanya Wildlife Park we had to leave as it is the maximum nights you can stay.

We were heading back along the Sea of Marmaris towards the ancient city of Troy.

Our first stop was at a place called Kemer Koyu Yolu. We drove for around 4 hours to get here. We did not want to stop at the same park ups as on the way to Ormanya.

This one sounded really nice on our park 4 night app. It said it was a very nice beach with showers and toilets. It also said that there was a small village nearby and you could find a bakery, fresh fish and a market. It also said there was an archeological site.

We arrived there quite late probably around 6pm approx. We did drive through a village but didn’t see any of those things!

The beach park up itself was very wild and not very clean. There was some outdoor sinks that were abandoned and not working, the same with the showers. There was also a very dirty toilet block that had ‘Indian style’ toilets.

The place itself was just not very nice. If it was earlier we may have just moved on! As it was late we stayed and in the morning we decided not to go looking for any of the things mentioned! We didn’t take any photographs of this place and I didn’t even feel like I wanted to swim there.

Troy

Troy is an ancient city and archeological site located around 19 miles from Canakkale and around 4 miles from The Aegean Sea in the North West corner of modern day Turkey.

The first settlers were in the early Bronze Age around 3000BC! The city hosted many different civilisations without interruption over 3,000 years. Troy became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1998 .

Troy was very much an archeological site, you definitely had to use your imagination a lot. It was still a very interesting place though.

The first 2 photos below are taken from the archeological site and are where the Temple of Athena once stood. The view is amazing and you can imagine the enemy approaching from the distance. If you look at the 3rd photo you can see how the Temple would have looked. 

The bottom photo is the Odeon building which was financed by Roman Emperor Hadrian .

We also visited The Museum of Troy, where you can see may artifacts found in the city.

Troy is probably most famous for the Trojan Horse. It was a wooden horse used by the Greeks to enter the city of Troy and win the war .

A reconstructed Trojan horse stands at the entrance to Troy. Sadly when we were there it was actually having repairs done . I’m sure it usually looks quite impressive though.

After seeing both the archeological site and the museum we went to find a place to park up for the night.

We found a place by a beach, it was high up but possible to get down, although it was very wild and overgrown. It also had lots of cannons and WW1 relics. It was very quiet and definitely a great place to stay either before or after visiting Troy and with it’s own bit of history attached.

We had a great sunset that evening too.

In the morning we decided not to hike down to the beach but to have a walk around the top and then get moving. We were heading down to Izmir, one of Turkey’s major cities .

On the way out we passed a UK van that was heading down to the park up we had just left. We both hooted and waved and then we both reversed. I realised it was ‘The Jones’ .

We had been following each other for ages on instagram. They came in and had a coffee and we chatted for ages. Before going our separate ways we had a selfie together.

We found a nice little park up on the way to Izmir. It was a residential street that led down to the beach. There was a row of houses but it didn’t look like anyone was living in them. We decided they were probably holiday homes.

The sea was a little bit too rough to swim in the day we arrived but I did manage to swim in the morning and there was a buoy to swim to, always a bonus.

After my swim we were on our way to Izmir when I spoke to Elisa Jones who we’d met the day before. She said they were heading to Foca. They said they had heard it was a nice little town. It was actually on the way to Izmir so we decided to head there first.

Foca

We arrived at Foca to a nice park up. We had a walk round. It really was a lovely town with a great feel. The day we arrived we walked up high on the cliffs looking down.

In the morning we walked the other way into the town.

Below there is a few photos from us walking around the town

Whilst we were walking around the town we bumped into our friends ‘The Jones’ who had arrived. We wandered around with them and stopped for some lunch. We tried gozlemi (pancakes) for the first time. They were very good. We had them with cheese.

We decided that we’d go out for a few drinks that night. When we arrived back at our park up there was another van from the UK parked next to us. After having a chat to them they decided to come with us.

After a few drinks we decided to get pizzas. There were no pizza cutters but scissors in a pot in the table for cutting the pizzas with! First time we’d ever seen that!

There are lots of places that have outdoor gyms such a fab idea. I usually have a go on most of the things when I see them but on this occasion Dee had a go as well, thought I should include on the this blog post as it doesn’t happen very often. This is the morning after our night out.

Of course I had to have a swim at Foca and whilst out the day before we’d found the perfect spot. I even wrote Foca Turkey in the sand as you can see.

That night the other couple we’d met went out to celebrate their wedding anniversary. It was a lovely evening so together with ‘The Jones’ we made a joint barbeque and sat outside drinking and chatting til the others came back and joined us. It was a lovely evening especially being able to sit outside for so long.

We also had a lovely sunset. A perfect end to a lovely few days. In the morning we were all heading off to different places.

Izmir

We were heading to Izmir, the place we were originally heading for when we did a de tour!

Izmir is the 3rd most populated city after Istanbul and Ankara. There are almost 5 million people living there!

We got a park up away from the main city. There is an undercover market next to the park up. We had a little roam around inside there first. It was mainly spices, dried fruit, nuts, olives, that kind of thing.

There was a bit of green nearby and it was a 10 minute walk along the promenade to the port where you can catch a ferry into the centre of Izmir, the stop to get the ferry to is called Konak and it cost 8TL each way ( roughly 35p or 30 cents if you are thinking euros)

The main attractions in Izmir are the Kemeralti bazaars, the clock tower in Konak Square, the mosques and the Agora Open Air Museum, (The Agora of Smyrna) which features the remains of an Ancient Greek and Roman market and city centre

Although the photo of Dee above makes the bazaar look quiet it really wasn’t. On the whole it was mad, crazy busy and very crowded. There were different sections that sold different things, a fish section, a clothes section etc etc . Some bits were busier than others but most of it felt like we were fighting our way through the crowds.

We made our way to Agora Open Air Museum, the ancient city of Smyrna it’s about a 15 minute walk from the bazaars. Just as we were about to cross over a Turkish man spoke to us and said that you could see most of it from the street and it wasn’t worth paying to go in. I think he was right although we didn’t get the best angle as you can see from the photos below.

Walking around Izmir was quite tiring because there were so many people. It was an interesting city to see though. We went and got the ferry back to our park up and decided that we would move on the following day

Our next destination is the ancient city Ephesus and the nearby town of Selcuk. It is also the title of our next blog post.

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