Turkish weekend in Ankara
Ankara
It was another cozy trip to one of my favorite countries. As always, promotional tickets were bought last year, four trips before this one. Departure time was fast approaching. Intersections with other events began. The trip partially intersected with two corporate parties in different places at once. We went to one of them, taking backpacks with us. The corporate party was cheerful and active, I did not want to leave at all. But I had to) As a result, we had from ball to ball. Traditional relaxation in the mastercard lounge zone and we are in the air. There was an overbooking on our plane, that is, more seats were sold than there are. Moreover, we were at risk, as our online registration was canceled as well. But fortunately, the airlines still found places for Dasha and me. Next, I faced an important task, I wanted to be a sorcerer, but according to the rules of the card, only a barbarian could choose. The whole flight lasted the battle in Heroes of Might and Magic 2. The plane began to descend, the stewardess entered my position and allowed me to continue the game, but without headphones. Just before landing, I won! We arrived at night, the city met us with very beautiful luminous residential areas. Perhaps during the day these skyscrapers did not look very good, but at night the backlight worked wonders. Since the city bus runs around the clock from the airport, getting to the hotel in the center was not difficult. The hotel had a free "Quick check-in" service. The service consisted in the fact that we changed the room twice at one in the morning, as the air conditioners did not work. But after all, this is an adventure, without which it would be boring. Also, the elevator glitched and it stopped on every floor of a nine-story hotel. But during the trip, such motivating music played that the stops seemed to be something solemn.
We started our exploration of the city from the main mosque. The size and decor of the mosque pleasantly impressed.
It was pretty deserted. By and large, Ankara is a city of nightlife, until the afternoon it is hot and quiet here. The city has a huge number of parks with cool fountains.
Day walks around the city basically boiled down to walking in parks and streets with local markets. We also climbed to the fortress. From the fortress, a view of all districts of the capital came off.
The poorer area stood out very much. At first, the city did not seem to us anything special, just a town with parks. But it only took a little heat to get off. We waited out the peak of the solstice in the hotel. On the way to the hotel, we had a very tasty meal of traditional cuisine in a local cafe. It is very difficult to eat tasteless in Turkey, especially when there is Iskander kebab on the menu) Dasha generally stated that she had the most delicious shish tavuk in our five-year experience.
Subway adventure
So, the sun has weakened a little, now we will go to the far region of Kechioren. We went down to the subway. The turnstiles are off, you don't have to pay to enter. Well, ok, it looks like a holiday. There is a map of two lines, among which there is no our station. The manager looked where we needed and said that this is the Anadolu station on this branch. On the map of Turkey, this station does not exist at all. We arrived at Anadolu. According to GPS, we are at a station with a different name. And not at all what we need. The manager explained in Turkish that we had to drive in the opposite direction, pass the station from which we started and get to Kyzylay. Transfer there and get to the AKM station. Something weird, ok. Let's go back. Moved to the second branch. On this branch in the metro scheme there are already not two, but three branches. Among which our station is still missing. Now the branches have different colors. And there is a branch that goes from one color to another. Everything was complicated by the fact that we did not know where to look for the direction of the branch, but we were lucky in this. We arrived at the AKM station. There, a diagram was waiting for us, on which there is a mysterious fourth branch, but since it is essentially the fifth (After all, there are two colors), there is no pointer to the M5 branch. We intuitively chose a candidate branch, but grandfather said in Turkish that we should switch sides. On the other side, the branch had a different number. The Turkish guy strongly recommended that we cross over to the opposite side again. The guy seemed convincing, we went over again. But grandfather did not give up his position. He saw us again on the platform and approached us and began to prove that we would not reach our goal this way. As an argument, he called another grandfather, and together they convinced us in beautiful Turkish that we still need to find a mystical branch. After wandering among the four escalators, we spotted a secret passage. After five minutes of wandering through the tunnel, we came to another branch, which was absent in all previous schemes. It had the station we needed. Now we need to guess the direction. But the current station seems to be the final one, since there is a dead end on one side of the tunnel. While we were waiting, the train arrived on the tracks in the other direction. All the people that were waiting for the train in the first direction abruptly ran into the train from the second direction. We ran after the crowd. Thanks to unrealistic luck, we did get to the mysterious station. In fact, the Turkish metro has a couple more surprises in store for the next day.
We left the subway. This district was much more beautiful than the previous ones. But the beauty was behind. It was a large and wide waterfall in the middle of the city. It was obviously artificial, but it looked very, very impressive. And it was joyful to walk both from below and from above.
The waterfall was multi-level, large and divided into separate ones. At the bottom of one of the waterfalls there is a park with a lake, bridges and local residents - ducks.
We were so impressed by the waterfall that we immediately forgave Ankara for the monotony of the morning streets. And there was no longer any doubt about the correctness of the trip. The most interesting thing is that the waterfall did not appear anywhere in the guidebooks. I found out about him by chance, when I saw him on one of the photos of Google maps.
The waterfall overlooks the mountain, on top of which there is a beautiful building and there are also waterfalls. How beautiful it is here! Even the sunset adds its touch of romance. We moved from one mountain to another. The building turned out to be an exhibition center. Entrance is free. It’s also beautiful to climb inside, and you can even go out on the roof.
At the very top of the mountain there is a restaurant of Kazakh cuisine. Here we stopped to have dinner in the rays of the setting sun. Panorama of the waterfall, sun, romance! When the sun hid and the city began to plunge into the night realm, the lights on the waterfalls turned on.
Now they also shimmered in different colors. Moreover, the beauty of this attraction is that it is in Ankara, where we least expected to see such a creation) A narrow river passes through the area. There is a recreation area along the river for kilometers. The city came to life. People climbed out into the clearings and into the pavilions. The children frolicked and played in groups. We walked along the river and nurtured the atmosphere.
There were also enclosures with animals. Moreover, the animals were not particularly in a hurry to sleep at night. In general, the conclusion is that in the summer Ankara is a night city. You could walk endlessly until your legs started to get tired at all. Closer to midnight, we began to return to the central area with the hotel. There were more and more people. And at our stop the crowd was already quite unreal. It turned out that today is the anniversary of the coup attempt and there will be rallies all night in the central square. It was hard to sleep to the rallies and singing.
Morning again. It will be hot soon. We jumped on the bus and drove to the outskirts of the city. There is a large lake where you can ride bicycles. But you still have to walk about three kilometers to the lake. When we got off the bus, a surprise awaited us in the form of a very steep serpentine descent down. This means that during the peak of the heat you will have to go up a lot. But the confidence that we will hitchhike went through the roof. We didn’t have to go far down, the first hitchhiking found us by itself. It was a taxi in which tourists from Canada rode. They saw us wandering alone to the lake, stopped the taxi driver and waved to us to jump in to them. The girl offered to chip in together and leave on the way back, she has a local phone number and a taxi driver's number. All in all it worked out great!
Also, the girl with great misunderstanding asked how we originally planned to return back. But there was no particular answer, in principle, nothing at all) We agreed with the girl for a certain time, rented bicycles ($ 3 per hour) and sped off along the lake. It's a funny fact, but for the whole trip it was almost always necessary to go down the ring route. The laws of physics obviously didn't work here.
Of the interesting things were turtles, which lazily crossed the road. Along the lake in places there were cafes in the open air for a break. On one of them we relaxed, and I ate ice cream. At the time, it worked very well for me. Two hours on the lake flew like 5 minutes. The girl told us that she decided to make another circle, so our return joint trip was canceled.
But it's okay, now we'll think of something. I waved to the first car. And a minute later we raced with a breeze along the serpentine. The man gladly agreed to let me down and insisted that he does it for free. How cool are the Turks? In any case, those that are not connected with the taxi and hotel business. And there are not many countries where the mentality of people allows you to take fellow travelers. And in Turkey, this is the second of two times we have used successful hitchhiking. The guy took us to one of the stops, from where we easily got to the hotel. The sun was at its zenith. We urgently need to eat and wait out the 35-degree heat under the air conditioner. A good kebab with a glass of draft ayran went with a bang! When we ordered ayran, the waiter spoke to us as much as possible expressing his respect.
For an hour they were lying around, you can try to get out further. On the street, it’s not that there was no heat... it was concrete rain! It was completely unexpected. I had to sit in the lobby to wait. But it didn't take long to wait. Since we were running out of early closing time of the mausoleum of Attatyurk. The rain seemed to enter our situation and stopped exactly for those 20 minutes that we needed to get to the mausoleum. But then, as the downpour began, it didn’t seem enough.
The mausoleum impressed with its scale. Looks very impressive. We also watched the changing of the guard in the downpour. With the end of the changing of the guard, the rain also ended.
The sky is serene blue again. A long alley with stone lions stretches from the mausoleum. On the side of the alley stood a vending machine with drinks, which mercilessly squeezed one lira from the tourist.
In the evening we planned to return to the area with waterfalls. Yes, that's bad luck, you have to take the subway again. Everything went wrong when we mixed up the station. This time we were waiting for such adventures as the transition from one platform to another through a standing train, so as to immediately go into another train. That is, the platform was triple and two trains belonging to different branches at once. Then, at one of the transfers, we mistakenly sat in the wrong direction, but for some reason the train went in the direction we needed, despite the electronic signboard by the driver and the electronic scoreboard inside the car. And people weren't surprised at all. They somehow magically knew that the signs and electronic direction indicators were fake. At one of the stations on the map, two branches immediately meet in a horizontal direction. I wonder what miracles await tourists there. This time we got to the stops near the park, the name of which is impossible to read “Gö kç ek Park”.
The park, like all previous parks, was very nice. It had many fountains and even a waterfall with a cave. Turks know a lot about parks. Relaxed in the park. We began to slowly move towards the waterfalls and at the same time looking for a restaurant for dinner. In one of the restaurants, the service was so intrusive that they would have torn Freimud's gold plate by force. We didn't stay there for long. Nearby was a small, but seemingly cozy restaurant. There we stopped. And since another downpour began, we were in no hurry to go anywhere. In addition to our order, they put a salad and three types of snacks on the table. When we finished the most delicious, they brought us another one of the same. Then they brought our order. When we finished eating, they brought us a watermelon. And we asked if we wanted tea. Dasha said that maybe later, but the seagulls were immediately brought to us, and in addition there was also a watermelon. It was pretty nice. But when it turned out that they didn’t include all this in the bill, we were simply blown away by the atmosphere of the institution. The rain had stopped and we could continue walking. Until the very night, we again wandered along the rivulet and rejoiced at Ankara and its inhabitants. There were also mass celebrations in the area near our hotel. The nightlife in the city is amazing! I looked at my watch, I was overwhelmed by that very feeling when you are in another country and you have to go to bed, and in 12 hours I will already be working in the office like a cucumber. Ankara did not want to let us go so much that it turned out at the airport that the flight was delayed by 2:30 hours)))
It was one of the best weekends this year! Ankara is great!
Trip information
Date of travel: 07/14/2017 – 07/17/2017
Trip type: Weekend
Duration: 2 full days
Visa: Not required
Air tickets: UIA for 8 months
Excursions: All by yourself
Trip difficulty: 2/10 (easy)
