Five Days in Istanbul and one in Ankara
by Jo Curran
Turkey is a country whose history stretches back to the dawn of civilization and despite the ravages of time and natural disasters, much has survived for archaeologists and treasure seekers to find.
Traveling in February, which is definitely the off-season, has its advantages. Glorious warm and sunny weather is, however, not one of them! Snow, sleet, rain, cold, wind; we encountered them all. But we did not encounter crowds and high-season prices.
I picked up my 20 year old granddaughter, Renate, in Milan and we flew on My Air, an Italian, no-frills airline, to Istanbul’s secondary airport Sabiha Gockcen, an hour’s drive from the city center. The plans were to catch a bus to a train for the five-hour ride to Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
However, upon discovering that there was in fact a cheap flight ($55 one way) that would get us to our destination hours earlier than intended, we jumped at the opportunity.
Ankara’s airport is either visionary in its scope, or an enormous boondoggle. It appears to have been built to handle about 50 times its current passenger level. Empty does not begin to describe it. The airport lies about a 45-minute drive from the city. We took a shuttle bus into town, and then a taxi to our hotel, Hotel Spor. Conveniently located, it’s inexpensive, clean and adequate, but nothing more than that.
We soon discovered that taxi drivers not only did not know where our hotel or the major museums were located, but did not even know the street names when presented with them on the printed page.
The time we saved by flying we used to visit the Ethnological Museum. It’s housed in a very grand building which was Ataturk’s (founder of Turkey and its first President) offices, and where he was put in a temporary mausoleum until a fitting edifice could be built to hold his mortal remains. The collection was well chosen and, on the whole, well presented, especially where a whole tableau had been put together to illustrate a particular scene. To preserve the fabrics from over-exposure to light, the display cases lit up upon a motion sensor being triggered. However, the time switch allowed for only a cursory look at the exhibit and did not give time to really study it, so you have to do a little dance stepping forward and backward, side to side until you manage to trigger the motion sensor again. We saw only two other visitors in the hour and a half that we were there.
The real reason for our visit to Ankara was to see the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. The museum is located on a steep hill, just below the Citadel, in an historic building which was formerly an old covered bazaar. The weather made it impossible for me, being mobility impaired, to consider any mode of transport other than a taxi. Our hotel was within walking distance, but snow, slush and ice made walking difficult.