Postcards from abroad
A trip to the Urfa Museum yesterday oriented us for our site visit today to the most extraordinary archaeological find - Gobelkli Tepe (Potbelly Hill or Hill of the Naval), a UNESCO-listed wonder of the pre-ancient world. The site is on a hilltop 870 metres high with a view to Syria. The site is one… Continue reading Time to revise your prehistory understanding!
Urfa is famous for pistachio coffee - the opening photo - which is delicious: made of ground pistachio seeds and milk powder apparently. But leaving that to one side, Sanliurfa (Urfa) has been through it all: first settled by the Hurri around 3500 BCE, the Hittites and the Assyrians came along and then the Romans… Continue reading Urfa – allegedly Abraham’s birthplace
We began our quick tour of Gaziantep with a compulsory stop at the Hammam Museum (how could we resist) which told us about bridegroom parties held in the baths, post-pueperal bathing habits (pour water over the child and mother from a wolf’s skull forty times on the fortieth day) and the habit of circumcising sons… Continue reading Antep – pistachio baklava capital of Turkey
We arrived safely in Istanbul, spending a night in a charming hotel (bed covered in paper rose petals in the shape of a heart) and going for a wonder the next morning to find money and SIM cards. The streets were full of very relaxed police officers - literally hundreds and hundreds of them -… Continue reading Full-on Turkey
We are getting braver in our travels! We are off on another adventurous trip, this time to the east of Turkey which is far less visited than the west of the country. Sue came here in the 1970s so we're sure it's changed somewhat (at least we hope so). We'll be picking up a car… Continue reading Eastern Turkey