Saturday, November 1 "Koc Museum and Ankara Castle"
What a busy day! We moved Maren's bedroom furniture upstairs, the "office" downstairs, and headed out on the town with Mustafa at 2 PM. He picked us up and presented Aeden with a new toy car (given to him when he had his winter tires installed). Aeden was thrilled and didn't let go of the car the whole rest of the day.
We picked up Mustafa's daughter Serrin at Tunali Hilmi and headed to the area of Ankara called Ulus. This is Old Ankara and a great place to visit for day trips of shopping and eating, but not so much to stay overnight. We spent quite a while at the Koc Museum (Cengelhan Rahmi M. Koc Muzesi) looking through each of the rooms full of historical artifacts--some Turkish and some not. www.rmk-museum.org.tr describes the museum and the collections, but I think the building itself is what helped it hold all of our attention for so long. It is a restored caravanserai (caravan stop, think hotel and stable), originally built in 1522-1523. Each of the rooms on the perimeter of each floor had different collections in it, and Lacey and Maren were almost running from room to room saying, "Come see this, Mommy!" and "Look at this, Daddy!", while Aeden happily played with his new car on the tray of his stroller. I often wonder how we've been so lucky with these kids of ours, but I couldn't have asked for more this day.
We picked up Mustafa's daughter Serrin at Tunali Hilmi and headed to the area of Ankara called Ulus. This is Old Ankara and a great place to visit for day trips of shopping and eating, but not so much to stay overnight. We spent quite a while at the Koc Museum (Cengelhan Rahmi M. Koc Muzesi) looking through each of the rooms full of historical artifacts--some Turkish and some not. www.rmk-museum.org.tr describes the museum and the collections, but I think the building itself is what helped it hold all of our attention for so long. It is a restored caravanserai (caravan stop, think hotel and stable), originally built in 1522-1523. Each of the rooms on the perimeter of each floor had different collections in it, and Lacey and Maren were almost running from room to room saying, "Come see this, Mommy!" and "Look at this, Daddy!", while Aeden happily played with his new car on the tray of his stroller. I often wonder how we've been so lucky with these kids of ours, but I couldn't have asked for more this day.
Actual size is about 2 1/2 feet tall.
Original writing over a doorway. I still can't fathom anything being as old as the 1500's, and we haven't even gone to the "old" stuff museum yet (the Museum of Anatolian Civilization).
(their last name is Turk, they're not from Turkey!)
The display sign at the old pharmacy cracked us up, especially since two men were taking an inventory and touching and reorganizing all the bottles in the process.
We headed out of the museum to go up the hill (and I mean HILL) to visit the Ankara Citadel/Castle. Along the way we bounced Aeden along in his stroller over the ancient cobblestone streets and visited a few of the shops. And of course bought a few simit from the vendor passing by. They carry the tray of simit on their heads, thus the special hat.
Mustafa drove Aeden in his stroller up the hill quite a ways and we dodged cars driving down the narrowest streets with the tallest buildings on both sides I couldn't believe cars were even allowed. We left the stroller on the edge of the stairs climbing up to the inner walls to go exploring for a bit, and the ladies selling trinkets and bracelets along the pathway smelled the fresh blood and assumed their sales pitches in full force.
It reminded me of the story Brian told me about the market in Nepal: he had been there for 3 or 4 weeks already when Eric arrived. Brian was being ignored at the market by that point, but as soon as Eric was there with him, everyone pounced again on the foreigner.
Mustafa bought the girls and me some blue eye bracelets for 1 YTL each and we continued climbing the giant uneven steps. The castle overlooks the city and we got there just as the sun was setting. It was pretty cool. One wall was so high and so sheer a drop on the edge that Mustafa insisted on holding Lacey's and Maren's hands while we were up there.
We stopped at Dikmen Park on the way to dinner to see its nighttime display. Photos don't do it justice, since they look unreal! I'm excited to see it with snow and to walk around the reflection pool trail sometime.
We had arranged to have dinner with Tim's and Paul's families at Liva, so we invited Mustafa and Serrin as well. We had a group of 15 by that point, so we kind of took over the back corner of the second floor and had a great time. There was a mixup in ordering, so Maren ended up with a cheeseburger, a hot dog, AND an order of manti with no sauce. We all laughed about that one when the plates kept coming and coming. Then we sent back the manti because they forgot to leave off the sauce. We had a bit of leftovers from that night, that's for sure. But we left in a hurry after our stomachs were full (we were all quite tired from our museum and castle exploring!) and managed to leave our "alo packets" at the restaurant. Tim brought them by on Sunday, and they were gone in a heartbeat :-)
What a day!
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