Exploring life in Ankara

We got up there was 20 cm of snow. After breakfast we had a short walk to experience the "winter" and continued our journey to Ankara. Since it was still national holiday the freeway was for free. There was no traffic and we came to Ankara before noon. We parked in front of the Czech Embassy and went to explore the city. The guidebook sad that the city is not very interesting so we did not expected too much. It was again quite modern city. Agnieszka found out that it will be interesting to visit the old part of the city called citadel. It was 5 km so we took a nice double-decker bus. We missed our stop so we too one more round and had a nice tour through the city. The old part look quite interesting. We found a nice caste with old houses. Local people still lived there and it had a very nice atmosphere. There was a nice view on the whole city. The most interesting were old houses on a big hill. The castle did not look as some big touristic place. On way back toped in from of a local pub and made few pictures of the city. The owner invited us inside for a tea. It had very nice atmosphere with local men playing cards. I made few pictures of the owner, taxi driver and local police. The sun was getting down so we started to look for our way back. We stopped at a big mosque. In the middle there was a large light in the for of globe. It had again a very peaceful atmosphere. I that there are now pictures of goods. Sitting on the carpet with heated floor is also quite comfortable end relaxing. I was approached by two men and they were trying to explained me something about Islam. Since they could only speak Turkish they could not explain me too much. But I felt that they were quite nice I wish I could understand more. After a few days in Turkey my feeling about muslims is that they are quite peaceful. after this relaxing experience we went back to our car. My diesel tank was almost empty and the car stopped going up the hill. I switch to oil and it was ok. Or next stop was Goreme in Kappadocia 250 km from Ankara. It is supposed to be a very special place with cave houses. The road was very good and I was near Goreme in less than 3 hours. We slept again at the gas station.