A Short Break In Turkey, Placeholder & Links, 8 to 18 November 1995

There’s not a great deal of written material on this short trip to Turkey, which Janie and I enjoyed very much.

I have now, however, written up the holiday as best I can as an eight-part piece, starting with the Istanbul leg of the trip – click here or below:

Janie’s diary (see above) confirms how we flew out from Heathrow to Istanbul on 8 November and had arranged to be met at the airport and taken to our first hotel, the Sokullu Paşa Hotel.

It also shows that we booked a flight to Izmir lunchtime 11 November, with the Avis desk awaiting us there.

Our flights back to Heathrow on 18 November were 10:00 Izmir to Istanbul, then 13:45 to Heathrow arriving London at 16:00 GMT.

We had not arranged any accommodation for the Izmir week; we were playing it by ear on a fly-drive holiday. Seems fair enough in November, frankly.

Part of our purpose was to see Ros Elliot (who lived/lives near Izmir) and her plans were a bit up in the air, so booking ourselves up ahead of time would have been a bit daft.

There’s a good album of well-labelled photos – which you can already view – click here or below:

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A

From those photo labels and memory, I’ll write up the whole trip, hopefully before the end of February 2021.

A Short Visit To Turkey Part Eight: Bodrum & Then Return To Izmir & Ros, 17 November 1995

Bodrum‘s a beautiful coastal town and of course we made sure we had time to stroll the town in the morning before heading back in the direction of Izmir to meet up with Ros Elliott at the end of our trip.

Bodrum Castle by day
Within the castle

On our way out of Bodrum we encountered some scallywags who showed us their school.

I cannot remember exactly where we stayed that last night but I am pretty sure that Ros lived in Kuşadası at that time, so I suspect it was on “that side” of Izmir, making it a convenient place for us to meet Ros and get to Izmir airport reasonably early the next day.

Update: Ros remembers that Janie and I stayed at the Ege University Hospital Hotel, which was brand new at the time and was happy to take guests unconnected with the University or the hospital. According to Ros, the place remains open to all comers. It was very conveniently located for our purposes…

…except that, as Ros recalls, we found it surprisingly difficult to find a suitable restaurant in that Bornova district of Izmir.

Still, Janie and I do remember having a very pleasant meal with Ros and finding it very interesting to “swap notes” with her; us as tourist visitors while she had already been living in Turkey for a few years by then.

Ros said we had seen an awful lot in just a few days and she was right. Looking back on the pace at which we took that road trip, while I can believe we used to tour like that I wouldn’t dream of arranging such an itinerary in so few days any more!

Towards the end of the meal, “Mystic Ros” read our coffee grounds in the Turkish style…and I tried to reciprocate.

We’d had a great time.

All the pictures from that holiday (just one or two from this leg of the journey are not shown in this piece) can be viewed on Flickr – click here or below.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A

A Short Visit To Turkey Part Seven: Around The Aegean Coast, Fethiye, Marmaris & Bodrum, 16 November 1995

We had a lovely morning stroll around Fethiye, taking in the beauty and quaintness of the place. The above photo is but one example. As is the one below.

Trendy Marmaris

Then we drove on to the trendy town of Marmaris, where we wee able to enjoy some lunch out of doors and also were able to wander around, trying to look trendy ourselves.

Daisy looks so trendy
Best head towards Bodrum if we want to get there before dark!

Then on to Bodrum, where we stayed for the night. After dinner…

… we took a stroll around and just about managed to get a night shot of the castle.

We vowed to return the next day to take a daytime picture of the castle. Did we succeed? Tune in for the next and last episode.

All the pictures from that holiday (just one or two from this leg of the journey are not shown in this piece) can be viewed on Flickr – click here or below.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A