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 Two: Two Nights In Izmir Including A Day Trip To Ephesus 11 to 12 November 1995

The collective memory (Ged & Daisy) of this part of the trip is a bit foggy. Ros might be able to help us to fill in one or two gaps.

We arrived in Izmir in the afternoon of 11th and collected our Avis car, which was to be our companion for the next week.

I’m not sure why we ended up at the Izmir Palace Hotel for a couple of nights; perhaps Lonely Planet recommendations, perhaps Ros suggested that combination for our routing.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that, once we had collected our car and navigated the Izmir traffic, we didn’t much fancy doing anything else that day we arrived. I’m sure we had a decent meal, either at the Hotel itself or somewhere recommended nearby.

It was well cold, but I’d paid for the balcony so I was going to use it!

We had arranged to see Ros the next day. I think she lived in Kuşadası at that time, so the plan was to meet at/near Ephesus, which Daisy and I were in any case very keen to see.

I think we met Ros at the House of Virgin Mary on Mount Koressos. I’m pretty sure Ros took the following picture of us there:

We have no photographic evidence of Ros joining us that day, but I am sure she did, at least for a while. Whether she came all around the Ephesus ruins with us or not I cannot recall. I do remember her not wanting to be photographed that day, although she relented on the matter of photographs when we met up with her again on the way back from our road trip, at the very end of our visit to Turkey.

Ros might remember this day better and/or differently.

Anyway, here are some of our photos from the fabulous ruins of Ephesus.

A life in the Great Theatre, darling!
What a Great Library
Stroll the Arcadian Way
More splendours of Ephesus

There are more photos of Ephesus and of course the whole trip available to view on Flickr here or below.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A