Anka-blah

Ataturk's tomb. 

After a long journey on the bus, we finally made it to Ankara. Instead of going straight to our hotel, which most of us wanted, we instead went to probably the most important site in all of the city: Ataturk's Tomb. This was a compound celebrating the life and accomplishments of Ataturk. There was a museum attached to the tomb and everything was larger than life. The tomb itself was had mosaics everywhere but the actual supposed resting place of Ataturk's body was pretty subdued - a big coffin type thing but only in grey marble, nothing too fancy shmancy. My favorite part was the museum; we got to see the history of Turkey after Ataturk came to power - all the reforms and changes in culture. We also got to see wax figures of Ataturk at his desk; his clothing, his cufflinks, etc. That man had some sweet swag. There are also soldiers that guard his tomb, quite like the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington. The difference is, these soldiers looked so young! They barely fit into their uniforms and at one point during the changing of the guard, I caught one of the soldiers laughing. Big no-no.

The Complex - yes, I'm rockin'
tie-dye leggings. 

We left the tomb and finally got to our hotel in Ankara - the Kent Hotel - and let me tell you, it was no Noah's Ark. I have never missed Ali Bey and his family so much. This hotel room was just a bit creepy - the view was of a Turkish man doing his laundry on the balcony and there was no sunlight to the room. We didn't spend much time in the room anyway, so it all worked out.

Our friend, the injured pharmacy man.

The three days we spent in Ankara really could have been condensed into one and we could have gotten to Alanya (read: the beach) so much faster. On Monday, we had an early wake-up call to go to the Anatolian Museum. They had artifacts from thousands of years ago, with wall carvings of soldiers and charioteers, pottery and religious sculptures, and my favorite, jewelry from centuries ago. After the museum, we headed over to the Parliament complex. The building we walked into for security resembled an airport, but then once we got through that building, we got to see the more architecturally appealing buildings. The actual Parliament has a very mod look to it, orange seats, lots of bubble-type lighting, but the greatest fact of the day: the orange seats are made of the skin of gazelles. very luxurious but also quite expensive.

The day pretty much ended there, with dinner thrown in and a viewing of "How to Train your Dragon." Thank god I have other people who appreciate animated movies as much as I do.

Even Turkish ducks fly together!

Tuesday, Sept. 7th, we took a bus tour the city of Ankara. Ankara was turned into the capital city from a quaint town in the twenties, so it was easy to tell that it hadn't been building up its size and neighborhoods for centuries. They have a lot of slum neighborhoods, which didn't add much to the scenery, but it was interesting to see the difference between Istanbul and Ankara - to see how the capital was so less 'cosmopolitan' and european than Istanbul. After the city tour, we took a break in a park (a positive attribute of Ankara is the number of parks), and then ended up eating lunch at a restaurant in the park. A great discovery: Turkey has ducks, but not just any ducks, MUTANT DUCKS that are MASSIVE. and they fly together - hizzah - so I was thrilled to see that even thousands of miles away, Mighty Ducks is relevant to my life.

The most interesting part of our detour through Ankara was meeting the head officer of Religious Affairs . He spoke to us about his job (and how it has 'nothing' to do with the government). It was interesting to hear how he felt Islam should be practiced, and that there was a group of (presumably men) who discussed certain laws of Islam and analyzing the Koran to see what they felt the script was telling the masses. It was easy to see how removed this office was from the government, though, merely by its location a good 40 minutes outside the center of the city. We were set free to roam the streets, aka our small neighborhood, after the meeting was over. The most important stop was the grocery store to stack up on food for our 10 HOUR bus ride on Wednesday. Basically, hazelnut wafer cookies were necessary, as well as a jar of Nutella. Bedtime was early because of the early hour at which we had to be ready to start on our journey to Alanya.

I shall regale you with the tales of the tempestuous journey very soon. (i promise, mom)

Our luggage. I may have had the most, but I apologize for nothing...