Ataturk and lokum

So we caught an early morning bus to Ankara. We'd heard it wasn't worth a whole lot of time so we planned to get there early afternoon and leave on the evening bus. That should have been enough time to see the main sights of Ankara: the mausoleum of  Ataturk being the biggest one and a couple of museums nearby. Ankara is more modern history than the rest of  Turkey. It wasn't much before Ataturk came along but he put a lot if work into it so they have a lot of stuff about him. It would have been enough time if we'd thought to look up how to get there before we left. Instead we stared at the metro map until we spotted something that said museum then assumed we could get directions from there. But the further inland we got in Turkey the fewer people spoke english and when we asked for directions to the museum we didn't understand the answer. So we wandered Ankara. Found a pretty park to eat lunch in, followed some signs to not a museum, found a could be a museum but couldn't find the entrance. Sat in the shade for a bit trying to find some free wifi to figure out where we were and how to get to the mausoleum (which was the thing we were most interested in) and managed on my phone to find out where we were and on Catie's laptop where the Mausoleum was before the internet disappeared. But we couldn't figure out how to match them up and get from here to there. So we spent a few hours wandering around Ankara, seeing the city if not the sights, then headed back to the otogar for our bus to Safranbolu.
We had decided before we left NZ to go to Safranbolu because it is something like number 2 on the lonely planet top places to see in Turkey. But oddly when we were talking to other backpackers about it most of them hadn't even heard of it. But the turkish people we talked to said it was great and told us to skip Ankara and spend more time in Safranbolu. Good advice. Safranbolu was beautiful. It's this town that had been basically preserved from ottoman times. Cobbled streets and shuttered windows and little alleys. And the middle of this old town is sort of like a permanent market with little shops of hand made goods and cafes. Wooden boxes and mirrors and decorations, metal tea sets and vases, ceramics, shoes, clothes. All through these little cobbled alleyways that don't have space for cars. And on every street there is at least one (but probably more) turkish delight shop. Safranbolu is famous for lokum (the turkish name for the delight) and it was pretty fantastic. We only wanted to get a little bit to try the different flavours but their idea of a little bit lasted us all day and onto the bus to Istanbul the next day. It is not really like the stuff they call turkish delight in other places. You can see the resemblance but mostly in the way that you can see how what you get in NZ is an attempt to make something like lokum but they don't really know how. We ate quite a bit of it. I kind of wish we had some left but since we ran out 3 days ago we wouldn't have any left by now even if we'd bought more.
So we spent the entire day just waking around the old city of Safranbolu, enjoying the sights and sounds and especially tastes. Then the next day we took the morning to meander a bit more before catching our last bus back to Istanbul. It took most of the day and we didn't get back to our hostel in Istanbul until after 9pm. The bus was full of children some of which were supremely annoying (if your child is being a brat take away their toy gun, don't just talk to them and then ignore the fact that they are still doing exactly the same thing) but others were completely adorable. Luckily the little girls who were practicing their english on us came after the little boy who was try to shoot us so we ended the trip feeling more endearing and less irritated.
The next day we got up early to hit the post office then went to the archaeology museum. It was pretty impressive. Living in NZ you don't really see a lot of the results of archaeology in person. Canterbury had the logie collection which was one of the best collections of classical artifacts in the whole continent, and fit into one not so large room. The Istanbul archaeology museum is just so close to everything. They have a neolithic section and a paleolithic section and an early orient section and a greek section and a roman section and a ceramics section. They need 3 whole buildings and then the less interesting stuff is left in rows outside because 3 buildings isn't enough. I won't gush too much more but as a classics major it was pretty fantastic.
But we didn't have all day so we didn't linger. We grabbed some traditional ice cream since we hadn't gotten around to trying any yet. It was odd. Almost chewy. But pretty tasty. Then we packed everything up and headed to the airport.
I won't bore you with the details. It was an average flight. Lots of waiting before, lots of waiting after. But we got to Casablanca and they let us into the country. Found our hostel and basically crashed. It was pretty late for us by that point.
This morning we walked down to the 3rd biggest mosque in the world and back through the streets of casablanca. Not the greatest tourist destination. Which is why we are now on the train to Marrakech. Which should be much nicer. I don't know when I will next have internet to post this but hopefully soon.