Tour - Day 6 Cappadocia to Antalya

Today was spent on the road - our longest day - 360 miles, from Cappadocia to Antalya. Antalya, according to the guide book, is known as the gateway to the Turkish Rivera. We’re on the Mediterranean Sea, but only had a glimpse of it coming down out of the mountains. We started the day driving through miles and miles of nothing much - mostly agriculture. At the beginning we noticed lots of fields with stone walls around and still lots of stones in the fields - Jon said they are growing stones there. Our first stop was at the Sultanhan Caravanserai - another oasis stop like the one yesterday, except this is the largest, best preserved in Turkey, and is a museum, not a restaurant. The Sultan built these stops for the caravans, and in return he collected taxes from those who passed through.

Next stop was Konya where the Museum of Mevlana is located. He was a famous mystic poet and founder of the Sufi Order of the Whirling Dervishes. It is a sect of Muslim, but different, taking elements from Muslim and mysticism.

The dancers start out wearing a brown cloak which they shed (shedding their earthly life) and the white dresses they wear symbolize their burial clothes. They begin to spin around and around faster, one hand toward heaven and one pointed at the earth and they enter a sort of trance state where they become closer to God. At least that is what the guide book says. There are still active dervish lodges in Turkey, though most of the dervish shows the tourists can go to are put on for their benefit.  This is a special place for Muslims, or at least for mystic Muslims, and many pilgrims come here to ask Mevlana to take their prayers to God, the same way Catholics ask the Saints to pray for them. Most of the people there today were older peasant looking people. This is the most conservative area of Turkey and we saw a lot more women wearing headscarves. But Jon said just because they are conservative in dress they are not radical angry Muslims, but rather calm, happy peaceful Muslims.

Then we had lunch - Turkish pizza (that’s not actually the name).

It was very thin crust with onion, meat and cheese and peppers.  It was wonderful, but we each had about twice as much as we could eat. We also tried Ayran, a slightly salty drink made with yogurt but we didn’t like it much.  But that’s about the only thing we’ve tried we didn’t like. The food has been WONDERFUL!!!!

After lunch we drove across the mountains, I’m not sure how high we were. The mountains were higher than the tree line, and some were rocky and totally covered with snow. The rocky cliffs were covered with Christmas type pine trees.  Finally we came down to the Mediterranean. The mountains come almost to the coast.  Here it is warmer - tomorrow is supposed to be in the 60s - quite different from the 20s yesterday! Here we see olive trees, tangerine, orange, and lemon trees, palm trees, fig trees, and even a few cotton fields. (Yes, Jeff, there is that no smoking sign hanging in the sky over Turkey again!)

It seems like everywhere we see solar panels on top of every residential roof. In the photo below you can see the panels with water tanks above. So they use them at least to heat water and maybe also to generate some of their electricity.

Animals - there are cats everywhere! And even though many are feral, people feed and take care of them. We’ve seen people in parks feeding them, or shopkeepers or restaurants putting out leftovers. It seems like an awful lot of the cats are calico. I always thought only females were calico but maybe not. Also they have pretty crows here that are black and grey.  The cat pictured below was in the Aya Sofya - he was up where the altar would have been where there were some spot lights, and the cat liked to come inside and sit by the warm lights.

My brother Jeff wants a map showing where we are going. I think he wants an interactive one, but this is the best I can do, filched from the tour company's web site, so you can have an idea of where we've been and where we're going.