After being awoken at dawn by the call to prayer, we managed to stay in bed a little longer to get over the jet lag. When you hear the call to prayer from the loud speakers attached to the minarets on mosques, you know you are in Turkey. The call to prayer comes five times a day and every mosque, no matter how small has an ornate minaret.

Our first day exploring Ankara began with a quick breakfast of bread with the local version of peanut butter, which is incredibly sweet and then we hopped in a Taksi (taxi) with G to visit her carpet man, Mehmet. Taksi is a cheap and easy way to get around hilly Ankara – pretty much every taksi we got cost us less than 10TL (A$6). None of the drivers spoke English but G was able to get us where we wanted to go with ease. There are ranks everywhere, including just around the corner from G and at ranks and other places there are yellow buttons you press to call a cab. After a short taksi trip downtown we arrived at the hotel Mehmet was using as his carpet showroom. When we arrived Mehmet was having breakfast, a Van breakfast, from the region he comes from which included a range of different things including a bolied egg  and a number of other interesting looking things that looked like they were actually ingredients to cook with. Mehmet offered for us to try some – it was good but hard to describe – perhaps lightly fried grains of some kind. He also offered us tea. Business in Turkey revolves around tea and G had already schooled us in the etiquette of tea. Essentially if people ioffer you tea, acceopt, it is rude not top and is part of the way transactions are done. We were introduced to the hotel’s manager, a relative of Mehmet’s and TC asked if he could get some baklava. They had none in the hotel but sent out to get it for us. G was Mehmet’s guest and we were her friends so we were treated wonderfully.

Buying a carpet is widely recognized as one of the quintessential Turkish experiences and the salesmanship is a huge part of the experience. After Mehmet had finished his breakfast we went into the carpet room, where we were brought more tea and two large plates of baklava. The tea here is served in tulip glasses with a couple of sugar cubes. The apple tea is particularly good. The carpet buying is a lengthy process so if you intend on buying one, put some time aside.  Mehmet had a stack of probably 40 carpets and he pulls out each one, lays it on the floor and tells you where its from and a bit about the age and quality of each one. Some of them were extraordinarily old.  There are carpets (with the tufts that we normally associate with carpet, kilims which are weaved flat and often lighter, and prayers rugs, which can either be carpets or prayer rugs. As Mehmet pulled the carpets out we put aside the ones we might like to consider. G had a list of carpet sizes for her sister-in-law with instructions not to get anything green – which turned out to be challenging as green means luck in Islam. We weren’t intending to buy a carpet but as Mehmet showed a prayer rug with rich red tones, we put that in our pile and then another one – this time with brown and blue tones. After all the carpets had been gone through, Mehmet re-showed them quickly as he packed the unwanted ones away. Then it was decision time. TC photographed the ones for G while mehmet measured them and then it was our turn to choose whether to buy a carpet and which one to buy. I was a little bit too eager (as I usually am when I decide I want to buy something) so I let TC do the negotiating. In the end we paid US$250 (originally US$450) For some reason in Ankara (and I suspect a lot of Turkey) expensive things are priced in USD while everyday items are priced in Turkish Lira (TL). You can pay in TL though, which is what we did for our carpet. Carpet shopping done, and G’s perfect record of getting everyone to buy a carpet intact, we took a taksi home to send the carpet pics to Australia before we headed out for the afternoon. [ Too Drunk to Drive- Bodyjar – from their pop punk register rather the hard core stuff but still fun nonetheless]

With Little Miss K, G’s young daughter, in tow we headed out to the Carle, a castle that sits high atop Istanbul. We grabbed another cab. Cabs in Turkey don’t often have working seatbelts so we made sure Little Miss K was wedged between us. First stop was Ankara Gar, the train station, so we could collect the tickets to Istanbul staff in our co-host S’s office had helpfully arranged. Finding where to go and how to collect them proved a challenge  but eventually we found the right window and after we got through what was a short and ordered queue by Turkish standards, we succeeded in getting the tickets. We hads left TC and Little Miss K with the cab driver so they were a little bit hot by the time we got back.

It was then onto the Carle. Unfortunately we couldn’t drive to the top because they were ripping up the road. In Turkey they don’t believe in fencing off big holes in the ground so walking anywhere near roadworks is a perilous task. We negotiated our way around the roadworks and headed up to the Carle, past the souvenir shops, touts and gypsies selling jewellery, handmade children’s clothes and exceedingly faded postcards. Little Miss K showed us the way up the stairs and helpfully pointed out that the Turks weren’t very good at railings. We climbed to the top and watched as TC walked out to the edge to take some shots of the city below. It really was a great view of Ankara.

As you walk down the cobbled lanes on the other side of the Carle, there are jewellery, antique and carpet stores lining the route. We stopped by one, another fave haunt of G’s where she went to pick up and pay for a lamp. There was more tea served, some gifts for little Miss K, including a bell and TC bought me an amber and quartz ring with Arabic script on the stone.  We wandered down the hill into one of the budget market places of Istanbul, shopping amongst fully scarved and frocked Turkish women selling low quality clothes, haberdashery and bridal wear, mostly made entirely from nylon. Some of the bridal outfits would rival Big Fat Gypsy Weddings gear. There were also loads of children selling simit , a kind of bread ring, kind of like a French stick but a quarter of the thickness fashioned into a ring  and baked for longer. You get about two for 1 TL (60c). Bottled water costs about the same.[Bar room Hero – Dropkick Murphys – one of my fave drinking songs – will incite dancing at any time.]

Eventually we wound up at the produce market at the bottom of the hill where all manner of things were available, including roasted sheep heads and heaps of fresh fish. The Turks aren’t keen on a low fat diet so you can actually purchase big slabs of fat. TC sought out some black olives and G bought a big slab of beef to roast and some salad vegetables to have with it. We grabbed another cab and headed home after our big day out in Istanbul. It was fabulous just to chill out in the afternoon on the rooftop deck at Casa G&S. In the evening, we enjoyed a delicious meal of roast beef, fresh salad and potato bake. We sat around and chatted for a while before I promptly fell asleep in front of the telly at about 8pm when g suggested I go to bed. I really do need a mother wherever I am.

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