Antalya, Lake District, Konya

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We were relaxed about staying in Antalya for a while. I had just had the abscess cut out and wanted to stay near the hospital in case there were any complications as the wound healed. The city was busy, attractive, the pension did a superb breakfast and we had new visas so there was no reason to rush.

The beach near the city centre was big, but comprised solely of stones, which was disappointing. We eventually found the dolmus to a lengthy stretch of fine sand a half hour out of town. We knew that this would be the last stretch of beach we,d see before heading inland so we hung around for a few extra days. If we,d known how cold we would be on the next part of the trip we would probably have stayed even longer.

A visit to Antalya Museum turned out to be an expensive disappointment. The entry price, at £5.70 each, was several times what we've paid to get in elsewhere and was not justified by the contents which were almost exactly the same as the Bergama museum. To cap it all you have to pay again to use the toilets. We were not impressed.

In the Old Town I left Linda unattended for five minutes. She was enticed into a shop down a side street where the owner asked "May I kiss your hand?"."Yes" she replied, and was surprised to find him slobbering up the length of her arm. Fortunately her wails attracted my attention from the street. As ever, her gullibility remains untempered by experience.


We had heard generous praise of the beauty of the Turkish Lake District. over the last few months so I was quite looking forward to a change of scene.

The area consists of 3 main lakes: Burdur, Egirdir and Beysehir, each sided by a town of the same name (amongst others).

Our guidebook discounted Burdur as an industrial nonentity (from the tourists point of view) so we planned to see the other two.

The air was cold as we alighted from the bus at Egirdir, but the sun was shining and we took a room with a view over the harbour, lake and mountains. The lake is undoubtedly attractive. The surrounding mountains do not seem very high but this is because we are already at an elevation of 960 metres above sea level and these are just the mountain tops.

At the edge of Egirdir proper there is a causeway to what used to be an island. This is now populated mainly by pensions and a few restaurants. A gentle stroll around the edge of the island takes only 15 minutes. The restaurants here provided the highlight of our stay. Lake bass, lightly fried in fresh batter. Delicious, and only £2 a portion.

The small town of Egirdir itself has everything you could need. Several decent lokanta restaurants, kebab houses, patisseries and internet cafes. It is spoilt by unimaginative block-like architecture producing an ugly town in a pretty location. On the South side a grim dusty dual carriageway is laid along the lakeside from the bus station.

Autumn arrived. On the first afternoon we could see rain falling in the mountains on the far side of the lake. By the following morning it had reached our side. After 3 months of blissful sunshine, Linda took this as a personal insult and became very grumpy. I plied her with coffee and cakes, but to no avail. I was quite pleased to get the chance to wear the bloody jumper I have been carrying that won,t fold flat.

The rain followed us to Beysehir. They had built a new bus station since the guidebook was last researched, we decided as we trudged around the edge of town. The book describes Beysehir as "charming", we thought it was ordinary, but OK. As in Egirdir, scant attention had been paid to the lake. Both were more like towns which happened to be by a lake rather than one whose identity centred around it. We only stayed one night and couldn't help feeling a little disappointed with the lake district, even accounting for the poor weather.

On the bus from Beysehir we came around side of a hill and looked down on Konya. It,s big. The biggest city in Turkey by surface area we were told.

Once we had settled in we decided that its also very nice. The city centre sits along a central boulevard with some splendid municipal buildings and mosques on either side. Konya has a reputation as the most conservative Muslim city but the only expression of this to the casual visitor is a higher proportion of women wearing headscarves or wrapped from top to toe. It is also supposedly a "dry" city, but we saw a few places selling beer and a couple of drunks clutching a Turkish equivalent of Special Brew.

We visited the Mevlana Museum, really a shrine to the founder of the Whirling Dervishes, and the Koyanoglu Museum, a private collection of minerals, stuffed birds, carpets, photos and other nik-naks that had been donated to the city on the owners death. Here there was also a house furnished as it would have been 100 years ago (sparsely).

We took a day trip to the nearby village of Sille where there are rock-cut dwellings in the hillside, one of which still appeared to be inhabited. Also here was possibly the most photogenic cemetery I have ever seen, with the ancient bronzed headstones sticking out of the hillside at improbable angles.

A few days previously we had bought some cake from a local charity stall and got talking to the charity director who just happened to be a lecturer in English at Konya University. He invited us to attend on of his lectures so we duly turned up at the university grounds and found our way to the English department. First we were taken to the Senior Common Room and offered lentil soup and roast chicken. Then we attended 2 classes where the lecturer introduced us and then went to sit at the back. Each class consisted of about thirty 18 or 20 year olds. I did my best to run a question and answer session around things that interest me about peoples lives in Turkey, but inevitably discussion turned to the national obsession of Turkeys possible entry to the EU.

Around this time the area around my operation began to get swollen. On consideration I thought that this could be because: a) the original infection had returned or the wound had become reinfected, b) a new cyst was already forming where the old one had been, or c) scar tissue was forming around the wound. When the incision burst open and creamed the inside of my t-shirt I decided it must be a). I went straight to a pharmacy to get a course of antibiotics and recommenced the iodine applications.

We stayed in Konya for 5 nights, in contrast to the typical touristic visit which consists of getting off a coach outside the Mevlana Museum and getting back on it about an hour later. This probably explains why we found the city so welcoming, none more so than the exuberant owner of a restaurant who tunefully sung "Lovely, lovely people. Wonderful, wonderful people" to the assembled diners as we paid our bill.

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Photos

Lake Egirdir
From our room