Turkey, here we come!

Hello bloggers!

We are over halfway our journey and this week we are going to visit the Republic of Turkey.
All of us have all been looking forward visiting this country. We are sure it is going to be spectacular.

Turkey is an Eurasia country bordered by eight other countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Asia) as you can see on a world map.

As we noticed while visiting Turkey, Turkish is the official language but the habitants also speak Kurdish and Zazaki. These two languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas. At the airport of Antalya, we already learned some Turkish words! Çıkış means exit (you pronounce it like tchikesh) and otopark means parking.

We arrived at 10am at our hotel, the Antalya Hostel Abad Hotel but it was too early to check in. Because of the great location of our hotel, we could leave our baggage at the reception and start exploring the city by foot.

Antalya is a very famous city for tourists. Not only for the beautiful weather but also for its history and monuments. A lot of people think that Turkey is all about partying but that is definitely not true.

Back in our hotel, we found some brochures about things we have to see during our visit. We discussed at lunch what we are going to visit first. It is very hot around noon so we decided to start off with the famous Antalya museum.

We took the bus to Konyaalti, one of the districts of Antalya. The Antalya Museum or Antalya Archaeological Museum is one of the largest museums of Turkey. It has 13 exhibition halls and an amazing open gallery. In 1988, it won the “European Council Special Prize”. The museum has its focus on showing examples of works which show the history of the Mediterranean and Pamphylia regions in Antalya.

Antalya is surrounded by mountains, this gave us the opportunities to make great pictures of the sunset and sunrise. It’s really amazing. These are some pictures we took:

We had dinner at a local restaurant in Konyaalti at the beach. We were told that the economy of Antalya depends on a mixture of tourism, agriculture and commerce. Industry does not take the upper hand at all.

We spend the rest of our time in Antalya at the beautiful Lara beach. Here you find a lot of 5 to 7 star hotels. Most of those hotels are replicas of famous places around the world for example Venice and Kremlin.

Wandering around in the Kaleici, the historical centre of the city is something you really have to do. Also Hadrian’s Gate is worth a visit. It is an triumphal arch which was built in the name of the Roman emperor Hadrian who visited Antalya.

Luckily, we still have some time left to discover this beautiful country. Delphine will be your guide!

İyi günler

Lies Descheemaeker