Sirince + Selcuk

Coming back from Ephesus we wandered through the weekly market in Selcuk and bought apricots, dried figs, and walnuts — in half kilogram quantities due to our language limitations. The apricots and figs were excellent, but the walnuts were amazing and must have been the freshest ones I've ever had.

We went to the train station to book tickets from Ankara to Istanbul near the end of our trip, just to make sure our third attempt at a train trip wasn't foiled! I noticed that the stork nests in the viaduct near the station had fledgelings in them (the pair in our pension are still building their nest).

On the way back we found a coffee shop run by a lively Swiss woman (married to a Turk), which actually had real coffee.

Following advice from a young American backpacker on the bus back from Ephesus, we caught the local bus up to Sirince, an old Greek village up in the hills. This is rather touristy, but has no modern developments and looks very pretty. The best view was from the Artemis Restaurant, where we had a bite and chatted to a Greek couple doing a ten day archaeological tour. We also got invited into a house by an old woman and of course had to buy some lacework as a result. (The room she was in was pretty run-down, but the house had a washing machine and a tv/dvd and satellite dish.) It was overcast and drizzled on and off.

For dinner we went back into town and ate excellent mezze at an outside table with a view of the stork nests on the aqueducts.

Sunday 23rd May

In the morning the little Swiss cafe was closed, so we had to give up our quest for real muesli and coffee for breakfast.

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