Egirdir / Eģirdir
the local bus from Isparta to Egirdir
The bus from Selcuk took us to Denizli, where we had lunch while waiting
for the bus to Isparta. There we had to use a taxi to get to a different
bus station, then got a local bus to Egirdir, where the pension came
and picked us up from the bus station.
Egirdir is nestled between the peak of Sivri Dagi and a very large lake;
its new residential developments have sprawled along the lakeshore.
We stayed on Yeshilada "Green Island", which is connected to the centre
of town by a causeway and which is absolutely chock-full of pensions and
restaurants and boat hire places. A lot of the tourists are locals,
presumably coming from Isparta, Alanya, etc. for the day or weekend —
we got in late on Sunday and just caught the tail-end of this.
We had dinner in the pension — which was a little expensive —
and chatted to an English couple. He had been an "old school" stockbroker
and told us anecdotes about Rivkin and Bond from the 80s. He asked
if we'd been to Ningaloo Reef (in Western Australia), which we hadn't, but
I countered by asking if they'd ever been to the Orkney Islands.
There was also a Scottish couple scouting out routes for a motorcycle tour
they would be leading around Eastern Turkey.
Monday 24th May
We had a full day in Egirdir, and there's not that much to see in town
itself — the old and unused Saint Stefano Church, a few bits of
Byzantine fortifications, a small mosque, a little medrese turned bazaar,
and an "old house". So we hired a taxi for the day, to go out to Kovada
National Park and Yazili Canyon NP (more a gorge than an actual canyon).
We did a short walk in each, and then had trout for lunch at a trout
farm near the canyon.
At the end the taxi took us up to Akpinar, a village half way up Mount
Sivri which gave us great views over Egirdir, Yeshilada, and the lake.
Gabi stayed with the taxi but I walked down the mountain back to town.
That evening we had the pension to ourselves.
Egirdir is pleasant, but there's not that
much to see in town. And we had a good day looking at Kovada National
Park and Yazili Canyon, but they're not nearly as nice as the valleys in
Cappadocia and getting there involves an expensive car/taxi hire. So I
would recommend Egirdir as a one night transit stop for most travellers.
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