This amazing week in Turkey ran from Saturday May 24th to Saturday May 31st, 2003 and complemented both Classical Civilisation and Archaeology courses at Filton College, near Bristol.

We flew from Heathrow to spend our first night in Istanbul and then travelled by coach to Ankara in time to visit the Ankara museum of Anatolian civilisation. After a night in Ankara we drove to Bogazkale, home of one of the most extensive Hittite sites in Turkey and also our third hotel. Later that day we visited the open air Hittite temple at Yazilikaya. The following three nights were spent in Goreme, during this time we travelled extensively throughout Cappadocia; visiting the prehistoric site at Kerkenez, the monasteries and churches hollowed out of rock in the Soganli valley and the "fairy chimneys" of Uchizar, Urgup and Zelve. We explored the underground city at Derinkuyu, the Gumusler monastery near Nigde and the Ihlara valley, with its rock cut churches and dramatic gorge. There are over 600 rock cut churches and many thousands of underground rooms in the Cappadocia region. We returned to Ankara for our last night in Turkey, taking in two Caravanseray and the salt lake en route. On the final day we flew home via Istanbul.

Here are some pictures:

Days 1 and 2 - Filton to Heathrow to Istanbul. Istanbul to Ankara including museum - these are technically very mixed as many are taken in poor lighting, on planes and airports and from the coach in rain.

Day 3 - Ankara to Bogazkale, in Corum province. Visits to Hittite open air temple at Yazilikaya and Hittite capital at Hattusas.

Days 4 and 5 - Bogazkale to Goreme via Kerkenez. Derinkuyu underground city, Gumusler monastery and the Ihlara Valley.

Day 6 - Cappadocia: Goreme area, Avanos and the Soganli valley.

Days 7 and 8 - Goreme to Ankara. Ataturk's mausoleum, Ankara to Istanbul, Istanbul to Filton.

The pictures were taken on two cameras. Mine is an Olympus C2100Z and Claire's is a much newer and smaller Olympus mju 300. The filename of each picture ends in either "rc" (me) or "cmc" (Claire). The original image sizes were 1600x1200 and 2048x1536 pixels respectively, but resized to 700x525 pixels for these webpages. If anyone would like to print any of these images, please email me at the address shown on this page for the full size original picture file.

Some related links, no particular order:

Official website of the Turkish Embassy in Washington has plenty of information.

The CIA website also has facts and figures.

Demir's tour company, Umay Tours.

The Turkish Ministry of Culture homepage.

An Ihlara Valley link.

Whirling Dervishes information.

Whirling Dervishes - more photos.

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or for more of my digital camera pictures go to bobcox.com/pictures

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