I travelled how many miles to sightsee in Victoria rain?

My second full day in Ankara started out nice. It was just warm enough that I almost thought about wearing my sandals. I'm glad I didn't, because by the time we finished breakfast, it was spitting, and by the time we finished sightseeing, it was raining.

So Tina and I started out with meeting Naci in Kizilay for breakfast. I can't remember what we had, but it was a type of flat bread with meat, some potatoes. Then we were off to Camii Kocateppe (Jamee Koh-jah-tepp-eh, sort of). This is the big mosque in Ankara.


We were there just as the midday prayer was being called. So I got to see the full Islamic midday prayer. Then I took a couple of photos of the inside.

What you don't believe me that I was there? Oh, yeah, Check this non-photoshopped picture of me.

After the mosque, we went to an area of town called Ulus. This is where the bombing that happened a couple of weeks ago occured. In fact, we walked around the building that was bombed. However, this statue of Ataturk was on one corner of the street block that the mall was on.

Ulus used to be the center of Ankara, but sometime ago (I can't remember), Kizilay took over that. We also pasted some of the buildings of the National Assembly, the first two. They are now museums because the assembly has outgrown them both. Why no pictures? We were walking, it was raining, Naci was melting.

After some lunch, and drying off, we taxied it up the hill to Ankara castle, and the Anatolian Civilization Museum. The museum covers the early history of civilization in Anatolia as it known. It holds a lot of artifacts, and shows that in some aspects, humans haven't really changed a lot over the centuries. Some of the pottery looked a little familiar. We also figured that if you looked a little, you could find something similar to some of the necklaces in a jewellery shop.

Then we walked around the Ankara Castle. It is up on a hill, and you get some nice views. However, it was raining, and we didn't feel like swimming all the way up to the top. I did take some pictures from a nice vantage point. To me, the view here reminded me of the Gulch in Trail.

After another taxi ride, we arrived at Tina's friend Safinaz's place. Here, all of Tina's friends from school had gathered for a little farwell celebration. There was cake, and sweets, and they gave tina a nice pendant for a necklace. In the picture, from left to right, Safinaz, Christina, Fatosh, Faruk, Naci (on the floor), and Janna.

Safinaz was nice enough to pummel me in a few games of backgammon. It is a popular game among the Turks. When she asked if I knew how to play, she called it turkish chess in english. I can't recall what it is in turkish, and I remember Tina telling them what it is in english, but I was busy getting my hat handed to me.

Tina was apparently telling all her friends about how gigantic I was, and how small turkish people tended to be. Well, I'm only really a little above average for Canadians, and Turks tend to be only a little be smaller than that. For instance, Naci is in between Tina and I for height. So really, I'm not that much bigger. Of course, though, My feet were actually quite large. So we took a picture comparing my shoe to Safinaz's. Mine is a little bit bigger.

They also had a unique head band. Here's Tina modelling it.

After, a rather sedate 3rd day of tying up loose ends, laundry, and a movie, It is off to Istanbul. The movie was kind of interesting. We saw Ocean's 13. It was shown in english with turkish subtitles. That was a little problem when they had scenes that were in spanish, and would have been subtitled in english for a North American audience, but as they should be, were in turkish. It is a good thing I know a little bit of spanish, and could get the gist of what was said. Also, in Turkey, they have intermissions during the movie. So about halfway through, we got a 10 minute break.