Hoov's Travel Adventures: September 2020

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Bus Hopping to Amasra—September 22–24, 2020

Amasra

It was a nice surprise that the hotel staff were ready for breakfast at 8am instead of 9am like yesterday. It was the same food except the egg was overcooked. The cay—pronounced chai and is tea—is the most popular drink and the Turkish coffee like I had yesterday is a specialty.

I went to the town center where I had been dropped off, and I asked the fellow standing by if this was the place for the bus to take me to Safranbolu, he nodded yes so we waited just 5 minutes and the minibus arrived for the steep hill to the Dolmus bus station at a cost of 3.5 TL.

When I got off, I pointed to the town, Bartin, in my LP Guidebook and asked the drivers where the bus was. They gestured with their hands, so I got the general direction of where to go. After two blocks, I asked again at another bus stop with more gestures, I ended up going down a street and turned right as gestured down an alley where I saw the minibus station.

I was lucky since the bus was leaving in just 20 minutes for the 1 1/2 hour ride to Bartin at a cost of 30 TL after presenting my passport. This was a fully packed 20-passenger bus, and before getting on, they did a temperature check and applied my hand sanitizer. Everyone aboard wore masks as well as everyone I saw on the streets. The only times you don’t wear masks are when you are eating and drinking.

We passed through pine forests and river valleys on our way to Bartin.

The blue lights came on as we went through tunnels.

We stopped halfway to take smoke and bathroom breaks and then proceeded with occasional stops to drop off and pick up passengers before we got to Bartin.

Once there, the driver showed me that I just had to walk across the street to take another minibus to Amasra. It was a short half-hour ride on the completely full 20-passenger bus and this time I just wrote my name down on a register along with my passport number, sanitized my hands, and got a temperature check as I boarded the bus. It cost 7TL

This Black Sea village was beautiful with a harbor filled with small fishing boats along with lots of tourist restaurants and hotels. It is on a small peninsula with an old stone bridge to a small steep island with cobbled streets and great hilltop views of the harbor and village below.

Once in Amasra, I had no Lonely Planet guide, nor booking.com so I just started walking around and ended up at the Kristal Butik Otel for 125 TL for the night. It was just a block from the local market and the beach area. I got the 2nd floor with views of the remnants of the fortress walls above and rooftops. It was clean and comfortable for a night’s stay.

I enjoyed walking across the Kemere bridge to the Boztepe Island through two of the fortress gates whose side walls were scarred by the drivers who scrapped their rearview mirrors and more on its walls.

View of Tavsan Island

I saw lots of fishing boats along with restaurants featuring fish as well as a sandy beach area.

The nearby food market was fairly active and had the usual vegetables for sale.

Again, it looks like there are few tourists with most of the restaurants empty or with few customers. Both here and in Safranbolu, I have not seen or heard anything but Turkish tourists and locals.

I had dinner at one of the seafood restaurants where the menu showed bass, but the fishermen had only been able to have mackerel. It came fried and I ended up spending most of my time picking out the bones and pulling off the skin. The green salad was welcomed as was my raki aperitif.

It was so relaxing that I stayed another night.

I spent the morning going by many of the trinket shops and discovered that nobody has postcards of the area, just framed pictures for sale. I am wondering how I will be able to use the 20 postcard stamps I bought at the local post office that also operates as a bank as well as wiring money like Western Union does. I think this is something our Post Office should consider so they can make more income and make banks and money transfer services more accessible and affordable to more and lower-income people in the US.

Here are other meals and drinks I enjoyed while here.

This is cay—pronounced chai and is tea—which seems like the national drink at only 2-3 TL.

Saffron pudding—jello-like with currents and cay.

Turkish coffee—sweet with a water chaser to clear the coffee grinds out of my mouth.

Fried calamari

Kofte Casserole—meatballs

After lunch, I explored the nearby museum that featured lots of Roman antiquities from architecture to statutes and coins.

This features Anatolian wire-woven fabrics.

Now I will retrace my route and I am not sure whether I will spend the night in Ankara or Istanbul. It’s all about the connections.

I have recently uploaded all of my travel videos to YouTube now that they allow longer uploads and you may want to see my Peru Adventures there as well as my other travel videos. That link is https://www.youtube.com/c/huntforgold

If you do go there, please subscribe to my video channel since it will help me eventually get some income there and help with my future travels. Fewer people are using DVDs so I am transitioning to streaming my travels on my YouTube channel.

Sampling Saffron in Safronbolu—September 20–22, 2020

It was a smooth 3-hour freeway ride to Safranbolu but as usual the Otogar—Bus Station—was about a mile from town. I walked into town, and as I was trying to locate some of the hotels mentioned in the Lonely Planet (LP), I was baffled. I stopped in a cafe and with luck, the owner spoke English and hooked me up to his phone hotspot wifi so I could activate map.me.

Few passengers were on this bus—about 10 or so.

Treats are served on the bus.

While there, I ordered a pastry and a lemonade. He did not have any so he served me up a local drink—watered-down yogurt called Aryan.

Even with the map.me I still could not find where the LP was listed. Part of the problem was that there were few street signs. I went to the Tourist Office, but no one spoke English, but he did direct me to a minibus that would take me down into the old town of Carsi. It cost just 3.5 TL for the downhill bumpy ride into this 1994 UNESCO World Heritage site.

Carsi was the site where saffron traders from India and Iran came to sell and trade their goods, primarily saffron, during the 17th-century Ottoman era. Most of the timber-framed buildings along these narrow, windy, and cobbled streets were built during that time and continue to be restored drawing tourists from all around.

I ended up staying at the Ebrulu KonaK hotel on the left across from the LP Bastoncu Pansiyon since it was closed and was being restored. COVID 19 has severely affected the tourist trade here. The innkeeper charged me 100 TL per night and including breakfast. Normally the charge would have been 200 TL per night plus 50 TL for breakfast.

Here is the view of the town from my hotel room during the day and later at night along with a view of the interior of the room.

Here is the Hammam—Turkish Baths—with a section for men and another for women and to the right is a mosque with its minaret.

The Tasev Restaurant was just across the street, and I enjoyed a sunset meal of saffron sauce over two steak medallions along with some veggies. I topped off my meal with a serving of Raki--a Turkish specialty—which has an anise flavor and was served with a bit of water which turned it cloudy and then put in a cup holder encased in ice.

It seems like breakfasts are served a bit later here than I am used to like about 9 am. My breakfast at the hotel centered around a soft-boiled egg and a range of vegetables, cheeses, and jams.

In the morning, I walked about town, checking out the mosques and shopping streets. There were few tourists here so I was a good target for the sales folks who loaded me up with Turkish Delight treats and perfumed hand spray along with other offers I did not understand.

I was surprised to see that none of the merchants sold postcards and it wasn’t until I went to get stamps at the post office that I could some pretty dated postcards for sale. I tried to buy a bunch of stamps, but this post office only metered the mail so I sent off two postcards to my grandson while I was there.

After some more wandering about the steep, narrow cobbled streets and stopping for cay—pronounced chai and is tea—I went for a Hamam—sauna, exfoliating rub down with rough gloves, sudsing, followed by a rigorous massage and then a rinse-off followed by a shower. The guy’s name was Typhoon and I felt like I was in one when he was exfoliating me. The cost for this total treatment was 95 TL —$13 USD—plus another $3 tip for Typhoon.

This town Hamam has been here since the 1700s during the Ottoman period. There are two parts, one for men and one for women.

On Monday night I was planning to revisit the Tasve Restaurant, but it was closed Monday. Instead, I settled for a bubbling casserole of Kofte—meatballs at a cafe at the bottom of our street. Some of these restaurants think they are doing you a favor by putting perfume in their hand sanitizer stations at their entrance. At this place, I got a whiff of the perfumed sanitizer every time I took a bite.

After dinner, I followed the sounds of music and enjoyed some more musicians along with a mango smoothie and lemon cheesecake.

Every morning I have been in Turkey I wake up around 5:30 am for the Muslim calls to prayer. Sometimes I hear it from multiple mosques that it lasts over a minute. Hard to get back to sleep after that.

The following morning, the hotel staff had breakfast ready for me at 8am before I headed to my next destination— Amasra on the Black Sea. I had to cobble together three separate bus rides: Carsi to Safranbolu, Safranbolu to Bartin, and Bartin to Amasra. All connections were tight and it took me just 2 1/2 hours to get there for a cost of 40 TL.