Rowboat

The sole boat I saw in the river:

Central Antakya

Here are some pictures taken from the top of the Buyuk Antakya Hotel of downtown Antakya. Notice the Orontes River flowing through the middle of the city bisecting the downtown area.








Here is a picture of the statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the founder of modern Turkey) that is in the center of the turning circle in the third picture. Notice the large flag and the plaques of the political parties, these were setup because of Children's Day (Çocuk Bayramı), which was the day before this picture was taken.

Pizza weirdness...

A common thing you see in Turkey (and apparently also in Syria) is that some people give their businesses names in english that just don't make any sense.

From the streets of Aleppo:




From downtown Antakya:

"We Love Syria"

Syria ended up being a really nice place, when I return from Izmir next week I will post some pictures and comments...

Syrian Hotel Wiring

Here is a picture of the lamp outlet in my Syrian hotel room, once again like the Taxi buzzers, likely not up to code:

Antakya Taxi Buzzers

These light switches are hanging from trees and light posts all over downtown Antakya, the wording essentially says "Call Buzzer, Please Wait". What makes these buttons interesting is that they are essentially light switches and the cables that attach them to each other is draped through the streets in trees, definitely not up to code. What I was not able to figure out is how the taxi's figure out where to go after they receive a signal that the button has been pressed...

Hatay Airport

This morning I flew back to Istanbul from Antakya. As discussed earlier, an Airport opened in the Hatay Province in December of 2007. There are two problems with this airport:

• It is a $30 cab drive away from the city center. Putting the airport so far away was not really necessary as there is almost nothing outside the city (5km from the center) except small villages.
• There is only one flight a day to Istanbul. This is actually two problems, the flight only goes to the Ataturk airport, which is difficult to get to from the asian side of Istanbul and the flight leaves Hatay at 5:30am.

It may have been better to have taken a bus to Adana and taken a more conveniently timed flight back to the other, conveniently placed Istanbul airport (Sabiha Gokcen). It would have been at least a 2 hour bus ride but it would have been inexpensive and would have avoided the 2 hour drive through traffic in Istanbul.

The other interesting thing about the Hatay Airport is it is essentially a giant parking lot for airplanes. There is a road that goes around the perimeter with a few military jeeps driving around the periphery over and over, I am assuming this is to prevent someone from shooting down a plane.

Here is the terminal building from about 4:45am today, notice the plane parked in the background. Also, the cars parked directly in front of the building put it in perspective, I would guess about 1500 sq.f.:



Here is the plane viewed from inside the terminal. This is something I have not seen for a while in Turkey, but they make you pick your luggage out of a pile after you checked in. Basically, your bags will not be put on the plane if you don't claim them on the way out:

Syria and back...

Just returned today from Aleppo, Syria. Syria ended up being quite a nice place and extremely safe. People were out walking around at all hours of the day and night.

When I return to Istanbul (currently in Antakya), I will write more but here is a summary of exciting events:

• Arrived in Hatay Province early April 24th
• Departed to Bab Al-Hawa (via Cilvegözü Sınır Kapısı) at noon on the 24th
• Taxi driver took me to the wrong boarder crossing (Yayladagi)
  
• Went to correct boarder crossing and dealt with taxi driver who expected to get paid twice after taking me to the wrong place.
• Met new, cooler taxi drivers at Cilvegözü who took me to Bab Al-Hawa
• It turns out that not many Americans cross over through this port of entry into Syria, no less than 5 boarder guards inspected my passport, ignored the visa, and continually asked me where I was going.
• The taxi drivers became irritated because we were stuck there for an hour while the guards were trying to figure out what to do with my documents. After they started telling the boarder guards to just stamp my passport (and after they pointed out that I actually had a visa) they let us go.
• Met friends at boarder crossing.
• Went to Aleppo, very nice city.
• Secret Police (CIA of Syria) came looking for me. They wanted to make sure that I was not a spy and really was in Aleppo.
• Returned from Aleppo to Antakya, getting out of Syria is much easier than getting in. The guards and the guy selling coffee remembered me...
• The Syrian taxi driver thought it would be a good idea to drive on top of a median to get around some trucks, the Turkish guards were not impressed and were quite angry.
• Made it back to Antakya for 2500 Syrian Pounds ($55), better than the 125 Turkish Lira ( $95) it cost to get there.
• Heading back to Istanbul Wednesday morning

I have taken lots of GPS tagged photos that I will put on my website later this week...

Rahmanlar!

Here are some pictures of Rahmanlar. Notice that the first one is the same picture as yesterday but taken 6 stories above ground.

Also, notice in the background is an island that is called Buyukada (Big Island).

Pictures from Kartal/Istanbul

Here is some dude in the street selling flags in downtown Kartal.




Another shot of downtown Kartal with some funny looking trees:




An unusual building that was built on a slope on Minibus Cad.:




Standing on Akti Sok looking down towards Minibus Cad:

Aleppo via air.

This is a bit annoying, it appears that Turkish Airlines is starting a non-stop service to Aleppo (Halab) on May 15th. As a result of not currently having a direct flight, I am going to be crossing the Syrian boarder at Bab Al-Hawa after flying into Hatay. Apparently, this airport just opened in December of 2007 and is being targeted also at the Syrians so hopefully there will not be an 'incident' while crossing the boarder...

Here are some pictures of the Hatay Airport during it's opening.

The city of Reyhanli may also be worth a visit since I will be in the area...

What happened to Rahmanlar?

As some people were curious as to what I look like sans facial hair, here is a picture of me standing in Rahmanlar overlooking the Marmara Sea. One interesting thing is that Rahmanlar is not mentioned on Google Maps and it's name in the train station has been changed to Atalar, maybe the Turks are phasing out this city...

Gasoline

Earlier today I was driving down the D-100 in Istanbul and noticed that gas was going for 3.4 YTL (currently, 1.32 YTL = 1 USD) per liter. This totals almost $10.50/gallon, and we thought we had it bad in Michigan. Diesel is a slightly more bearable 2.9YTL/liter...

Some dude named Furkan Alp just wrote an editorial essentially stating to relax, prices for barrels of oil (in dollars) has greatly increased but not for liters of gasoline in YTL (Yeni Turk Lirasi) over the last 13 months...