Sunday, June 27, 2010

Turkey Day 4 Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey

Phil walked me to the conference venue in a light rain; then he returned to the apartment for a day of adventures with the Buteras. I checked-in on the working groups and tried to meet up with Gwyneth and the others, but they had already left.

Atanas Radenski asked me if there were anyone going into the city so his wife could accompany her, so I said I was going to find a geocache and would be glad to go. We took the bus to Sıhhiye in Ankara and it left us off in a weird place – the exit ramp of the highway. A nice man, a Brit, from the conference showed us the way to find the park where the geocache was.

Ruomi helped me negotiate to buy a scarf from one of the stalls in the Sıhhiye Market we went to next to. Then we walked through Abdı Ipekçi Park and went the wrong way on Tuna Street ending up walking through an enclosed market building that had a big parking garage on top. We found ourselves in Kurtulus Park which is where I had hoped to find a geocache. We saw lots of bridal parties exiting a building labeled Çankaya. Then we stopped for lunch at a café where we ate the traditional pancakes, Gözlemeler. Ruomi’s mother-in-law in Bulgaria makes similar pancakes in the old style, so they had a conversation through the waiter acting as interpreter.

We walked back to the Tunus stop because we were afraid to find it near where we were left off.

Phil and the Buteras explored the old citadel and had the same pancakes at a café where the server gave them each a small geode as they left.

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