Selcuk and Sirince
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2007
1
32
68
Trip End
Nov 08, 2007
Selcuk,
Turkey
Monday, September 17, 2007
From Foca it was only a few hours drive to our next destination - Selcuk, which is a small town or large village right next to the famous ruins of Ephesus. To get there we had our biggest driving challenge yet - getting through Izmir, the 3rd largest city in Turkey (around over 2 million people - a gnat compared to Istanbul, but still full of crazy Turkish drivers). Our maps showed a ring road freeway that would be perfect for us avoiding all hassles and cutting masses of time off our journey (cos we wouldn't have to be stopping at every red light right the way through the city - which was the alternative route). Unfortunately the ring road hasn't yet been finished, but luckily it was only the very north end that we got to first that hasn't been completed and we were able to get onto the rest of it quite easily after only 10 mins of city driving - we were pretty grateful, cos the 10 mins had been a bit frenetic and we didn't fancy an hour of it with the alternate route!
We arrived in Selcuk at around 11am and checked into our room at Hotel Bella - a place that had been recommended to us by 2 Kiwi ladies we'd met in Goreme. The owners of this hotel are 2 friendly Turkish guys and the hotel offers free trips to some of the local places of interest. There was a van leaving for Sirince, (pronounced like shiringe) a little village in the hills about 5 kms out of town, about 30 mins after we arrived, so we joined this trip for a few hours in the afternoon. The van dropped us at a restaurant that the owners had recommended and since we hadn't had breakfast, we went straight into the restaurant, ordered a couple of Efes beers and had lunch.
The view from Hotel Bella terrace
It was great! The highlight was the excellent and interesting selection of mezes, including things like mixed wild greens (which Tina had been wanting to try since she arrived in Turkey). The corban (mixed local) salads are also becoming top of the list favourites for us - the best ones are tomatoes, cucumbers and onions chopped fine, sometimes with local cheese and sometimes with rocket or lettuce, and with fresh herbs like mint and dill, all mixed with olive oil and lemon juice - yum, yum yum!!!! We didn't spend a huge amount of time walking around Sirince - it was just too nice sitting in the shady restaurant (it was a fairly hot day with no breeze!), drinking Efes and chatting to the young guy who ran the place - we taught hime some NZ sayings (like see ya) and he taught us a slang (and much easier) way to say thank you in Turkish. He also showed us his rock collection, which Tina at least was pretty interested in. Sirince is known for its fruit wines, so Tina tried a couple of samples - but they were very much like straight blackberry nip, so we haven't bought any!
Arrived back at the hotel in late afternoon, so went for a walk though the main part of Selcuk to get oriented, then ended up back at the hotel, sitting on the lovely roof terrace, which looks across the road, past a storks nest, to the ruins of the St John Basilica and the Citadel high on the hill behind.- the best view in Selcuk. The hotel restaurant (which gets great write ups in the guide books) is also up her and Chef spends most of the day preparing at leat 20 different mezes plus around 10 main couse dishes. We were sitting up ther for a few hours and Chef kept coming out with little trial nibbles of everything he was preparing - it was great!
Then just as we were sitting down for dinner there, who should turn up but or Assie friends - Paul and Carol! Wasn't 100% surprise - we'd seen their car parked outside the hotel and knew they were intending staying here, but thought they would have been a day or 2 earlier than us. So we all had dinner together and a great catch up one what we'd each been up to since we last saw each other.
