Travel to Antalya

We have a long day of 9 hours of driving today from Cappadocia to Antalya on the southern coast. Today is the last of the three holiday days of Eid.

We had a quick stop for bathrooms and to visit the Sultanhani Caravansarai. In the 1200s the caravans traveled the Silk Road and other trade routes. We are currently following part of the old Silk Road on our bus. This was built in 1229 and enlarged in 1278 to be the largest of the Caravansarai at the time.

The Caravansarai were places where the caravans could stay the night.

Traders and their animals and goods were inside the thick protective walls with other traders. You could trade with the other traders to get a wide range of goods to take to your destination.

They had very large stable areas inside to protect the animals and goods.

In the summertime, you slept on the roof under the stars.

A stop in Konya for the Mevlana Muzesi which is the traditional home of the Whirling Dervishes. This is were the Dervish students would come to study and learn. Lots of local people who have today off are visiting as well.

They don’t have any whirling dervish dance demonstrations, but they did have these mannequins, which show one technique for learning. Notice the board with a raised bump in the bottom middle of the picture. These mannequins are standing on that bump to learn to pivot about one point.

The fields were gently rolling hills, but still didn’t get very big, maybe 40 acres at the biggest. Lots of wheat 6-8 inches high.

We then crossed the mountains and traveled along the southern coast to Antalya. Lots of big commercial greenhouses, the wheat was already harvested and they were baling the straw, or was turning from green to yellow.

We stopped at a roadside stand and our guide bought a bunch of bananas that were grown in the greenhouses. She also showed us the this vegetable and peeled and offered us small slices of one, asking us to guess what it is. It’s about the size of a medium apple.

Some guesses were papaya and mango, the flesh inside has a slight orange tinge, but was a little bit sweet. Donna liked it.

The answer is eggplant. It’s a newer variety of Turkish eggplant.