It was a beautiful sunny day that got to about 17degrees and one could see for miles and miles or km and km! We checked the must see places with the concierge last evening with directions and translations and took a regular cab to the Ankara Citadel or Castle. It is more like a citadel, up on a high high hill overlooking Ankara and probably this was chosen as an excellent vantage spot to see visitors/marauders approaching. We walked the ramparts and I got an excellent photo that a little girl took of me standing on the rampart and overlooking a vast lookout of the city.
There was the old walled town around it with very steep streets and houses that were barely standing and we visited the different corners and shops selling locally made cottage industry handicrafts which was great. One could even buy giant giant bags of carded wool and raw wool from the Afghan goats or the Ankara goats that they call them here. We had some lovely Apple Tea (it is hot) in a rug place and we continued to wander around the little hilltop streets. We went for a break in a Gramaphone Cafe which was a collector's dream, old record players, old radios, wood cabinet TV, metal dinky cars, old movie posters, old binoculars, clocks, typewriters, all shiny and clean and not dusty. It was the detrius of the 20th century and all good working stuff. Old cameras too. Old music was playing and the menu was nicely done in 2 45s. All this in an old hilltop citadel town in Ankara. We had some refreshments here and a sit down as it was hard climbing up or down for hours.
We took a cab back to the hotel and then left to try to find out where the Ministry of Economy building was for our meetings on Monday and Tuesday. We knew it was about 2 km away and just wanted to find the right place. Well we walked and it was easy except for the speeding traffic with hardly a letup in the offramps we had to cross, on a workday it is probably worse. We were careful and we had to run for it crossing the very very busy freeway offramp. Not something we want to try on a work day. But now we know. We may walk it back at the end of the day just to be moving and running a bit for exercise, but it is treacherous here for pedestrians and we have one skywalk that we used but there should be at least four others. On the way back we took the other side of the busy road and there was one skywalk but again that side needs four other skywalks also.
We went by one building called Next Level and it had a Starbucks and Andrew wanted to go in and it turned out to be a high end shopping centre with every high end store one could think of, Rollex, Marmax, Lacoste, Harvey Nichols, and so on. It was done up in the most beautiful lights. We don't have anything like that at home. We then split up and I went to another bigger store while Andrew went back to the hotel to do some work for tomorrow. I came out and it was dark and had a 10 minute walk home, dodging all the traffice along the road to get back to our hotel. The road was really busy with tons of people parked and others looking for a parking spot.
Now I am heading to supper and then some work for me also afterwards.
It was nice to walk and walk today.
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