Goodbye Haluk

Today was the last day with our private guide Haluk before we went to the capital of Turkey, Istanbul. This morning, Haluk said he had a surprise for us. We were quite curious. We leave at 3a.m. with the car in the direction of a unknown place. Suddenly we arrived in a very crowded city, called Afyon. On the first sight, Afyon hadn’t something special but when we turned 180°, we saw one small but high mountain in the middle of the city. It was called “the Black Rock”. Now some of you should say: “well it’s just a mmountain in the middle of the city” but when we looked better to the mountain, we could see a castle on it. But it wasn’t a normal castle, it was built on the same shape as the mountain. The Kara Hissar, that’s the name of the castle had been built with stones of the same color of the mountain to give an impression to camouflage. Here you can see a picture of the mountain in the middle of the city and if you concentrate, perhaps you can see the castle. If you can’t, you can take a better look by clicking on that link.

We also saw the Ulu Kami Mosque. The mosque had been built in 1272. The most important character is that the wooden roof is supported by only 40 wooden pillars. That was a very typical example of the architecture in that year.

A third thing we visited was the museum (Istiklal Harbi Müzesi) of the Liberation war against the Greek people in 1922 in Dumlupinar. We can also see a memorial of the war in the park near the city hall. In the museum, we saw some weapons both armies used, the different strategies they used, the important turning points during the war etc. It was a very interesting visit in that museum. You can find more info by clicking here.

After having a good day in Afyon, we came back to Antalya, said goodbye to Haluk, Dilek and the children and took the airplane to go to Istanbul, our last stop in Turkey.