Ancient and Modern

S headed off to Day 1 of her conference this morning (after an excellent cheese simit for breakfast!) leaving me to wander all over downtown Ankara. It was great, especially getting accosted by two different sets of school kids at a couple of the major historic sites all wanting me to speak their names for a laugh. I left the first group with a present of a Turkish flag hanging from my rucksack which seemed to go down well enough because people started saying stuff to me in the street. I figured they were being pleasant but who knows! The second lot of kids were more demanding and I suspect there may be a Facebook entry going up today with me being taught some dodgy dance moves and being a typical Wally!

There can't be many tourists visit Ankara because a lot of the places I went looking for really weren't signposted in any helpful way. Apart from the Citadel which is perched on top of a hill so is hard to miss, I don't think I found anything at the first attempt. Which meant that I did find a couple of good bazaars, the plumbing supplies district, the motorbike repair district and a fantastic place for lunch!! After which I finally found my way to the site of the Roman Baths, wedged in the middle of modern Ankara. There are bits of Roman and Byzantine buildings lying all over the place, I expect just too much to display properly while the site excavations are still going on but the baths are really impressive. The Modern less so.