Gaziantep and Mount Nemrut road trip

This blog has been collecting dust for the past seven months or so.  I never did get to blogging about the rest of the weekend trips I took with pals over the last few months of my time in Turkey.  And lately I've been missing my time in Turkey, due mostly to the TimeHop app on my phone that reminds me of all the cool trips that I took while over there.  So this blog post is dedicated to my most adventurous and crazy Turkish traveling experience.  My partners in crime, Donna Johnson and Lauren DeVries, can testify to that statement.

A little background about Gaziantep and Mount Nemrut:

• Gaziantep is a rapidly growing city about two and a half hours east of Tarsus.  It is famous for it's world class pistachios that they use to make the best baklava in Turkey, and maybe the world.  Gaziantep is also known for it's delicious food, Zeugma mosaic museum, and copper bazaar.  
• Mount Nemrut is an UNESCO heritage site about two and half hours northeast of Gaziantep.  It was very hard to plan how to get there and where to stay because it's pretty remote.  But it was a must see for the three of us because 'it's on the Turkey Starbucks mug'.  King Antiochus of Commagene (a small empire that was around in the 1st century B.C.) built a sanctuary on top of a mountain.  On Wikipedia, it is referred to as the 'pantheon of the Armenian gods'.  

We planned this road trip over a three day weekend.  Donna took the wheel, I had the Google Maps directions, and Lauren had the homemade kettle corn in the backseat.  We left on Friday after school and did a good job of almost getting to Gaziantep.  We did not do a good job of getting to our hotel.  What we didn't realize is that Gaziantep is a much bigger city than we were anticipating.  Our Google directions with Turkish road names and exits did little to help us navigate the city to get to our hotel.  After driving around for a while, getting turned around, and ending up in a parking lot trying to ask random Turks where our hotel was, Lauren finally got us some help.  One of her high school students was visiting his family in Gaziantep and his mom came to find us in our parking lot spot.  To this day, I still have no idea how Ziya's mom found us.  But she did and we were able to follow her to our hotel---Turkish hospitality at it's finest!

The next day, we went to the Zeugma mosaic museum.  The museum houses dozens of beautiful mosaics featuring Greek gods that were found in an archaeological site in the area.  The rich Romans had these mosaics in their villas.  Many of them were excavated during construction of a dam.  I read an article recently about more excavations taking place there, so maybe more mosaics will surface.  It is the best museum I have ever been to.  They did an amazing job of recreating what the mosaics would have looked like in the Roman villas.  Looking back at my photos, they don't do the artwork justice by any means.  But here's a few to get an idea of what makes them so special.

Camel statues in front of the museum :)

One of the statues found at the archaeological site

After the museum, we were feeling pretty hungry and in dire straits for some baklava.  Everyone recommended going to the same restaurant in old town Gaziantep.  Lauren's student, Ziya, was going to meet us so we could buy him some baklava and kebab for saving us the night before.  We finally found the restaurant...

Then walked inside and saw that it was JAM-PACKED with people.  

So clearly this was a good place to eat, but we had no idea what to do at this point.  There was no waiting list and it seemed like a big free for all as to finding a seat.  We must have looked confused/hungry enough because a very nice waiter finally found us some spots.  The menu consisted of about a dozen or so different kinds of kebap, which was making my stomach nervous already.  But this was hands down the best kebap I had in Turkey. 

Eggplant kebap and ayran (water, salt, and yogurt) in the silver dish

And when you are in Gaziantep, you have to save room for baklava.  While walking around, we thought it would be fun to start counting the baklava shops.  We gave up after 15 or so.  It's everywhere, and the people of Gaziantep can be proud of their treat.  I certainly treated myself to three little pieces of baklava...

And then one more huge pie sized piece...

What can I say, except that it was delicious.  I know baklava is generally thought of as a Greek dessert.  I've had it in Greece and in Turkey....Turkish baklava wins, hands down.  And what I wouldn't give for a piece of that Gaziantep baklava pie right about now.  

After that amazing Turkish lunch, we walked down the street to the copper bazaar.  We knew we were close when we heard the banging and hammering of metal on metal.  While some of the copper plates and bowls are machine designed, you can find some where the designs are handmade.  It was really cool to see these guys banging out their pots, pans, and plates, and hammering out the beautiful designs. I put down my deposit on my copper plate, which is now sitting on my coffee table and one of my most prized Turkish treasures.

Just another day in the copper bazaar.

In the early evening, we got back in the car to drive to Adiyaman, where we would be staying that night before going to Mount Nemrut.  We actually got to the small town without any problem and were able to find the hotel without someone's mom having to provide an escort.  Donna went to her room to do some grading, and Lauren and I went to our room to turn in for the night.  We got to our room and just started commenting on how cute it was that the staff left little flowers for us on the sheets....

Exhausted after a long day and excited for Mount Nemrut the next day, we started getting ready for bed.  Lauren went into the bathroom and asked why there was something on the ground.  I yelled back that I had no idea.  She kicked whatever was on the ground and then started screaming, "RAT, RAT, RAT!"  and ran out of the bathroom.  Initially, I tried not to panic and told myself that Lauren was crazy and imagining it.  Until I saw a RAT run out of the bathroom.  Panic and screaming ensued.  I jumped up on the bed and screamed in terror.  Lauren ran out of the room, leaving me alone with the RAT.  I watched it run under the bed I was standing on, then made a massive long jump out of the room and nearly knocked Lauren down the stairs running after her.  Donna was downstairs talking to the guys who worked at the hotel (or trying to, they only spoke Turkish and French).  As Lauren was pantomiming RAT and I was having a panic attack, Donna managed to pull up her Google translate and show the guys the Turkish word for RAT.  Their eyes got huge and they ran upstairs to do something....I am not sure what they did, but I do know that they moved our stuff to another room.  By this point it was about 10:30, we were exhausted, and after considering sleeping in the car but then thinking the rats would get in there too, Lauren and I ended up sleeping in the rat hotel.  I wish I had a picture of Lauren wearing all of her clothes to bed to avoid touching the bedding.   Needless to say, I got little to no sleep that night.  And we were more than happy to get the hell away from the rat motel the next day to go see Mount Nemrut.  

**Note:  This is the ONLY rat I ever saw in Turkey.  Most of the other places I stayed at over the two years I lived there were extremely clean and very satisfactory.  I highly recommend travel to Turkey.  Just don't stay at the two star hotels in remote Turkey and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Next blog post will be about our awesome trip to Mount Nemrut :)