Amasra City

This is the weekend I spoke and heard the most English and the least Turkish. It was also the weekend that I felt relaxed most, but I don’t honestly think there is a correction between those first two sentences. It is the weekend that I went to Amarsra City with Alex (who is also from Canada), Kylan (from Wisconsin, U.S.A), and Saed (from Palestine). Amasra describes the beauty and my International friends describe the lack of Turkish.

Getting bus tickets to get there was a huge hassle. The only company that Alex and I could find still selling tickets 4 days ahead of time was a company called özemniyet but they didn’t accept our Canadian credit cards to be valid. So, we made a couple friends in the lobby of my dorm and they sat and helped us with it for over an hour. Finally, I paid them (40 lira per one way ticket) to put it on their credit card but they had maxed out their limit so we were only able to get tickets for the way there. Thankfully my friend Betül helped us to buy our tickets for the way back before we left on the trip! It is unfortunate that she was busy on the weekend, but I did very much enjoy the trip still.

The bus ride was long. But what 4.5 hour bus ride doesn’t feel long? Other than a longer than 4.5 hour bus ride.. I suppose would feel longer. The bus wasn’t very busy at all. We were the only ones to remain on the bus when we got to Amasra. I don’t understand why because this place is breathtaking.

We then sat at a restaurant along the coast and had hamburgers. I just realized it’s ironic that Turkey sells HAMburgers because it doesn’t sell pig meat due to the religious undertones. There was such a little amount of meat on these burgers that you could barely tell what kind it was anyways but hamburgers don’t generally have pig meat in them anyways. But they’re called that. Tuhaf. (Weird.)

Our next destination became finding the place we would stay. Alex found an amazing place using AirBnB. Here is a link to the place we stayed at: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12065419?s=VNKua8Am

This place was a bit tricky to find but we used deduction skills to match the windows near the address. It was the second floor of a building (beside a wooden one) right along the coast! When we realized it was the right place we weren’t sure how to get in but the elderly grandmother that was taking care of it came very shortly to show us the place. It was a very nice place. Saed actually just joined us for the second night so the three single beds were perfect in the main room overlooking the harbour. There also was a double bed in the bedroom, which Saed used. She made tea for us and I communicated with her using the Turkish I have acquired. She left our space and went upstairs to where she stays. We did have a locked in area separate from the rest of the building 🙂

The first place we explored was the castle of Amasra. This was a very small castle, the part we could access anyways. It was a beautiful view, though this whole place is hard to look not beautiful I think. I enjoyed the large Ataturk head at the look out spot. We didn’t see it at night but I do imagine it would have been lit up.

Then we walked up the main touristy street in Amasra. There was some pretty neat things here! 🙂

We ate at the Marina Cafe and really enjoyed the food and service here. I wanted fish but there seemed to be either places with only fish or no fish. This was the no fish place. We all had Turkish Ravioli (Manti) and Dondurma Salep. We’d had Salep before (it is simlar to hot egg nog but it’s not) but this had a scoop of ice cream in it! 😀

We saw an extraordinary amount of Jelly Fish that were dead and washed up onto the shores. Kylan began playing with them and I felt them. They felt so funny. Like a thick Jell-O kind of.

We went back to our home in Amasra and played a game of cards. Then we fell asleep.

At 9 am we went back to the Hamburger place and had some Tost. This is basically grilled cheese and they have them all the time here for breakfast. 🙂 Then we embarked up on the hill past where all the buses stop. This was quite the climb and it was also quite the view from the top. I suggest climbing to the high points in Amasra if possible, and if you ever find yourself there.

Sead joined us. Alex and I swam briefly (me more brief than him) and we all played some
frisbee. Then we built an awesome sand castle with the help of some dogs who liked the cold sand! Before we knew it… we were a tourist attraction.. 😛 There was a school trip there and they circled all around us asking us where we are from and what our soccer team is. I told them mine is Fenerbahçe (because my roommate who is fan gave me a jersey for my birthday and now I am a fan of them too because I have a shirt to prove it!) Some of them liked that I said this, while others thought Galatasaray is the best or Beşiktaş is the best. It’s an ongoing debate in Turkey. 🙂

I had a Balık Ekmek (Fish sandwich) and, Kylan claimed he didn’t like fish, but the following picture proves otherwise.

We climbed back up the hill to have a campfire, where we noticed earlier the soil was blackened from other people doing the same thing. Before doing this Kylan climbed in this cave at the top and it went up and down and was really skinny and it was scary for us waiting at the top. I thought I would also explore it but then quickly doubted my upper strength after descending a few feet. Kylan spent at least 10 minutes in this cave climbing down; it was frightening to hear rocks falling down from in there. Thankfully he did come out and was unhurt.

We went for a bit of an adventure and it felt like a jungle up here. Then we made the campfire and it went really tall at first after we lit it but then burned down quickly. It provided nice heat and we enjoyed conversation and sharing songs. The smoke from the fire was overwhelming though and almost impossible to avoid. When the fire had fully burnt out we sat and looked over the cliff for a bit breathing in as much of the beauty as we possibly could.

We got to sleep pretty late but it was so worth it. 🙂

I have been forgetting (how could I?!) to mention all the ice cream we ate over this weekend. There is these 1 TL ice cream bars. They are dangerous, I tell you. I had an uncountable number of these in berry, pistachio, and caramel flavours. We also had some cone ice cream on our way down from the hill too.

The next morning after a DEElicious traditional Turkish breakfast we climbed up the hill on the side that our house was on. It was really really windy up here but still very beautiful!

Then we boarded the bus to go back to Ankara for our last week of classes! 😥

Another great weekend!