Bursa and Bergama

Desafortunadamente nuestra visita a Bursa fue muy breve y no vimos mucho de la ciudad pero pasamos un excelente tiempo con un amigo que tenemos ahi. Llegamos de Itsambul a Bursa como a las 5 pm y nos encontramos con Cengiz el nos llevo a comer Iskender Kebaps que es un platillo de carne de cordero con una salsa turca delicioso... Despues fuimos a su casa jugamos OK con reglas que me invente, nos sirvio un platillo Bulgaro (el es originario de Bulgaria) platicamos de la vida, de deportes, de religion, del amor mientras el bebia Wisky y yo vodka al estilo turco..... medio vaso del licor con un par de hielos y ya!
Al dia siguiente partimos a Seljuk haciendo una parada en Pergama una ciudad antigua griega en ruinas en donde visitamos el templo de Dionisio, el templo de Zeus y el Santuario de Asclepius

En las fotos esta nuestro amıgo Gengız en bursa una foto del templo de Zeus (o lo que queda) y una foto de Farheen y yo en el templo de Zeus

We probably didn't really do justice to Bursa...but I guess we'll just have to return next time.

After sleeping in late, taking a bus from our hostel to the airport, renting a car at the airport, driving across all of Istanbul, past the Colgate plant I used to work at in Gebze, to Eskihisar, taking the car ferry over to the other side, and driving another 1.5 hrs, we finally reached Bursa at 5pm. While waiting for Cengiz, a friend of a friend who we were going to hang out with, I took the opportunity to go shopping. The famous Turkish towels are actually made in Bursa so ofcourse I had to pick up a couple of them! We met Cengiz and went out to eat Iskender Kebap...awesome! Then we went back to Cengiz's place, chatted about life, love, etc, listened to Turkish music and played a board game called OK using a combination of Mexican and Turkish rules. It proved to be quite a fun night.

The next day we left for Bergama. There we visited the ruins of the ancient city of Pergamon which is believed to have had a population of 150,000 at its height in the 1st century AD. We didn't eat anything interesting here :) However we did drive on to Izmir the same evening and there we enjoyed midye dolmasi (stuffed shells) again!