184 TAHRIR

Eagean see

we can spend some days on the eagean see :

there is Izmir, its downtown is nice, but it's quite crowded. In its region i suggest Efes, very famous (and we can find a place not too far, next to Selçuk, too swim). It's 9 hours from Istanbul by trian or 7 hours by bus. (YES. trains are slowlier).

Izmir

The picture looks a bit old, in real the city looks a bit like Alexandria (no offense).

 To go there, the "easiest" is to take a ferry (10€, 2 hours) to Bandirma, then a train(5 hours, not on tuesday) from Bandirma to Izmir.

Efes

more in the south, there is Bodrum, the city is a bit posh but still beautiful : it is a castle on the see. I suggest it too. Same than Izmir and Efes : we can go swim somewhere.

Bodrum

Here is a map : green star shows Izmir neighborhood, like Efes, red star shows Bodrum

If we have time, energy (a lot of hours by bus !), money, and reserves of water, we can go to the very beautiful Pamukkale (means castle of cotton - Unesco rated) : it's hot springs on a white hill. It's very beautiful, there are therms a bit everywhere in the village (of course they ruin the natural therms), it's very touristic, very crowded. So i think it's not very reasonable to go BUT i think it's not nice not to tell you this exists ! It's 11 hours by bus from Istanbul. It's not close to sea so quite hot.

Pamukkale

This is a zoom : UP Efes DOWN Bodrum RIGHT Pamukkale. around 3 to 4 hours by bus from Pamukkale to one of the others.

Until 12th of august, i will be in the Antalya region.

I don't mind staying there a bit (i mean if you're interested, then you can take an internal flight at your arrival and we start from here). Antalya is a too big city (only the downtown is interesting but it's really crowded), so if you're interested going to the beach, we can go along the coast : there are paraside beaches, old greek stones, a lot of sightseeing ! I think you're not that interested : 1) it's far from Istanbul 2) you have a lot of sandy places in Egypt so maybe you come to see something else !

This is a view of Antalya, with mountains

This is a view of Kekova island, one of the nice places (all those kind of places are around 3 hours by bus from Antalya)

red arrow is Antalya, blue arrow shows were Kekova is. Around the blue arrow there are nice places

we can go to Safranbolu (Unesco rated), see the beautiful ottoman houses, and come back to Istanbul the day after (one way : 4h by bus from Istanbul).

Or go further to the Black Sea and say hello to Ukraine (not sure if it's nice to swimm there, i can search)