The Best of Mersin
we're going to a city on the south coast of Turkey that had a port 2,000 years ago and now it's the second biggest port in Türkiye welcome to Mersin so this is Mersin on the south coast only about an hour's drive from Adana there's just over a million people live here in the urban districts and nearer 2 million if you include all the districts around it it's not renowned as a tourist center but only half an hour's drive away from here is the ancient city of Tarsus which is where St Paul was born and there's some relics of his there and we covered Tarsus in our Adana film and there's a huge harbour here and port and it's the second biggest port in Turkey second only to Istanbul it deals with millions of tons of goods every year and has huge fuel grain silos and cold storage facilities and it's directly connected to the rail network so let's have a quick look around the city so I'm walking down the kordon the prominard which is very long and the cycle track goes for miles and and I'm not near the center of what you would call the city center Anen Menderes Bulvarı or boulevard follows the prominard and cycle track for about 9 miles with cafes and interesting monuments to see on the way including an F-16 bomber that's seen better days but it's popular with the nesting birds and there's wide picnic areas in the shade all the way down the prominard there's also some cycle stations here too so somebody's just told me to use the bicycles i have to download an app called PayBis and I've looked on the app store but I can't find it it just comes up as Bitcoin so unfortunately looks like I'm walking today the prominard also crosses two marinas and one of the marinas is probably the most popular place in Mersin the marina is a place where you can choose either a nice restaurant a fast food outlet or just go shopping find anything you like no everything's small yeah that'll suit you so we found the quietest place that we could oh I feel in my element now it's lovely clearly the place to be on a Saturday afternoon is the marina looking at the cars yeah can we find our car not far from the centre of Mersin on the coast are the remains of the ancient city and port of Soli of Cilicia which became Pompeiopolis over 2,000 years ago and this area has been ruled by many civilizations through the ages including the Hittites the Syrians the Persians the Armenians the Greeks the Egyptians and of course finally the Ottoman Turks and at a place called Yumuktepe they have found evidence that there were people living here 8,000 years ago which makes Yumuktepe one of the oldest settlements ever found and some of the artefacts from the site are in the archaeological museum here there were so many interesting artefacts in the museum from Neolithic to present day and my favorites are always the glass items which are thousands of years old and in particular a glass bowl which I've never seen before one thing I like about this museum is the lighting its been really well done and there's a nice cafe at this museum this museum is next door to the Deniz Müzesi or what we would call the Maritime Museum i didn't visit this museum because it didn't take the museum card and they wanted to charge me for videoing the old town is very typical of most cities here in Turkey with the usual shops and hardware stores but there are several significant and notable monuments and buildings like the Muğdat Mosque with its six minarets that are 81 m high that's 266 feet the Muğdat mosque is right behind the archaeological museum and there are a few other buildings including the culture center the library and behind me is Ataturk's House Museum and every city I visit I always visit the Ataturk Museum but unfortunately its shut on a Sunday and today is Sunday there are also two churches here near the centre it was built in 1853 by I think the Italians that were here at the time and the French and there's also the Orthodox Church which is next to the culture center Mersin is linked to a Adana and Tarsus by a railway line which opened in 1886 at the moment it's being renovated because it's being upgraded for the new high-speed system which will connect almost all the cities in Türkiye by 2030 and there's a metro system being built at the moment which should be finished by next year 2026 but you can't come to me without seeing one building which dominates the skyline that's the Mertim Tower which is 177 m high it's often called the Metropole 52 floors inside is a huge shopping mall offices and it's a hotel too it was the tallest building in Turkey for 13 years until the year 2000 but now the central bank of Turkey building in Istanbul is the tallest at 353 m that's 1,161 ft and there are now 35 other buildings here in Turkey taller than the Mertim tower heading west towards Erdemli and Kızkalesi there are literally thousands of residential apartment blocks many are occupied by Syrian refugees who have come here over the years and thousands of Turks who have relocated from the Hatay region after the earthquake of 2023 temperature today is about 26° and it's the middle of March in fact it's a lovely temperature through the winter although it does rain quite a lot in the winter apparently but in the summertime they hardly see any rain and temperatures get up to around 40° C most days in the middle of the summer Cennet Cehennem is a sinkhole what we would call heaven and hell and it's about an hour's drive from here it's a naturally formed big hole in the ground yeah well this supports the platform so that you can look into hell so this one is called Cehennem or hell and uh I think it's 130m deep or something like that and you can see from the crust on the top that it was a cave originally and then could have been thousands of years ago the roof of the cave collapsed and um and left left it open to the air but it's quite impressive isn't it and you can see there's all trees and shrubs growing in the bottom and there's lots of stalactites and stalagmites and the stalactites you can see are they they're actually part of what would have been the roof of the cave before it collapsed but the Cennet or heaven's sinkhole is much bigger and there are steps going down into the bottom of it luckily for us there is a lift which apparently is not always working down in the big lift and at the bottom is an amazing surprise there is a huge cave here and the Christians in ancient times built a church here considering this to be an important place there is a written inscription on the church entrance that says it was built in the fifth century by a religious person called Paulus and he dedicated it to the Virgin Mary there is no roof on the church and it looks like there never was and there's still paintings on the roof here incredible the cave is not so impressive inside but it's worth going in just for the photograph looking out they've actually put wire on the steps which is really good actually it stops it being so slippy is it cold yes it's cold there's quite a few steps and a wooden platform which takes you right down into the cave but you do see how the cave was before the ceiling collapsed which is really impressive and lots of stalactites not far from the sink holes is a small resort this is Kızkalesi which is a small beach resort and at one end of the beach is an amazing castle but it also has an island castle just off the coast kuscali means girl or maiden's castle the two castles were originally the stronghold of the Corycus town, Kara Castle foundations date back to the ancient times but both castles were rebuilt at the end of the 11th century and they were once connected by a causeway some of which still remains in the summertime this beach is very crowded as it's one of the closest resorts to Mersin another interesting ancient site close to Kızkalesi is the Adamkayalar which are in a valley high up in the mountains these stunning rock carvings were done around 200 AD but they are very difficult to get to, down a dangerous pathway a little further away along this coastline are several castles the most interesting one which is around 200 kilometers from Mersin is probably Mamure Castle which was originally built by the Romans and it's just an incredible castle it's only been open a few years the last time we come here they were still doing restoration work on it um but it it is just incredible it should be on Game of Thrones it's one of the biggest castles I've ever seen and the way that they have actually done all the restoration work um it looks like a brand new castle but absolutely huge it's almost two castles in one actually because there's this huge courtyard in one side and then you go through this little doorway and there's another on the other side the remains suggest it was built around the 3rd or fourth century and it is of Roman construction although it's been repaired and rebuilt several times over the centuries by different civilizations so if there's any producers that are looking for a castle for their film come and look at so what about places to stay well there's about 100 hotels in and this one around Mersin most of them are sort of business class hotels so they are a little bit more expensive than some of the resorts most of the hotels are around £80 and above we stayed in the Divan Hotel here which is a little bit higher price than what we would normally pay the room was nice and it had nice facilities including a swimming pool and a sauna and a sea view but unfortunately because it's next to the road it was a little noisy and the next day we moved to the back of the hotel which was much quieter basically we are modeling today the latest divan hot towelling robes as you can see they're quite uh stylish, style-less I'd say they've got no style, who the hell invented these, even the belt comes around my chest it don't come it never comes around my waist in these things well at least yours goes around you some hotels we can't even get them to meet As you can see we travel light we've only been here for how many days, four days, look at this they're going to laugh when they see this aren't they we look like the hillbillies going camping are they What are you getting i can get in no problem I'm professional at this I think you've stolen someone's job, right can you get in? Can I get in, come on in I come oh just fit in the lift hang on there's quite a few shopping malls here and where we stayed at the Divan Hotel at the back of it is is one of the shopping malls which is called the Saya Park all the shopping centers nowadays seem to have all the same shops in except this one does have a cinema and a few fast food outlets there's a few famous dishes that come from this area especially in Mersin and one of them is called Tantuni so we thought we better go and try it it's very similar or reminds me of a beyti a bit like a beyti a beyti which is meat done in a wrap, I think I need a knife I'm making the right mess of it really nice i like it that's better for me you prefer the chicken one i prefer the chicken one your flavor so what's the night life like here in Mersin the most popular restaurants and lokantas are on the coast road although we did visit one restaurant which was recommended on Trip Advisor we've just found this lovely restaurant in a back street somewhere that you wouldn't even think of finding a restaurant and when you walk inside it's like Aladdin's cave it's beautiful very romantic and you have to press the doorbell to get in many years ago this building was originally a French police station now serving French Lebanese food the ambiencece the staff and the starters were all lovely but the main course wasn't to our taste and it was also a little bit on the pricey side so what's the best way to get to Mersin well we went in the car took us 10 hours from Fethiye but there are national buses going from nearly every city in Türkiye to Mersin and you can fly to Çukurova from Istanbul airport pegasus are doing the flight to Çukurova which is just outside Tarsus only about 40 minutes from Mersin for £25 each way So that's it from Mersin don't forget to like, subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss where we go next, thanks for watching
2025-04-12 15:25
