TRABZON ON THE BLACK SEA COAST
so we're at Dalaman Airport again and this time we're going to Trabzon We're in Trabzon a city in Northeast Turkey on the Black Sea Coast and the capital of the Trabzon province in total around 800,000 people live here and it was founded about 700 BC by Greek settlers and it had many names over the centuries for the most part it been called Trebizond. Popular with the Venetians and Genoese Traders Trebizond was a cultural mix of Lars, Greeks, Armenians and Ottoman Turks right up until the end of the 19th century. Most people know Trabzon from the football team Trabzon Spor which is in the Turkish super league and they have a stadium here that locals called Papara Park which cost $35 million to build in 2016 the full name is Şenel Guneş Sport Complex Papara Park which is a mouth full Şenel Guneş was a Turkish National team coach and former goalkeeper for Trabzon sport, the stadium is a couple of miles out of the center but there are plans to build a Tramway to it. The most popular part of the city is behind me, this is the Ataturk Meydanı or what we would called the Ataturk square, the square is quiet in the morning but gets busier throughout the day and the surrounding old buildings restaurants and cafes which are Tastefully lit, are pretty busy most evenings and especially at weekends and although alcohol is not served in most lokantas and restaurants there are a couple of places around the square that you can get an alcoholic drink The main shopping streets are also off this square and the most popular one is Uzun Sokak which means Long Street and it really is long with lots of shops cafes and Lokantas, so this looks like a nice Lokanta so we'll try here wow that's what you call a fire at the back of the Doner he's got a towel around him cuz he's sweating so much what's your name, Harlem Harlem, Kolay Gelsin wow they serve the meat by so many grams.
wow nice food on display here the food isn't it beautiful my favorite like a potato and meat stew and that's meat and green beans and a nice salad to go with it and of course a basket of bread. what was that like lovey? lovely, filling and tasty. How much do we owe you? 620 lira, that's about 15 quid isn't it oh yeah they're just your barrow lovey ye but you've got to be that big İ wonder if they do that in a larger size? and this street heads towards the older part of the city which has got some lovely restored Ottoman buildings and the castle wall which overlooks the Zağnos Vadisi park, an old Viaduct and the ancient bridge, this park at one end is the city mosque which is next to the coast and at the other end is the Trabzon aquarium, most aquariums that I've been to in Turkey have been really expensive but this is not it's 360 Lira per person and for me any aquarium is worth a visit one of the oldest surviving buildings here in Trabzon is Ayasofya Church which was built I think in the 13th century, this was originally a Christian church but they've now turned it into a mosque and as with all mosques you need to wear a head scarf but they do provide one at the door Agia Sophia which means the holy wisdom was completed as a church in 1263 but was converted into a mosque in 1461 remaining as a mosque for 500 years until 1964 when Edinburgh University got involved in revealing the amazing old paintings covered up by plaster for 500 years, after the restoration work it was then opened as a museum until 2013 when it was returned to being a mosque again, and the paintings covered with large Shields to hide the paintings but just for the times of prayer, what feels odd is that you're looking at pictures that depict Christianity but it's a mosque what is nice though they've rolled the carpet back so you can see the original floor here the tall building at the side of the church was originally built as a bell tower in 1427 that's 34 years before it was actually used as a minaret and it's been a minaret ever since. Another popular building for visitors here is the Ataturk Köşkü Köşk actually means a platform but this is obviously a really lovely house that he must have visited at some time. This Mansion
was actually built and completed in 1912 and it was owned by a Greek Merchant Banker in 1923 him and his family had to leave Turkey because of the population exchange and had to go to Greece so it became the property of the state and they gifted it to Ataturk, he actually made his will here in 1937, after his death in 1938 ownership went to his sister and was finally purchased from her by the Trabzon municipality to be used as the Ataturk museum for a sum of $116,000 apparently he stayed here several times and liked it here, although this was a beautiful house as a museum to Ataturk there wasn't much memorabilia or any of his artifacts, I didn't see much information about Ataturk or when he stayed in this house um and it's not the most impressive Ataturk Museum that I've seen. An early morning walk around the old part of the city revealed some really interesting things, buildings, parks and statues, I hadn't seen any of them on the tourist information or Internet sites, including Trabzon Castle which was closed off because of an archaeological dig the original Castle looked like it was a citadel and in the internal walls was mostly old derelict buildings, there's not much to see at the castle, in fact it's just really a wall they're doing a bit of a dig there as well and it's really not worth the walk, a very steep walk up the hill but I was invited to an early morning Bakery, so and it's hot as well look at that this is red hot I don't think I can eat it it's that hot it's lovely without anything on, amazing, I wonder how many Bakery's in the UK would let me film in their place? and I also popped into the Trabzon city museum which had some interesting artefacts and displays. On top of the tallest hill overlooking Trabzon port and the City is a popular Tea Garden serving tea in traditional Turkish double tea earns but we were also surprised to find several restaurants on this hill too, especially a particularly good fish restaurant this is levrek which is Seabass with tomato cheese and garlic, that is really nice Trudie's got a lovely Çıpra that's sea bream did they cook it well? to perfection most tourists won't go away from this region without seeing the Fantastic Monastery! in a car it takes about 40 minutes from Trabzon City so you got to pay for your parking and then we're going to go up with a minibus car park is absolutely full, so this car park is probably a mile from the actual Monastery so 60 L for the car park and then 52 L each for the shutle and then I think it's €20 each for the monastery, you only have to wait a couple of minutes for the shuttle bus to take you up to the monastery it's taken it's taken about 5 minutes to get up to this point and there's 400 m left to walk and as you can see we can't always guarantee the weather and it's obviously raining and there's a guy selling rain macks which I think I should have got one, so sensible shoes and something warm to wear. I came here 20 years ago and they've completely changed the way you get to it they used to just drop you off on the mini buses and then you used to have to walk up and in fact in my younger days I actually ran all the way to the top I couldn't do that now! entertainment on route on a day like today the views are this, stunning, that's a viaduct which I think carries water, so I'm going to ask him if the old Museum card is still valid, surprisingly he said the museum card was Ok last bit lovey it's the last staircase, do you think they sell tea up here? İ'm sure they do they probably grow it, I'm aware that over recent years 2016 they closed the place I think for 3 years while they did restoration work because there was a fire in the 1930s that destroyed a lot of the Monastery but they've totally restored it apparently, so we'll see. The monastery was founded around 386 AD they think and it's built at an elevation of 1,200 M that's nearly 4,000 ft in The Cliff face of KaraDağ, Black Mountain although originally a Greek Orthodox Monastery for monks it's been a refuge for all Christians and Muslim Travelers alike over the centuries and a place of study, boasting many rooms for monks, numerous guest rooms, study rooms, a libruary, a kitchen, several chapels and recently discovered a secret tunnel to a prayer room, but this is not open to the public. So for me the most impressive part of the monastery
is definitely the Little Rock Church which is covered in fantastic paintings oh wow! and the rock face is not very secure so there's still people fixing nets to it, well he's either dead or he's a dummy, I think you're right, it was a realistic dummy showing the difficult work they've done over the last three years securing the rock face. To get a real impression of this Monastery you really need a drone so the way that they've done the entrance at Sumela Monastery has changed and you don't actually get to see the outside of the monastery which is a shame, but if you're driving up here and you go past the security Point, tell them you're not going in the Monastery you're just going up the mountain and drive up to this point you get a lovely view of it 20 minutes drive out of Trabzon is a popular Lake Sera Gölü has a few restaurants around it and little pedal boats to hire which would be nice on a sunny day but we decided to drive into the Lush Green Hills and realized they are covered in thousands of hazelnut trees and we were fortunate enough to see a lady in her garden taking the husks off them, I asked her how long does it take to do this many nuts she said oh it's only a couple of days, these are fındık which is hazelnuts this is how they come with the husks on and when they peeled they look like this and that lovely lady's given us some as a present, yes very nice we just need to go and buy a nutcracker now! What a fantastic view while picking nuts but for me and Trudie the most enjoyable thing about this area is the beautiful natural scenery so we headed to the mountains to find the most famous Lake around here about 1 and a half hours drive from Trabzon when we arrived we were surprised and a little shocked, driving around wasn't what we were expecting so many hotels, restaurants, adventure parks, zip lines and bouncy castles, not what we were looking for, so this is Uzungol which is a beautiful natural lake in the mountains and a lot of people come here and 20 years ago it was a very natural lovely place to come, but it has become really commercialized now and it's not the place that it used to be this is my first time to Uzungol um and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed at all the commercialized things that surround the lake, there are those that love this sort of thing, but for me personally I think it detracts from the whole beauty of the surrounding area. Although this was still a very beautiful place it had turned into a very touristic resort. But a few miles above Uzungol is this lovely yayla or Plateau which is called Demirkapı which means steel door and we managed to stay in this lovely place called Yüce Suites by just driving up here, this lovely place was a mix of tourism and traditional culture with old traditional buildings and just a couple of hotels the perfect place to go walking in the mountains and get away from city life. we saw a lady collecting the Kuşburnu which is what we call rosehips she said she was going to make marmalade with them It's a Dipper a it's lovely to see a bird like that, oh he just jumped straight in the water I'm looking at the wrong bird so this is a another yayla which is actually higher up than Demirkapı and mostly camping here but what's so strange is the things they've got for you to do, I mean really! On a beautiful place like this and they've got bouncy things over here look and even a bit of a paddling pool and in a lot of the places they've got these zip lines which are only about 50 m long um it's the last thing that I want to do when I come to a beautiful place like this this is a lovely Yayla it reminds us of Cemel alan near Yakakoy in Fethiye Avec rent a car are going to have a heart attack when they see where we've taken this car Rufat just told us that there's Bears up there but I don't believe him and there's nothing like a cup of tea at the side of the road there's two or three different rooms in the Yüce Suites and we had the self contained apartment, well as you can see this is a really modern kitchen it's got everything you need including a fulls size fridge freezer so you could park yourself up here for at least a month and they actually charge about £50 a night here But this included the breakfast which was something else and this is the breakfast that you get and the girls are lovely they've made us something called kıymak which is traditional and it's made from musır un which is cornflour, oil and and cheese which like cheddar cheese kaşar peynir no calories here! You're joking and then we've got menemen over here which is lovely again with some cheese on and börek and the usual homemade jams and cheeses and olives and that's lovely and also this, how sweet is that, they've actually wrote on here, good morning Mick and Trudie enjoy your meal thanks for choosing Yüce suites, but this breakfast isn't just put on for us this is what they serve to everybody that comes for breakfast and look at the view fantastic isn't it I'm in heaven and you've put a line across here is that so that I can't eat too much, always put a line in your food when you're sharing especially with your man, very nice another place to stay in Demirkapı was this one, these apartments there's 26 of them they have a beautiful view and it's about 3,500Lira which is £85 including breakfast and the restaurant looks nice as well just bare in mind that if you're going to go up into the mountains away from the city um to take any alcoholic drinks with you if you like a drink because you won't find anything up on the Yaylas on the plateaus even the restaurants and hotels don't serve alcohol there, so go to the supermarket and the best Supermarket we found for any alcoholic drinks in Trabzon was Migros So what about the hotels we stayed in Trabzon we stayed at this one this is the TS Park hotel which there's no parking in this area only in the back streets and this hotel has got an agreement with one of the private parking areas in the back streets so what you do is you come to the parking area and just give them a call and then they'll come and help you with your baggage and they'll your car for you as well incidentally this hotel is in a building which is I think 200 years old but of course the rooms are modern and we stayed in a deluxe room which was £55 a night including breakfast with a modern toilet and shower the floors are carpeted so quiet and there's a shared sitting room and balcony it's situated next to the most popular part of the city So the breakfast is similar to what you would normally get anywhere else in Türkiye and you can sit outside overlooking the square for breakfast if you want there's only one disadvantage of this hotel and that is there's no lift and we're on the 3rd floor So then we stayed at the Panagia Premere for about £65 a night we were surprised that most of the staff here spoke good English, We'll extend your stay and you will be able to stay for another night lovely that's great rooms were nice with a balcony it had a gym a small swimming pool and a sauna and steam room breakfast here was really good wow they've got a good selection here haven't they? They certainly have And smoked salmon it also had a Lounge Bar and served alcoholic drinks which is unusual in Trabzon it is a bit out of the city but in a nice area next to the coastal Park and some amenities one thing you can't rely on in Trabzon is the weather it rains here over a 100 days a year which is less than it is in the UK but when it rains it rains a lot more and actually you get more than 2m of rain every year in this area but this is like a subtropical climate because it's still quite warm which is ideal for growing things like tea and the place with the biggest production of tea is the place we're going next we're going to Rize! So we'll be looking at the tea plantations and things to do in Rize in our next film so please subscribe to our channel So that's it from the lush green Black Sea region, don't forget to like and share with all your friends, subscribe and hit that notification Bell so you don't miss where we go next thanks for watching
2024-10-03 22:11
