Well, this happened over a month ago, but as we have been out of town for a bit, I will use that as an excuse for how long it has taken me to post about it.
We had a day off and Jack took us on a surprise road trip. He wouldn't tell us where we were going, until we were nearly there. Frankly as I know very little about sites around Ankara, he could have taken us to a field and told us it was something special and I probably would have bought it. But instead he took us to Hattuşa, which was super cool! It was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age.
It is always so amazing to stand in these sites and imagine the lives that were lived there and the capacity the people had to build these impressive structures. The size of the stones that they moved to make the temple! It was in incredible. Anyway here are some pictures.
The temple
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| The Mysterious Green Stone! |
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| Umm...some sort of cistern?? |
The appropriately named, Lion's Gate.
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| Lion with Hieroglyphs. |
The Rampart
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| Spooky tunnel through the rampart. Look really close, the speck at the end is Jack. |
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| Sphinx Gate |
Overlooking some of the sites.
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| Here you can see why we say it looks like Idaho in this part of Turkey. Except, somebody left some ancient ruins lying around. |
More Hieroglyphs.
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| Reconstruction. |
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| Super nice, Kurdish Rug Salesman/Village Headman. His English was sooo good, it was crazy! We didn't buy any rugs, but he gave us some of his homemade cherry-apple tea. So tasty! He should be selling that stuff! |
Nearby Yazılıkaya, a sanctuary of Hattusa.
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| Crazy, skinny crack in the rock you had to navigate. |
And of course, some dudes selling us stuff.
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| Jack did not buy that. |
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| I bought a little stone medallion for my sister and this guy carved her name on the back. One stop shopping! |
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