A first! A Hittite Bathtub!!

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Hello!

I think I need to start with a recap of last night’s dinner, as I did post the blog rather early.  We went down to the hotel’s restaurant about 7:30 p.m. and really, we had the entire place to ourselves!  We don’t know if this is possibly a business hotel, but even so, where do these people eat? 

R's pasta

My chicken and spinach

Blogger and photographer!

As we weren’t too terribly hungry, Robert ordered penne arrabiata (spicy pasta) and I ordered chicken with spinach; fairly plain, but very good!  Then back upstairs for the night!  (R has been threatening to take me to see the new Godzilla movie which has just come out, but I’m not really sure how we’d do with it either dubbed in Turkish or with subtitles…)

Up this morning about 6 a.m. and down for breakfast around 8.  As we had been having laundry done (yippee!) both cases needed to be entirely repacked.  It’s amazing what those cases can hold!  We were ready to go by 8:30 a.m. so checked out and were on our way north.  Excellent stay at a truly lovely hotel!  

Wound our way out of town and to the motorway.  We decided to follow the motorway for a part of the distance, just to get us clear of Adana and its suburbs.  Finally put them behind us – Adana is a really HUGE city, and it is SUCH a relief to get rid of all that horn honking!  Got off the motorway at Pozani, and followed some lovely highways through the mountains. 

Again, Turkey has some absolutely stunning scenery, and as we headed toward Kayseri and Mount Erciyes, the sunlight glistening off the snow was wonderful! 

It also looked very much like rain, which we were very excited to see.  (It kept threatening in Adana, but nothing ever happened – and that is one city that could certainly do with a scrub down!)  Mount Erciyes actually has skiing during the winter, and serves as a beautiful backdrop to the city of Kayseri.  

It took us about five hours to reach Kayseri, but we certainly weren’t in any hurry.  Our hotel, the Imamoglu Pasa Butik otel, was fairly easy to find, as it wasn’t right smack dab in the center of the old part of town.  Rather, it is out in the swanky suburbs in the furniture district.  We checked in – room 401.  Well…I had asked for a room with a view – meaning Mount Erciyes, but our room was really tiny, but it did face the mountain (a lot of other JUNK as well…).  When we decided to head to the museum, the other unoccupied rooms on our floor were open … and we decided we’d rather have a larger room, thank you very much.  So, down to reception, and we were re-assigned to room 403, a much larger and nicer room … even has a miniscule balcony and doors that supposedly open!  Moved our stuff, and finally made it out of the hotel and headed to the museum.

I can’t tell you what a difference Kayseri is after Adana! 

Very unusual - double Hittite lions!

An orthostat in the garden

First of all, there is very little horn honking, and Kayseri seems to have lots of wonderful parks and fountains – very, very attractive!  It was fairly easy to get to the museum, and they even had free parking! 

Chalcolithic painted pottery

More Chalcolithic pottery!

But the very BEST part was that 1) the museum was NOT under renovation or moving, and 2) it was actually OPEN!!  (Am I beginning to sound jaded??)

They have a wonderful double set of Hittite lions in the front garden, as well as some orthostats protected around the back.  The museum itself is fairly small/compact, and the lighting was terrible.  It was a very old-fashioned museum – wooden cases with glass fronts and sides that lock; nothing at all modern, with artifacts actually displayed on sheets of fabric.  And the signage was adequate.  

Hittite pot

Hittite BATHTUB-notice seat!

Hittite bathtub from the outside

(But then so is the lighting at our hotel, so maybe it has something to do with the area?!)

However, they had some truly WONDERFUL artifacts from Kultepe, a chalcolithic site about 22 km north of Kayseri, and where we are headed tomorrow.  Kultepe – also called Kanesh –  has been occupied since the chalcolithic.  At one point, it included an Assyrian trading colony, which was controlled from Assur, as it sits on yet another of the trade routes between Anatolia and Mesopotamia.  The early Hittites as well as the Neo-Hittites occupied the site at various times.  One of the most important discoveries here included more than 15,000 clay tablets written by the Assyrians, which dealt with the business of the Assyrian colony, as well as legal documents discussing marriage, divorce, adoption, etc. 

Hittite orthostat of a king

Hittite Luwian hieroglyphs

 But my very favorite Hittite artifacts – two, in fact –  were Hittite terra cotta BATHTUBS, that included little places to sit!  I KNEW I was a bath person for a reason!  

When we were in the museum, the storm finally broke – lightening, thunder and actual rain!  (We Arizonans are hard to convince…) It was WONDERFUL!  

From the museum, we headed to the Forum, a HUGE multi-story shopping center just down the street from the museum.  (If you are wondering why we go to shopping malls, let me only say that it seemed like the entire population of Kayseri was there – waiting for the storm to stop!)  I had hoped to go to the covered bazaar, but figured that in the rain, it wouldn’t be all that much fun.  Maybe tomorrow!

We walked through the kitchen shops – my favorite, and enjoyed mingling with the local population. 

Kayseri is a university town, and while Robert tells me that the AVERAGE age of the population is 29, I can certainly believe it!  Very nice and friendly people though; very little English, but no problems.  Then, when it looked like the rain may be stopping, we high-tailed it back to the hotel…for room change #3!

We were just settling in to our nice room 403 (much larger; nice French doors, etc.) when we found that neither of the bedside lights work!  Robert went down to the desk, and one of the staff members came back up with him, to see what he could do…nothing…so, about 5 minutes later, we get a call from the manager, who apologizes profusely and asks if we would mind moving … again…So, we are now cosily ensconced in room 503, where the lights work but the WiFi connection is terrible…so, will probably have to post from the lobby.  However, as we’re only here two nights, WE ARE NOT MOVING AGAIN…so says Robert, although we think it is possible we could go blind from lack of light…I feel rather mole-like at the moment!

More later!

m

xxx

Addendum from Robert:  It is really getting silly when, driving across a flat valley floor, to see a mound about 30 to 40 feet high and covering about an acre and wondering if there is an archaeological site buried there.  After all, there isn’t a Troy under every hump of ground!  But I sure wish I had a shovel.