Trip to Kurdistan and Mesopotamia. The most beautiful places of Turkey: Part 2

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For the first part of the route see "trip to Turkey-Part I" and "trip to Kurdistan and Mesopotamia."
Crossing the bridge over the Euphrates River leaves Mesopotamia, a sure hand for the indefinable territory of Kurdistan and continue to Gaziantep where we fall on the highway. The usual hot asphalt highway whose surface seethes beneath the car which fan is running at maximum, as the air conditioning of the Fiat Punto with which we have come from Italy. The night before we slept well, the transfer is long and the fatigue you feel so we decided, me and the friend who accompanied me to dine and sleep in a convenience store on the machine. We're back on the Anatolian peninsula and the next morning we continue west, to Tarsos quick detour to the north but soon the highway ends. Before continuing with the state we find refreshment in a local truck drivers then off to Cappadocia where we arrive around noon. The city of Nevsehir we announced that we arrived in this region that the vagaries of nature have made it fantastic. Any side you look Goreme, Urgup, Avanos are spectacular limestone pinnacles, and with their so-called fairy chimneys. If nature was not enough to model these rocks towering into the sky we have also thought that Christian monks here have taken refuge in their churches by building recesses. Cappadocia alone would be enough to do all these miles to come here. In late afternoon we continue north because Turkey still has much to offer. Campaigns desolate desert and semi waive Yozgat reach in the evening Bogazkale where we stay in an elegant and clean. The next morning we visit the excavations of Hattusa, capital of the ancient Hittite civilization. The remains are scattered on a hill and you have very large in most cases be provided with much imagination to understand its meaning, we must also constantly "run away" from a young man on a scooter who wants to be our guiding force. Fortunately, the archaeological site is visited in a car with a street circuit and out we go now, will have to go Bogozkale the Appendix of Yazilikaya where is the best memory from the Hittite civilization. For here you leave the car in a parking lot where we are assailed by sellers of junk and a short journey on foot inside a cave shrine between high cliffs look at the engravings on the stone: beautiful, beautiful, how many times seen on textbooks school. Engravings and the sanctuary appease us justify our departure date. Continuing west, bypasses Ankara, Istanbul and across the Bosphorus Bridge back in Europe slept nell'insignificante Çatalca city that will be our only point of support to leave the car and take the train to Istanbul. The day we take a local train from a station easily findable and that no one knows indicate, in fact it is very deviates from Çatalca in the country. The train takes us to Istanbul which still allows us to visit this great city divided between two continents in absolute tranquility. In fact I was already in Istanbul was a long time as first stage of a long journey by train that had brought me to Switzerland, West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and European Turkey! In practice, however, had seen little even though I've been here in a hotel rather dirty at the center. Precisely for this reason for me to Istanbul was to be discovered and so I did not miss anything: the Blue Mosque, Saint Sophia, the great underground reservoir with the image of the jellyfish, Topkapi (only because it was outside the day of closing), the bazaar , alleyways, the mosque of Suleiman and also a tour with a double-decker tour bus that took us to the Galata neighborhood dominated by the Genoese watchtower. In the evening return train to Çatalca where we took the car went to the Dardanelles and slept in a hotel in a city along the road. The next morning we covered the interesting coastal road long narrow peninsula of the same name Dardanelles Strait separates from Anatolia. In the car going up the Dardanelles on a ferry that takes us back to Asia in a short time in Canakkale. From here we reach the legendary city of Troy, nothing good if not the myth also mentioned the reconstruction of the famous wooden horse. If visiting the excavations hard to decipher and then point to the south. Pergamon opens the way for glimpses of the sea and very near the Greek islands that almost touch the Turkish coast. E 'night when we visit some of the ruins of Pergamum but then the most important finding of this ancient Greek city I saw the Pergamon Museum in Berlin! However, we have given a peek at some of the remains and the ruins of an ancient basilica which seems to have an important role in the book of Revelation. In the evening we get to bypass Izmir Cesme where we stay in the car because the next morning we embark. The next day we go with the car on the Turkish vessel that will take us back to Ancona.