Turkey Day 4 - Snow in Eskisehir & exploring Historical Ottoman Quarter

It was really nice to wake up to this huge room in this luxurious suite in a historical Ottoman House and finding it nice and warm after the cold of last night, the suite must have slowly warmed up overnight. Then to top it off Robin comes in and is all excited as there was snow outside, and in fact was still snowing!

Outside my bedroom window.

Other side of the house.

As we are staying in our own Ottoman House we need to go outside to get to breakfast and boy was that fun that. First up it Luke’s first time ever in the snow and the first thing he did was try and eat it and then he started slipped everywhere.

Luke testing and eating the snow.

Walking to breakfast with Luke still wanting to know what this white stuff on the fence was.

I hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps before snowballs started flying from Robin, he was having such a blast. A great positive way to start the day and then onto this huge arrange of breakfast food all so different than what would get in New Zealand.

After breakfast we off into the old historic part of Eskisehir called the Ottoman Quarter (Odunpazari).

Carrying Luke through the cold in the Ottoman Quarter.

I have walked through restored English cities such as York and it surprised me how similar this Ottoman equivalent looked. First up it was time to do what I always do when new in a town – head to the Tourist Information Centre, which was tricky to find and we had to end up asking someone and it turned out it had no signs out the front. They had maps in English and where very helpful and took us down to the Kursunlu Mosque Complex which was built around 1525 and was used by the order of Whirling Dervishes. Now days the buildings hold a number of different things. The big selling point for Eskisehir is Meerschaum, an unusual while rock which is used to craft a range of items, especially smoking pipes and earing’s it seems. Inside the Kursunlu Complex was a museum which show cased a range of Meerschaum handmade items and a handcraft Bazaar where items can be purchased.

One of many amazing hand crafted meerschaum pipes.

Robin examining all the meerschaum items.

We also visited a glass-making workshop where a course was running.

An amazing glass unicorn.

Glass octopus.

Julianne watching the students while Robin breaks out into a cool stance.

We then popped into the original Kursunlu Mosque, one of the oldest dedicated mosque’s I have seen from 500 years ago.

Grandma in the original Kursunlu Mosque.

Kursunlu Mosque.

Then it was a short walk back to the hotel and going past a bakery where bread was straight fresh out of the oven. It was so yummy eating bread that was still hot from just coming out of the oven – not something you can easily do back home.

Bakery in action.

After lunch I spent the afternoon working on the computer getting the photos and blog sorted with the first blog finally up while Julianne, Grandma and Robin went into the centre of modern Eskisehir to get key items needed because of the snow like boots for Robin and good jackets for Julianne and Grandma.

Julianne in her nice new jacket in our full length mirror in our suite.

For tea Julianne found a really nice clean real Turkish café where we had potluck meals, because the menu was in Turkish and no one around us spoke English. Everyone enjoyed their random meal, mine turned out to be lamb & cheese on a pita. Then it was back to the room to relax for the evening including drinking a random bottle of red wine that we picked up on the way.