The city of Tarsus has been inhabited uninterrupted for 9,000 years!

Sunday was an abnormally chilly day. Only an overcast high of 7C (45F), and down to the freezing mark at night. Next winter we are going somewhere warmer, even if it's only for a month or two!

We bundled up as much as we could and set off to explore the old central part of the city of Tarsus. 

It was about a 3 km (1.8 mile) walk to the central area. Even at 11:00am, there was hardly anybody around. Maybe they were all staying indoors because it was cold! 

Streets and alley ways in old town Tarsus.

The old town houses date back to the early 1800's of the Ottoman era. It's a shame, but most of them are very run down. I read about a plan back in 2014 to renovate some of them for tourism, but that initiative doesn't appear to have taken off. 

The one on the right has been turned into a nightclub.

Scenery along the way.

Tarsus is the first place we've been to in Turkiye that has a bit of a run down feel to it. Like I said in another post, it's almost sort of a suburb of the big city of Mersin, and of course big cities aren't always great. It's also the first place we've been to that has a higher police presence compared to other places. I tried looking up any recent news that would account for that, and all I could come up with is that there was a stabbing Saturday night and somebody died. So who knows. It still feels safe enough to wander around. 

We continued doing just that. We came across a small open market, and one girl was giving away tastes of sausage and it was really good. We ended up buying a big coil of sausage for 35 lira ($3.00 CAD, $2.35 USD).

Pony rides?

How about a camel ride?

Main pedestrian street.

Turkiye has a lot of big free playgrounds for kids!

We notice a lot less English here. We stopped in at the Turkcell store to buy some more data for our phone, and it's the first time that a young person in the store didn't speak at least some English. When I asked if anybody spoke English, the girl said "a little", but her English wasn't much better than our Turkish. No problem, google translate works great in these situations! We bought 25 GB of data for 95 lira ($8.25 CAD, $6.50 USD).

And, there is a lot more noticeable Muslim here. Yes, Turkiye is a Muslim county to begin with, but the western part of the country is much more liberal. We are noticing that more women wear headscarves here, although there are still many who do not. 

Lots of Turkish flags.

The city of Tarsus has a lot of history. It is the place where Marc Antony first met Cleopatra. It is also the city where the apostle Paul lived. You don't have to look very far to find ancient ruins right in the downtown area. In fact, there is one large block where they have torn things down and excavated...

Apparently this ancient road goes for 3.3 kms (2.0 miles). 

Notice how far they had to dig to get to what was ground level back then.

The city of Tarsus has been inhabited uninterrupted for 9,000 years!

The house beside where Paul the Apostle lived.

They charge to see St. Paul's Well and the ruins of what they think was the house where he lived. But although it was cheap, we didn't see the point. Reviews said there wasn't much to see and you'd be in and out in less than five minutes. So we didn't bother.

We headed over to the archeological museum. It was cheap as well, but worthwhile to wander around for an hour. It's fairly new (2018) and had lots of video screens with subtitles in English.

A beautiful mosaic floor from the 1st century!

Ruth, looking at the detail on the carved tomb.

These are also different kinds of tombs.

Rock inscription.

This is what it says.

Old Turkish carpets.

We spent about an hour and a half in the museum, and then wandered back to Max. Along the way, we came across an old mosque. This one used to be a church in a previous life.

Ruth, inside the mosque.

Another old Ottoman era mansion.

The cold has mostly passed, and today is supposed be sunny and a high of 13C. Not bad. There are a couple of more things we want to see in the area, so we're going to hang around one more night.

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