Day 11 - We took a dolmus into the old town. By the way dolmus means stuffed and is the name for the small mini buses that roar around the place. The name is very apt as often the bus is crowded to overflowing with people sitting on small stools in the aisle. We spent time looking for the tourist office, unsuccessfully, and managed to see a good deal of the town in our quest. The castle dominates the town to one side but we couldn't go up there as it is used by the army and to the other side are the Mesopatamian Plains which was pretty mind blowing. We visited the museum and I lost Sue temporarily when I followed a man with his donkey laden with grapes and went into his courtyard to talk to his wife.
We got into Mary's church but unfortunately could not get into either of the other Christian churches as they were being renovated. However, an old lady took us into her house and told us she was a Syrian Catholic. I think she was probably trying to sell us something but we escaped with just a couple of photos. Donkeys are used extensively in the market area of the town and ferry everything from cupboards to chairs to fruit and veg etc through the narrow passages of the old bazaar. We walked and walked and visited every mosque, medrese and went down every passage and alley we could find and ended up at the bottom end of town. We caught a dolmus back to the top and eventually found the Cercis Murat Konagi which we had read about in Lonely Planet. It is a restaurant where all the chefs are women and which is pretty smart. Fortunately there were not a lot of other people there mid-afternoon as we were pretty scruffy and hot but we had the most delicious plate of mezze and I would love to get the recipes.



We continued to wander until we felt we had given Mardin a good going over. The only place we missed was the Kervansarayi which housed the Post Office which was always closed when we went past.

Day 12 - Breakfast did not happen so we had simit in a little cafe near bus office. On reaching Sanliurfa we took a taxi (what a luxury) to our hotel which was a lovely old restored Ottoman house. Sanliurfa is a very religious town and a lot of Syrians visit to pay homage to Abraham who was born in a cave there. My singlet and cargo pants did not go down well but I did not care as it was extremely hot. We visited Golbasi which is filled with sacred carp. The whole area is lovely with peaceful ponds and kept beautifully clean. I visited Abraham's cave which was hot and sweaty and I had to wear a long coat to go in. A quick visit was made. We climbed up to the castle which gave a beautiful view of the city and called to women the other side of an alley who were making gozleme (pancake) on a rooftop. We visited the bazaar which is a maze and got lost in the alleys behind the main street. We were given a tour of one place by the custodian which had a beautiful courtyard and a young man asked us into his home where there appeared to be a number of youths living round this courtyard. They wanted us to stay for tea but we kept going. The back alleys were reminiscent of Spain or Italy. By this time I was flagging and we headed back to hotel and had long hot shower which worked reasonably well except the hose had a hole so I ended up with more water on my feet than on my head! A young guy came up and talked to us and we agreed to go with him the following day to see Mt. Nemrut. It was not cheap but we were running out of time and decided it was going to take too long to get there by ourselves.