Bursa and Eskisehir – Turkiye

We spent about a week exploring the cities of Bursa and Eskisehir.

Bursa

Bursa was founded around 200 BC and is situated at the foot or the Urag mountains. It was the first Ottoman capital.

Around Town

The town today feels like a huge shopping / market town. The entire old town is one bazaar connected to another through ancient gates and buildings. I was in my element and loved it! Bursa was located on the silk road and became famous for its silk making (scarves and rugs).

There is a gondola that goes up the mountain and apparently a ski resort up there, but the air pollution was quite bad and there was only one day when we could see the gondola, much less the mountains…

Here are some photos from around the town. Note the photo from the main mosque in town – it is the first mosque I have seen where the bathing fountain is actually inside the mosque! And, it’s one of the few places left that has a covered bridge (like Florence, Italy).

Green Tomb and Mosque

One of the tourist places to note was the Green Tomb and Mosque.  The Green Tomb is a mausoleum of the fifth Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed I. The tomb was quite pretty and named for the blue and green tiles used. The Mosque has some really nice circular calligraphy on the walls.

Silk Education Center

I found a place mentioned on a blog to learn about Bursa’s silk history. We weren’t quite sure what to expect – a museum? a shop? We went in and a ‘tour guide’ who didn’t speak much English showed us around the place. There was a room with several looms and some signs on the walls (all in Turkish) discussing Bursa’s silk history. Our guide showed us how to use the loom and taught K how to make a silk carpet. As we moved further into different rooms in the building, she showed us different carpets with knot counts and there were other women in the rooms weaving and embroidering so I didn’t feel comfortable taking photos. While there, I discovered that it is actually an education center to teach locals and villagers the art of silk weaving, carpet making and embroidery to try to keep this part of the culture alive. When we left, we were hoping to maybe buy a scarf but she didn’t open the shop and they wouldn’t let us pay for the ‘tour’.

Cumalikizik

We decided to take a day trip to visit this UNESCO listed 700 year old Ottoman town famous for its Ottoman housing and preserved village feel. Unfortunately, the air pollution was really bad – so much wood and other chemical burning – that after about 30 minutes of walking around, we all had burning lungs and coughing so we decided to leave.

Eskisehir

After Bursa, we drove 3 hours to the university city of Eskisehir. Eskisehir is divided into two sections – the old town (Odunpazari) and the new town. We stayed in an historic house in the old town. The old town was pretty quiet, but the new town was incredibly busy and crowded. It was the days leading up to the end of Ramadan (Eid Al Fitr holiday) so the markets and shops were swamped. There is a canal that runs through the new town and people have referred to the town as the Venice of Turkiye. However, I don’t think this is justified – there is only one canal and it was polluted. It was also difficult to find restaurants that were not fast food. In fact, we only found one place that wasn’t a kebab, borek or burger restaurant, and that was one of the cheap buffet-type restaurants. I’m not sure if this is because this is predominantly a university student town, but you would have thought that the old town which caters to tourists would have had some. There was a street in the old town that had several Halva shops and it was possibly the best halva I’ve ever tasted!

All up, the old town was cute, but we felt that the town was missing that X factor.

Up next: Ankara – Turkey’s capital city