Not every stop on our motorbike trip was eventful. Seydisehir fits into that category but I won’t say anything negative about it, because there was not a thing wrong with Seydisehir. We were just too tired to make any effort to make much of our stop there.
Ru
Doramac
We’d started our motorbike trip July 4th. By July 10th we were tired! I was tired when we left Konya and I didn’t have to drive, I just had to sit. I had planned for us to stop in Seydisehir for three reasons. I thought Antalya, our next stop was too far to ride in a day, there were caves near Seydisehir that looked pretty interesting, and I also thought it would be interesting to stop in a “small town” not really famous for anything. Seydisehir receives no mention in Lonely Planet. Unfortunately we arrived on a Sunday and most of the shops were closed. We managed to find the hotel recommended by our Konya Hotel manager, but, amazing to us, it was fully booked. That hotel sent us down the street and we did find another which seemed clean and quiet. Turns out we spent most of our time in Seydisehir in the hotel resting and sleeping. After 6 really full days of traveling, we were truly too tired to make an effort to do much else.
There was no AC and the pillows were really too hard to use.
But we had wifi in the room, the windows let in enough air, the streets were quiet enough with our windows open, there was hot water and the small fruit, veggie, cheese, bread, etc. shop on the next corner across from the hotel had Coke Zero and potato chips. There were lots of blankets so we folded some up and covered them with our pillow cases and that made a good enough pillow. We paid very little for the room, 50 TL ( less than $33) and they even provided breakfast.
On our way into town we had passed several large industrial looking buildings. I’d read somewhere that Seydisehir was a major producer of aluminum and one should visit a plant. It probably would have been interesting but since and invitation didn’t fall into our laps, we didn’t visit.
“Eti Aluminyum is the only producer of liquid aluminium operating in Turkey and also one of the few integrated aluminium producers in the world to have its own reserve of bauxite, which is, in fact, one of the highest quality reserves in the country….
Eti Aluminyum’s main facility is located in Seydisehir; a district of Konya, in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. Eti Aluminyum has 7 mines/reserves, which are located 25 kilometres away from the factory. There are still approximately 35,773 million tonnes of reserve available to be treated in these mines. In addition, the company’s network extended significantly when the Antalya Import-Export facility joined the company in 1999, and when the Oymapınar Hydro Electric Power Plant joined the group in 2003 following its privatization. The aluminium facility, which is located to the north of Seydisehir, consists of 24 auxiliaries including the main facilities of the mines, aluminium and aluminium factories, as well as the casting and rolling departments.” http://www.euroasiaindustry.com/page/412/Choosing-Quality-over-Quantity
While we were unloading our motorbike, (the two minutes that takes) this balloon covered wedding car pulled up to the small shop next door. Young boys ran up to the windows and were given coins. We saw a few other wedding cars so maybe that’s why the hotel was booked.
A trio of storks on top of the nearby mosque.
We’ve realized our motorbike is too small for the traveling we want to do so every time we pass a bike shop, we stop to look.
Hanging carpets to air.
Randal is fascinated by these “dog biscuit” shaped bricks. And you can see lots of tall apartment buildings.
More views of the town.
About 50,000 people live in Seydisehir so it’s not a small place. We walked around for a bit and then stopped for some lunch. Sometimes picking from a picture in the menu works and sometimes it doesn’t. We hadn’t planned to order a meat pide ( a cross between a pizza and a French bread with filling.)but that’s what we got and some tomatoes and cucumber. It was tasty but too much so we walked around some more after lunch. There wasn’t much to see in town especially with all of the shops closed. At least during the week there would be the hustle and bustle of people which is always interesting. Some people ignored us, but several we did pass said hello and were curious about us. One man invited us to his home for lunch! At that point we still had thoughts of biking the 15 miles to the caves so declined. We were really just feeling too tired to encourage much interactions with people.
We got back to the hotel and lay down for “a few minutes” which turned into a few hours. Both of us were out cold instantly. We were tired; it was really hot; sleeping seemed like a good activity. Around 3 ish we went looking for an Internet Café. We hadn’t been able to connect our computer through the hotel wifi and we needed a walk again, so off we went. The Internet Café was filled with young teenage boys playing video games just like our library at home. While walking back to the hotel we found an open building with books and computers and it seemed like a library of some kind. Sadly it was empty. We stopped in a small grocery store to buy more coffee packets and the staff welcomed us like guests. I was given tea and everyone tried to think of anything they could say in English. They seemed amazed that we’d come from America and were very glad to meet us. A bit later as we walked along we collected a trio of teenage boys. One really wanted to talk with us though he knew no English and as I have to keep saying we don’t know any Turkish. Actually, I have learned a bit and can understand a bit but my pronunciation confuses people. I often have to spell it for them and then they know what I mean.
We stopped next door at the veggie stand and bought more Coke Zero and some chips and headed back to our room. I had done some hand laundry and it was drying nicely. Randal tried the computer again and realized he’d misread a number in the password so now the computer worked. We read, rested and slept some more.
About 7 or so I went next door for some dinner food. We weren’t really hungry and we just needed more quite time away from everyone. I bought some bread and cheese and bananas and more Coke Zero. We travel with a small electric kettle and tea and coffee so we were all set. The town outside our open windows was quiet and we had a nice night of good sleep. We woke early in the morning and finished off the bread and bananas not expecting any breakfast from the hotel so early in the morning. But our young hotel manager had seen Randal bring down our panniers so had taken out the bread, cheese and olives. We really weren’t hungry at that point but to be polite sat and ate a bit. Then we were off in the cool of the early morning.