Saturday 18 May 2013

Malatya

From Cappadocia I travelled 5 hours east to the city of Malatya - the apricot producing capital of Turkey.



Straight away I fell in love with Malatya even though it's a fairly busy, commercial centre without any standout tourist attractions.

There's a small museum housed in an attractive Ottoman style house.

 


 Actually, the exhibits weren't nearly as interesting as the building itself.



It has some good, cheap restaurants and a whole street filled with coffee shops that sell not only great cappuccino but also world class danish pastries and ice-creams.
The best thing about the coffee shops were the waitresses, who were happy to engage me in conversation and then giggle with other waitresses about me whilst glancing over my way.

This is the only place I have experienced this kind of behaviour in Turkey and for some reason I really warmed to it...

Grrr...

There was a huge, vibrant street bazaar selling all types of fruit and veg - apricots were everywhere (even coated in chocolate) plus sackfuls of tomaotes, chillies, figs, walnuts, pistachios and strawberries. Great colours and smells.






 

The only bad thing was the weather. In the afternoon of my 2nd day the heavens opened and the rain came down in buckets.

 

I took this to be a freak occurence, but I was wrong. Every afternoon since then has been marred by black clouds and often torrential rain. Locals tell me to expect this to continue for at least another two weeks. Oh well...it does make for dramatic skies at sunset.


Even the cops (usually macho types best avoided in my opinion) were kind of nice!

Cute cops!      

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