Samsun is Turkey’s largest city on the Black Sea coast. It is situated on hills sloping into the sea and from city center I felt like being on the stage in an amfiteater surrounded by the built up hills as my audience.

It was hard for us to leave our very nice room at the hotel with this great view.

Apart from the huge balcony overviewing the harbour and some of the surrounding hills, it also had a jacuzzi bathtub. We didn’t use the jacuzzi as intended though – instead we emptied our panniers with dirty clothes and let them soak in the jacuzzi for some time before washing and leaving them to dry on the giant balcony.

Drying our clothes after washing them in the jacuzzi.

Before I travel to a new country I usually like to read a bit of its history and current political situation. Unfortunately this has not been possible since we have visited so many countries during a short time.

In Turkey huge turkish flags are flown everywhere and a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is never far away. When I have had time I have done a bit of reading on the internet to catch up on Turkey’s modern history and then I have understood that Samsun has played a part in the creation of modern Turkey.

As I understand it Atatürk was sent out by the Sultan from Istanbul to Samsun to oversee the disbanding of the remaining military forces after the Ottoman empire’s defeat in the first world war. He, as well as many others, didn’t like seeing their country being chopped up so instead of following the sultan’s order he started to organize the turkish national movement. His landing in Samsun on 19th of May 1919 marks the starting day of the Turkish war of independence that a few years later led to the creation of the Turkey we see today.

In the afternoon we went out to see the city. We started by walking to the seaside park and take a look at the monument of Atatürks landing in Samsun from SS Bandirma. I am not sure but I think the monument is made to to look like a famous photo of Atatürk stepping ashore. Unfortunately the information signs were only in Turkish.

The monument of Atatürk’s landing in Samsun

After a walk in the park and a visit to a nearby bazaar it was time for a very late lunch and once again we ended up at a restaurant with a döner being grilled behind the counter. The difference with this restaurant was that they grilled the döner by using firewood instead of gas. The chef looked after the döner roll by turning it every few minutes and fed a piece of wood into it when needed. It looked very authentical but I can’t say if it tasted any better than the döner’s grilled by the usual gas heated grill.

The döner chef. Please not the grill heatd by firewood.

Wej decided to order a ”pide” which is a long oval pizza looking dish with thin bread and toppings of choice. I decided to go for an Iskender which is döner meat cut in wider pieces on placed on top of shredded thin bread and then topped with tomato sauce and melted butter and with some youghurt at the side.

The “pide” Wej ordered. As you can see I have stolen one end of it… 🙂

A fresh and very tasty salad is usually served with the lunch. Squeezing a lemon over the salad as well as some salt makes it taste heavenly…. 🙂 And the spicy chillies served to it make us who like spicy food not wanting to leave…..

Fresh salad

The food in Turkey is very tasty and a good reason in itself to travel here. After having been here for more than a month we have only tasted one dish that we didn’t like and that was the toothpaste soup at the hotel in Istanbul.

Usually we like seafood and although being on the Black Sea coast we haven’t managed to try so much of it yet. Fish vendors are everywhere and one thing I have noticed is that fish doesn’t seem to be stored on ice like we do in Sweden.

Fish on display in the fish store

The man in the store wanted to sell us this fish, but we were already full after having iskander and pide in the restaurant next door. Maybe next time….

Fish anyone…?

What is even better is that in Turkey they are masters of making delicious sweets and desserts that also look very temtping. We like to enter the stores selling these delights just to have a look and smell…..

Wej in paradise 🙂

Everything looks so good and it is hard to choose. Should we by this one….?

Or maybe this….?

We wanted to try all of the pastries but we managed to agree on a few ones to bring back home and have on the balcony together with coffee made on our own little primus petrol stove. To conclude we can say that if we hadn’t come here using our own muscle power we would certainly have left Turkey a bit heavier than we came….

Coffee and sweets on the balcony

The view of the city was even better at night time when the lights were turned on in the houses on the surrounding hills.

Samsun by night