Excursion Day 1

For spring break, our program is taking the sixteen of us to eastern Turkey for a week to see some museums, old monasteries, and breathtaking landscapes. Each day, I will try to give a brief recap of our activities.

Day 1

After waking up at 4am and catching an early flight to Trabzon (a city in northeastern Turkey on the Black Sea), we enjoyed a traditional Turkish breakfast—cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, bread, butter, and jam. It was a chilly, sunless morning in Trabzon, but I still enjoyed sitting by the sea, munching on food, and sipping hot Turkish tea.

The first site we visited was Hagia Sofia, an old Georgian church situated on the coast. It’s a fairly large church and its ceilings are plastered with beautiful paintings of biblical scenes. There are two other Hagia Sofia churches in Turkey, the smaller of which has recently been converted into a mosque. The third Hagia Sofia is the famous one in Istanbul that shows up in movies and history textbooks and is positioned right across from the Blue Mosque.

After Hagia Sofia, we made our way to Sumela Monastery. The monastery is built into a cliff side, so after driving up a dangerously steep hill, we had to leave our tour bus and pile into vans for the rest of the way. The van ride was hair-raising, as our driver seemed to disregard the precarious nature of the road we were using; the road was narrow, had no guardrails, and was slick from the rain earlier that day, yet our driver seemed to relish his ability to take sharp turns and drive quickly.

When we reached it, the monastery was shrouded in a thick veil of mist, which, according to our guide, is pretty common given the altitude and the amount of rain this area sees. Unfortunately, the fog obstructed the view, but after our steep ascent, I knew quite well how high up we were. The stone buildings are built on the side of a sheer cliff face so the monastery is quite a visually stunning complex.

After inspecting the monastery, we opted out of taking the vans back down the hill in favor of a walking path that snakes its way down to the parking area. Once we reached the bottom, we had lunch at a restaurant that served the best rice pudding I’ve ever had. I also had some excellent trout (served with skin, bones, and the head).

Overall, it was an excellent day, filled with cool old churches and tasty food.