The Hills Are Alive

One really new thing for us about the city of Ankara is that it is SO hilly. And the hills are tall and steep! I've never lived in a place like this before! It's like somebody just plopped a gigantic city on top of a mountain range. There is very little grading or leveling - the city just follows the natural inclines of the landscape. And as the city expands, they just keep building up and down the next mountain! So everywhere we go, it's either uphill or downhill (usually both: up & down & up & down...). I don't think I've seen any level streets. Anywhere. That certainly makes it good exercise for us, since we walk most places! It's also interesting taking city buses up and down those steep inclines and zig-zagging the tight corners! Definitely a new experience for me! Below you'll find a few photos of what I'm talking about. Click the images to enlarge.

View from our kitchen window. You can see the hills stretching out in the background. I took these a couple weeks ago when there was still snow covering the rooftops.

A zoomed-in view out the kitchen window. You can really see how the city is just sprawling its way up the mountain!

Amazing view from behind Elias' school. The mountains are still snow-covered even though it has all melted in the city!

This was taken out the window of a taxi as we drove over a bridge. Another good example of how the city just follows the hills!

From the same taxi. In this spot, the road was dug out of the mountain, but the sides were reinforced. Those are huge apartment buildings sitting at the top of those embankments!

This one you definitely need to enlarge to see. We are at the top of a hill in the city. The road in front of us goes sharply down, but you can see the city continuing on and on into the distance over the hills.

We were riding in a bus today that took an amazing route through a deep valley! I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to capture the view, but hopefully another time. There are some spectacular scenes to be glimpsed at the top of every hill and around every corner! Ankara sure is a wonder!