Friday 24^th June – Yalova (Termal)

40:39.680N 29:16.603E

This morning our internet dongle still hadn’t started working again and so Richard spent the whole morning in a couple of Turkcell shops trying to sort it out.  In short the IMEI numbers of all non-Turkish phones and dongles have to be centrally registered to enable them to continue working with Turkish SIM cards, although we have done this ours still seems to have been switched off.  Frustratingly, having contacted both the Government equipment registry and Customer Services everything appears to be in order - the dongle is showing as ‘registered’ and ‘open’, and it is correctly matched to the SIM card which is not blocked – it should all be working !   In the shop they have tried reinstalling the software and checking the SIM works but to no avail.  The upshot was that he said we should give it a while longer for the registration to take effect on the network and then try again (not promising).

So this afternoon we took a domus (small minibus) to Termal, up in the mountains approx 12km from Yalova.  It is the local highlight, noted for its thermal springs.  The domus dropped us off at the entrance and we walked into a woodland park with sign-posted footpaths that led around the various hotels, spa baths and fountains where the hot spring water was rising. 

At one spot, we noticed some people at a fountain where the hot water was bubbling out, they were filling cups and bottles to enable them to drink the hot water direct so we tried a sip – we weren’t over keen.  There was a stream flowing through the complex into which the hot spa water was flowing.  Further along upstream, there was another area, this time for dipping your feet into the hot stream – it is very hot.

The hotels and spa baths offer a variety of more luxurious options for bathing in the thermal water depending on your budget.

We continued walking along the stream into the surrounding woodland and came across a large picnic area, seeing only a few people as we walked; it feels like we are still out of season despite it being end of June.  Sadly, in the picnic area, the short walk to the rubbish bins had proved too much for some visitors as there was quite a lot of litter around in the form of tied off plastic bags sitting in tree boles etc.

We came back to the central area and sat at one of the cafés for a tea beneath the trees.  The trees here are all specimen trees as part of an arboretum and all labelled.  We then wandered back down to the dolmus and headed back to Yalova.

Needless to say, when we got back our dongle was still not working so we headed into town to the Turkcell shop to see what options we had.  This time the people from the in-store technical department of one of the phone manufacturers had a go at getting it working, sadly without success.  Folk seem to be concentrating on the dongle rather than the network, but it stopped working when the network message said it would, if it wasn’t registered, which implies it is a central network registry problem rather than the dongle L

As the store was closing we headed off to fight another day.  On the way back, we stopped off at the small harbour and had dinner at one of the small fish cafés there; you pick your fish from the display, sit down and it appears at your table having been grilled or fried out back, along with bread and salad.  Cheap and cheerful.

Termal

Yalova

© Pyxis 2011