Exploring Eskişehir – Inside the Fairytale Castle!

Eskişehir is a vibrant modern city, an upcoming tourist destination and one of the stops on the High Speed train line connecting Turkeys 2 most important cities – Istanbul & the capital Ankara. Its old quarter, new attractions and lively modern but historic city make it a great stop over.

The City

Heading through the city from the station, you can see the regeneration that has been made to its river and high streets. You walk over beautifully crafted bridges through the town, while in the summer even gondolas and boats transport you through the city. Many sculptures and outdoor art are placed all around the centre too making it a pleasure to wander. Though we decided to hop onto the modern tram system a few stops down to the oldest settlement of Eskişehir with its colourful dated houses and boutique gift shops. Some of them are like Aladdin’s cave, full of treasures and others focusing on one niche creating anything you could imagine from wool, pottery, wood to name just a few. We wandered further up admiring the rainbow of houses, I loved how you could get lost in the bright winding streets and the way each level of the buildings sticks out creating a sort of lego village.

Museums

Wood carving must be popular here as there was a museum dedicated to it with really impressive sculptures in an old Ottoman tunnel, some quite scary! Then at the bottom of the old quarter there is a cute little wax museum we visited which took around an hour. Half of the figures were Turkish leaders & icons such as Ataturk and half were world wide stars such as Einstein and the Queen, some of their likeness could be questioned though!

Food

We somehow found a great restaurant just by luck, it gave the full Turkish experience in every way possible! The large open room was covered in traditional lighting and instruments; we were greeted and sat on wooden tables with authentic materials and crockery for it shortly to be covered in a huge kebap platter of different meats (that were regularly replenished from the grill at the back) with a variety of meze dishes and bread surrounding. Just when we thought it couldn’t get better, a musician appeared on the stage at the front and invited people to traditional dances around the floor. A great experience and amazing food that we just stumbled on!

The Fairy Tale Castle in Sazova Park

The next day we spent most of the day visiting Sazova Science & Culture Park – almost a theme park style parkland with attractions, play areas, a zoo, a miniature train, a giant lake and a science museum all situated around a ‘Disney style’ fairytale castle. We of course went to straight to the castle for some photos not knowing we actually could enter, so we also walked around the inside which was nicely decorated with different storybook scenes plus also contained a gift shop and cafe. It was very cheap to enter and the decorations around were all very cute, plus there was a puppet show for the children happening every hour. Once you reached the top of the stairs there was an outdoor section so you could look over the entire park too. This is where we spotted the place we visited next, a pirate ship you could board, walk around and even visit the bottom deck. There were lots of props and pirate figures scattered about so it was really fun even as two adults so kids would love it! A model village was the final attraction we visited in the park filled with miniature replica’s of landmarks across the world, they all did have some link to Turkey though, either an architect or a cultural link. We could have easily spent more time here as there is also a planetarium, a zoo and an aquarium so prepare for a day full of activities!

Check out my other adventures:

Working at Disney World – My Cultural Exchange program

Antalya – Paradise on the Turquoise coast

Pammukale – The Cotton Castle