Fate has been amazingly good to us with the gift of a highly valued friendship with a most wonderful family who live in Ankara Turkey. These folks have so kindly invited us to spend a few days with them at a spot on the Mediterranean coast that they have arranged for their holidays. Lucky us!

We are traveling  by plane to Ankara .. then the plan is to travel by car over a historical part of the Turkish mainland on the way to the coast and sunny beaches.

Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while ethnic Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state,

Turkey is an upper-middle-income and emerging country; its economy is the world's 16th-largest by nominal and 12th-largest by PPP-adjusted GDP.

The Turkish Armed Forces are the second largest in NATO, after the United States, and feature a robust air force, including American-made fighters.

Turkey has a Muslim majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city. Istanbul is its largest city and economic center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.