The last day of my trip, I didn't have any plans to travel to any other cities, since I had a flight out of Kars back to Istanbul at 2:45pm. After having breakfast at the hotel, I wandered around Kars again. I headed back to the citadel, but this time the castle was open.
Kars Kalesi, as it's known, was constructed in the 13th century as an Armenian fortress, and later used by the Ottomans. The view of the city from the castle is quite good.
Views from Kars Kalesi.
Just below the castle is the Armenian Church of the Holy Apostles, constructed in the 10th century, which has been converted to a mosque in the last ten years. I didn't go inside. There are also some hammams (Turkish bathhouses) nearby which are old, though I'm not exactly sure of their period.
Church of the Holy Apostles.
Ancient hammams.
Some bridge that has supposedly been here for hundreds of years.
After that, I wandered around the city some more, visiting a few shops and one of the many "baklava salons," which are like cafes, except they serve baklava and tea instead of coffee.
Kars did not have any of the conservative Islamic atmosphere that one might expect. While there were mosques, I did not notice the call to prayer, and most of the women were not veiled. Bars were as common as they are in the United States, in comparison to other places in the region where it is almost impossible to find a place that serves alcohol. Many of the bars were packed with men playing card games, and gambling on soccer scores was very popular.
Although most of the young adults and many of the women dressed in by Western standards, it seems any Kurdish man over 40 had a dress code. Every single male I saw over the age of 40 or so wore black shoes, slacks, a dress shirt, a colored sweater vest, a blazer, and a flat cap. I did not see any exceptions to this.
This picture clearly shows Soviet architectural influence in Kars.
Since Kars doesn't have an international airport, I had to return to Istanbul for a return flight back to Cairo. I took the shuttle from the Turkish Airlines office in Kars to the airport and arrived at the airport a little past noon. There was nowhere to get lost there - the airport only has one gate, so planes leave one at a time. The flight back to Istanbul was actually quite big, flying on a Boeing 737. I sat next to an elderly Kurdish man on the flight who couldn't sit still. On top of that he kept yelling at me about my iPod, as if he thought it was prohibited for me to use it on the flight or something.
I arrived Istanbul around 5:30pm, and after getting my luggage I proceeded to buy a ticket back to Cairo, only two hours before takeoff. I took the 8pm flight into Cairo with EgyptAir. The flight went smoothly. I was one of the few people who selected the fish option when asked about their in-flight meal choice. It turned out the last decision I made on my trip was the worst one, as I narrowed down this meal as the one that gave me a bad case of food poisoning for the eight days after that. I didn't notice it at the time, though. I arrived in Cairo around 10pm, welcomed by the madness of an Egyptian airport crowd. Getting my student visa stamped was not a problem, and after a long taxi ride back to Doqqi, my spring break was done.
Overall, a good trip with a lot of valuable experiences. The number of countries I've visited now numbers four, three of them being Middle Eastern countries.
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