Sopanca

It happens every single weekend, regardless of whether the weekend falls on a Sunday or Saturday or on any other given day that happens to be my off day and thus my weekend. Currently Mondays are my weekends and of course the curse of bad weather has fallen upon those days.

In any case, this Monday we decided to go for a trip. We hoped the local train and headed for Sopanca, a small town outside of Istanbul. Well actually it turned out to be quite a way out of Istanbul. It’s 5 stations past the city of Izmit and it takes a nice round 2 hours, or more, to get there. We realised this only upon the purchase of train tickets which indicated the arrival time at Sopanca. The train didn’t leave until 1pm which meant that we wouldn’t get to our destination until 3 o’clock, which would have been fine if the weather had been warmer as our supply of clothing was rather scarce as was the light that day.

Either way, Sopanca turned out to be a very small, quiet town on the banks of a lake of significant size. We spent the next 4 hours just walking about the local area rather than walking around the lake. There is a path running along the shore which most likely leads to the next station and makes for a great hike as it is surrounded by hills and of course the lake itself on one side but its unfortunate location to a rather busy highway makes it for a bit of a noisy experience. Maybe not noisy, let’s just say that it’s not completely devoid of noise. We chose not to wander all the way to the next station however, and returned back to the town of Sopanca to spend an odd hour walking about taking photos of the locals. It’s a good day trip with nothing special to see at the end of it but if you’d like to get away from the hustle and bustle of a busy city, this may be a good alternative.

If you have any questions regarding living in Istanbul or the city in general, just leave it in the comment section. I will try and do my best to answer your question.