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Trabzon

Overview

The Arab tourist population is incredibly dense. In the city center, at tourist spots, Arabs everywhere. Apparently there are 20 flights a day from Arab countries: Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. It's truly staggering.

What to See

As you move from the city center toward the countryside, you start seeing scattered isolated houses across the mountains. How they've managed the infrastructure for these places is genuinely remarkable. Every single house has electricity, water, and road access. It really makes you wonder whether it was necessary to bring all this infrastructure to people living this far up in the mountains.

Some of the villages reportedly don't have cemeteries since flat land is scarce and used for farming. In these villages, they bury their dead in their own home gardens.

The Ataturk Pavilion is worth seeing; a well-preserved, nicely restored building. But I found it unnecessary that it's dedicated solely to Ataturk, who only visited Trabzon 3 times over 13 years. Is it really worth dedicating an entire place to a single person for 3 visits? Didn't sit right with me.

My Place Reviews

Restaurants

AKPINAR YILDIZLI RESTAURANT2025★★☆☆☆

The view is genuinely beautiful, but that's all there is. The food was pretty mediocre, and many of the appetizers had gone sour. The Akpınar special meat dish was also bland and sour. We were not happy.

Hotels

Santana Resort Otel2025★★★★☆

It's in a very peaceful and enjoyable spot location-wise, right by the sea. The first room we got was very stuffy, so we switched right away and the second one was fine.

Nova Suite Hotel2025★★★☆☆

Right next to the airport, rooms aren't bad, could've been a bit cleaner.

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