The old facade of a golden citadel towers over Afyon, a typically Turkish city where carbon-copy apartment buildings vie with older houses and mosques for space on the crowded streets.  Horses carting mattresses wait for their owners near shops selling gold jewelry, while an entire street is full of men sharpening knives and selling cutlery and pots and pans.  Tables on corners are piled high with pomegranates and greenish oranges with leaves still attached.  From everywhere in town you can see a large rock hill poking into the sky, circled by the walls of the old Afyon Kaseli.  Seven hundred steps to climb to the top, to have the opportunity to overlook the city, sitting on the graffiti-marked fortress.  I decided to go for it - up to that point, all I’d done in Afyon was eat Turkish Delight, so some exercise might be good.  For the record, seven hundred is an awful lot of steps. (more…)