City of Ankara

We spent a lot of time throughout the day drive around Ankara to our different visiting sites.  The city is located in a valley surrounded by hills.  It reminds me a bit of Athens with all of the red roof tiles.  The air is actually amazingly clear for a city of 5 million people.  There are a ton of mini buses that we are told will stop whenever a passenger signals the driver.  The traffic is much heavier than we've seen elsewhere and a bit more aggressive.  I'm really startled by the lack of graffiti.  Its not completely absent, but is missing from many of the obvious places (under bridges, along walkway walls, etc.)  Our guide seemed surprised by this remark and told us they do not clean it off, so that must mean that people mostly do not do graffiti in the first place...

The city is pretty spread out (but dense) and we drove a lot today.