Hi everyone! A couple of smaller, quieter, posts for you all.

By this time we are on the home stretch of our trip around Turkey. Having just done the big historical sites, it is time to wind our way back toward Istanbul. Today was very much just a day of taking a step toward our final destinations of Troy, Gallipoli, and finally Istanbul. So all we really did today was spend a fe hours driving along the coast to the seaside town of Ayvalik.

Ayvalik is not really known for much, mostly just as a nice seaside village. So after a lazy start to the day, we arrived in mid afternoon at our nice little hotel, which was a converted family house. With small, share, bedrooms and communal areas, it was going to be the perfect place to just have a relaxing evening.

Rather than sit around, a bunch of us decided to head to the nearby beach. So we braved the public transport (reminiscent of some buses in Central America, where it is just “squeeze! squeeze!” to get on) and spent a sweaty 20 minutes on a crowded bus to arrive.

The beach was at Sarim Sakli, and I can’t say it was the greatest I have ever been to, especially with the spoils of the past few days. The beach area almost looks desert, with large expanses of dirty brown sand. The waterfront area was packed, and we secured some chairs and umbrellas and proceeded to hang out for the next couple of hours, swimming and relaxing.

The water was much colder than I was used to from the previous days, and the colour certainly wasn’t what we had on the boat. But I was swimming in a foreign country, so who was I to complain?

When we were done, we all headed back into town to visit the Farmers Markets to get some food for our dinner spread. Rather than head out to a restaurant, since we had our own kitchen we decided to go with bread, cheese, mezzes, baclava, wine, beer… all the essentials.

We had an awesome array of food and the rest of the night was spent nice and relaxed… eating and drinking into the night.

 

We thought we had seen a ruined Roman city yesterday? We hadn’t really seen anything yet. For today we were heading to one of the biggest and most well preserved, the ancient city of Ephesus.

On our trip from Pamukkale to Selcuk (our base for the night) we stopped in the small town of Sirince. This was a tiny little town in the hills, in part known for their wine. During our wandering of the town we tried some of the local wine, which most of us agreed really wasn’t that great. Turkey does a lot of things right, but not so much their wine.

One thing we found about the area is that it was a home of St John, and as a result there are some churches that are in his name. One small one is located in the town, and was quite quaint, although in not a very good state and even a bit vandalised, which was quite out of the norm for what we had seen around the country.

The rest of our brief time we spent wandering the small streets. It seemed to be quite the small tourist town as all the vendors tried to lure us into their stores. But we weren’t too interested, rather happy to have some lunch (mmm… turkish pancakes) before heading into Selcuk.

Selcuk is also home to a large church of St John, as well as a large well preserved castle. We only had an hour, but a few of us decided to visit these sites, knowing we wouldn’t have too much time to explore. The church site was quite huge. Sadly there wasn’t a real church building to explore, but the ruins were quite cool to wander through.

The castle in particular looked fantastic up on the hill. Castles like this were few and far between in Turkey, and Kate was obviously super excited to visit another castle (I think she had been having castle withdrawals since the UK).

We only had an hour as it was time to head to the main stop for the day, the huge ancient city of Ephesus. Ephesus was a huge Roman city that became quite large and powerful back in the day given its proximity to the sea and subsequent power in goods trading. The city is huge and we spent the best part of 3 hours exploring, with Ibo filling us in on all the history.

As we wandered we saw more amazing marble columns, ancient paved roads, huge facades, and beautiful tiled mosaics. For me, the most impressive areas were an amazingly well preserved collection of houses, still with mosaics in tact.

The other was the entrance to the city Library. A towering grand entrance if ever there was one.

 

 

 

We kept wandering about soaking it all up. The last stop was actually the church of Mary, yep THE Mary. Given St John’s prominence in the area, it was of no surprise, and there was the ruins of quite a huge church in the grounds of Ephesus.

By this time it had approached 7:30pm and the sun was dipping down the and the temperature becoming glorious. We made our way back to the hotel, and with a little time to freshen up, we went out exploring Selcuk a little more as a group and off to enjoy some dinner. The town certainly had a pretty cool vibe to it, with everybody out having dinner and fun in the bars and restaurants.

A few of us continued on for a bit after dinner. We crossed paths with another G Adventures tour group which is always fascinating. We where have 8 Aussies, only 1 was in that group, with it being dominated by Americans. It is always interesting to see how groups can be so different from tour to tour.

Kate and I hit the wall about midnight, leaving the last diehards to continue on. We were happy to hit the hotel and have a sleep in before our next fairly easy day of travel.

Sadly it was time to say goodbye to the coast for the time being and head back inland. But that was OK as it was time to visit some of the key geological and historic sites that Turkey has to offer.

We left delightful Kas on our way to the town of Pamukkale. Pamukkale is renowned for three key things: natural hot springs, amazing white cliffs, and ancient roman ruins. Oh, and roosters apparently.

After a few hours of driving, we arrived into town. Since it was the middle of the afternoon and as a result super hot and bustling with tourists, we had an hour or so to relax before heading to the sites to check everything out.

It is quite remarkable to see everything all together in the one site, almost like a big amazing coincidence. We started at the far end of the site to work our way through the ancient site of Hierapolis. They sure knew where to build the city back in early BC, as they had the luxury of having a site founded on natural hot water, and as a result being able to have some amazing hot roman baths.

Ibo gave us an orientation walk to let us know the main features of the site. It was quite a big area, and was split into a number of smaller areas, with nice warm pools scattered around to relax. We made our way to the cemetery to see many sarcophagi scattered about the landscape. It was pretty crazy to see so many columns still standing and so many ruins about that we were able to explore.

Given it was still super hot, Kate was keen for a bit of time to relax rather than keep running around. So what did she get up to? Why not have a bunch of tiny fish nibble at your feet for a while? Hhhmmm….

Not being my cup of tea, I decided to continue exploring. I made my way up the hill to the huge amphitheatre that sat atop the hill. Part of the the main stage had seemed to have been restored and looked quite amazing. Even though it was so hot it was quite relaxing to sit up above Pamukkale and stare out over the ancient ruins.

By this time Kate’s feet were nice and nibbled and we had just a little time so we popped into the museum part of the site. Much of the very well preserved statues and sarcophagi were taken from off the site and placed in the museum. This seemed like a good move as they were in immaculate condition. We even got to see some more Medusa.

Time was disappearing, as was the sun, so we decided to start heading back to our hotel. By heading back, we made our way slowly down the incredible white cliffs that tower over the town. We were able to walk right down them, as long as shoes were off. Even though there was warm water flowing all over the place, it wasn’t particularly slippery.

The cliffs are formed by hardened calcium carbonate, so they are always changing a bit. With the amount of water running down them, and the amount of tourists climbing the cliffs, I imagine they are always in a bit of a state of flux.

As we made our way down larger pools would be there to soak the feet. Some tourists took the opportunity to completely submerge in the pools, but Kate and I just did a bit of casual splashing about.

The white walls and dropping sun gave an opportunity for some more wacky photos. My shadow puppet skills were pretty lacking, so we just decided to strike some classy poses.

After an hour we reached the bottom, our feet feeling nice and supple from walking on cliffs and soaking in the water. After a quick bit of dinner, we had the opportunity to visit an actual real Whirling Dervish ceremony. Only about half the group decided to take part, but Kate and I were super keen.

Rather than a tourist show, this was an actual ceremony that is conducted each day. We took some seats in a dedicated space (that was pretty sparsely populated) and let it unfold.

We weren’t able to take photos during the actual ceremony, but it was actually really haunting. Two musicians played music and sung, and were then joined by 4 others, 3 of whom were performing the “whirling” part of the ceremony. One guy in particular had an amazing ability to have his dress soar around him.

After about an hour the ceremony wound to a close. We were all quite spellbound by it. To conclude the 3 whirlers came back to do a quick final bit where we could take photos. Sadly the pictures can’t capture the grace of it all.

And with that another day in Turkey came to a close. It seemed we were all now very sleepy and tired and looked forward to a good nights rest before our next day of adventure.

The call to prayer from the nearby mosque (yep, there was a nearby mosque) woke me briefly at about 4am, but then it was quickly back to sleep for another few hours sleep. The emerging light didn’t really worry me, rather the temperature starting to creep up and being on the boat’s roof meant that it started to get warm pretty quickly.

Oh well, that must just mean it is time for breakfast! Again our awesome crew put together a good meal for us and we sat and had our morning start as the captain drove us out to explore some more of the small islands. Quite quickly we moored and then it was swim time again! Who needs a shower when you have the Mediterranean?

A few of us spent the next hour or more just floating in the beautiful waters, taking it nice and easy. We spied another turtle doing his thing, but we left him alone and just floated on our pool noodles and soaked up our situation. Kate, myself, and the few others from the group that were floating together were all feeling pretty special.

But by this point it was getting to late morning and we had to motor back to shore. We said farewell to the boat and hello again to the bus. But it wasn’t for long as we went to a beach side restaurant to just hang out on the beach again for another hour. Now THIS was a nice pace to be traveling at!

This was a rocky beach like all of them, but there was hardly a soul around, so we all just claimed a deck chair and chilled out. I took the opportunity to spend yet more time in the water. I know that when I get back home I am not feeling sea/ocean water this temperature again!

Well and truly water logged we headed to our home for the night, the seaside tourist town of Kas. This is quite a charming little village… definitely more touristy, but with a charm of quaint seaside villages rather than big tourist traps.

After freshening up a but, Kate and I went exploring. Just a short walk from the centre of town was an ancient Greek amphitheatre that dated back to about 1st century BC. It had clearly had some restoration work done, but it was crazy to think it was just sitting there casually, for everyone to climb all over.

They did put it in a great spot though, with the audience being able to look out over the sea.

 

As there was really no one about, we took the opportunity for some fun snaps. Even though it was super hot and sweaty, there is always time for shenanigans.

The rest of the town was cobbled streets, cafes and tourist shops. We just decided to get some ice cream and sit down at the marina and enjoy the shade. Why shop when you can eat ice cream?

The lazy afternoon culminated in another group dinner, at another seafood restaurant of course. What else would we have? I had the mixed seafood grill, which was calamari, shrimp, and swordfish. Overall not too bad, although swordfish isn’t really my thing.

It seemed most of us had hit the point in the trip where heading out to have a drink every night wasn’t a priority any longer, and we were happy to find a nice little spot to just relax. A cool little tea house was discovered in a back alley and we enjoyed some chai and chatted until sleep was all we really wanted.

So what have I been doing over the last day or so? Well, not much really. Just hanging out on a boat on the Mediterranean and having a casual swim whenever I felt like it. Ha!

Sorry to gloat… that’s not fair is it? But it is not a bad way to spend a day I gotta say.

Anyway, we started out the day in Antalya and had a very lazy morning. I still wasn’t feeling 100% so took it a little easy, just having a casual breaky to start the day before we all jumped in the van to head to our proper introduction to the Mediterranean.

On the way we stopped at the costal town of Demre. There seemed to be two main things to this town. First of all it is the home of good ole St Nicholas. Yep, that St Nic. You didn’t realise he was from Turkey did you? Well he is, and his church is there to prove it. The other interesting thing about the town is that it is FULL of Russian tourists. So much so that every sign had Russian on it.

We only had a little time to explore so I didn’t have time to get a haircut. Although I have always thought I would look good rocking the Brad Pitt look, so I guess this is an opportunity lost.

After a quick bite, Kate and I went into the St Nicholas church. It was quite cool actually. Quite small, but the paintings on the walls were in relatively good nick (ha, see what I did there) and the whole building was looking pretty good. There were mosaics still about and even the resting place of St Nic was there.

By the many Russian tourists in there paying their respects, it was clearly a special place for them.

We didn’t spend too long in there, as it was time to head to our waiting boat to head out onto the water for the next 24 hours or so. Our first boat was just one to take us about some of the small islands and to moor somewhere for us to have a swim.

And man! The water was so amazingly warm and blue. It was gorgeous. While the water in Antalya was nice and warm, the colour had nothing on this.

The boats crew were very relaxed about our shenanigans and were happy for us to jump off whatever part of the boat we wanted. It meant I could recreate my Guatemalan spiderman leap (as you can see up the top of the blog post), but with the glorious Mediterranean as the backdrop. Tour mate Ryan elected for some flying Bruce Lee action which was most impressive. He seems to have a habit of jumping off everything he can find.

After a bit of time here swimming (were we saw turtles! woo!) it was time to jump on another boat, which conveniently pulled up just alongside, which was to be our accommodation for the night. Yep, we were going to cruise about for a while, do some more swimming, check out some ruins, then moor for the night where we would have dinner, play games, and sleep on the rook under the stars.

First order of business on the new boat? More swimming! Of course! Best feature of this boat was the copious amounts of pool noodles. While the sea is very buoyant, who want to use ANY energy when on holidays, am I right?! So with pool noodles in hand, it was time to simply float and relax.

After a bit more of a swim it was more time for sailing about and exploration. On some of the islands were old ruins of inhabitants from many centuries ago. Talk about waterfront views.

The main ruin though was the Sunken City Ruins of Simena. A significant Lycian site, it sits majestically overlooking the water and is also still in quite good condition. Most of us jumped of the boat and made our way up to the top.

While it wasn’t that many steps, when it is mid-30’s warm (feeling in the 40’s) it sure takes it out of you. But the view was spectacular and made for a great group photo.

Nearby were a number of sarcophagi of significant folk, that were very Nordic in design. The top was intentionally shaped like an upside down boat, so in the event of flood, they could all sail to the afterlife. Very cool.

With our fill of ancient ruins, it was back on to the boat and a short trip to drop anchor for the evening. A wonderful meal was prepared for us by the ships two crew, of course including some fresh fish. Mmmm. The rest of the night was spent lying on the front of the boat, staring at the wondrous clear skies. I counted 6 shooting stars although there were no doubt plenty more.

Some games followed for a couple of hours before it was time to hop up on the roof of the boat onto our makeshift beds and catch some z’s. Not the most comfortable bed, but when on a boat in the Mediterranean, who’s complaining?