Robyn's Blog: Day 4 in Turkey

Observations of Turkey:

Peasants in wagons

Everyone wants to sell you something, especially a carpet.

Saw a man holding the load on the top of his truck by sitting on it,big truck.

Peasant food

People drive very randomly. We saw someone overtake us by just driving round the roundabout in the wrong direction.

Today someone cam at us in the opposite direction on the freeway. He was travelling in the breakdown lane at quite high speed.

People herd their cattle and sheep along freeways. How dangerous is that?

Lime terraces floodlit at night

Day 4.

The white terraces are lime deposits from the natural hot spring. Today we will walk on the top of them and hopefully check out the ancient city of Heiropolis which is at the top of the hill. (We have to drive for 3 ½ hours and catch two planes tonight plus hopefully see Sardis and Philadelphia on the way to the airport so it will be a rushed day. Mal is trying to hurry me along as I type this. (Sorry, isn’t this a holiday?? )

Breakfast as usual is cucumber and lots of yoghut plus yummy sesame paste and cheese and jam and fruit. I want to change my diet. I will start making yoghurt again as soon as I get home. And much Turkish coffee.

We thought seriously about buying a carpet from Tufun, but we didn't. They are really expensive and I am not sure if our cats would be nice to it. They are really nice, though, and we have the perfect place for it.

You can have a fish massage (ikk)

Heiropolis

Pamukkale is like nowhere I have ever seen. The terraces of white lime rise high next to the town. Today, Tufun, the owner of the hoel, drove us to the top gate of the Terraces, and we walked back down to the road. On the way, we walked through the ancient ruins of Heiropolis, bathed in the “Cleopatra Pool” which they have built so that people wont swim in the natural pools. The Water is just bath temperature and very refreshing, although awful to drink. Apparently its used for irrigation. We were in a hurry as we have a lot to do before catching two planes this evening so we raced up to have a look at the Heiropolis amphitheatre and some more of the ruins, then walked back down through the natural pools, down the long lime covered slope. It was just amazing and very beautiful.

Its Sunday and there are many people around. I saw lots of women. I guess they are not so hidden after all. They mostly hae veils on. They mostly look like they are old peasant women. Noone seems to be younger than about 40 Where are the young women?

We needed to get to Izmir airport by 6, but on the way, planned to see Philadelphia and Sardis. There is nothign to see at Philadelphia (according to Google, which admittedly is a bit lacking when it comes to Turkish ruins) , so we didn't stop there, but Sardis is really amazing. People live there, which is alot different to the other sites. But nevertheless, definitely worth a wander around.

We were in a hurry and had alot of driving to do so we ate biscuits in the car for lunch.

We made it to the airport with about half and hour to spare, returned the (crappy) hire car and got on the plane. We had booked (for an extra 10 dollars) the best seats, and bought dinner, which was great since we had hardly eaten and didn't have time for any extra activities. That plane took us to Istanbul, then onto another to Kayseri, then picked up another hire car, this time a new Clio. Much nicer.

However, make note - late at night, never get the hire car man to program your GPS. We drove for about an hour and a half in the wrong directly, already very tired and it was late. The GPS instructions and screen was all in Turkish (not the voice, thank goodness) so I was hesitant to fiddle with it. In the end, we realised our mistake, and looked at a map, turned around and headed back. I decided there was nothing to lose now by fiddling with the foreign GPS and managed to program in the correct address. We got to Gorome at about 12.30. This place is amazing. Everything is built into caves.