Travelpalooza - Part IV

28th January; Antalya - Kaş
After breakfast, leaving the hotel for Kaş, drive to continue to Demre where Father Christmas was born , visit the Church of St. Nicholas (Father Christmas). Drive to continue to Kekova for a boat tour (available weather condition permits only) after visiting drive to Kaş, dinner and overnight at the Hotel in Kaş.

We'll start the day with breakfast. This was a typical hotel breakfast, and generally a pretty typical Turkish breakfast. Occasionally the hotels had Frosted Flakes, too, which was divine. Mmm cereal. It's expensive here. But the filter coffee was good. Most Turks don't drink filter coffee; it's Turkish coffee (boiled) or Nescafe (instant) instead. Or tea. Turks like tea.


Derick (Brazil) sleeping on the bus. You're missing Scenary, Derick! Scenary and herds of goats!


Maeghan doing...actually, I don't think I want to know what Maeghan was doing. Wacky bus hijinks. We'll leave it at that.

(Also John (Florida), Tinkerbell (Mexico), Mattie (Ohio), Blase (Michagan), and Amanda (California), going left to right)

Town of Demre, as seen from the bus:



And the church of St. Nicholas in Demre. There are all sorts of legends regarding his origin, and our long-suffering guide seemed (as usual) to be having a little bit of trouble keeping them straight, but basically she said that the man who was eventually known as Santa Clause was a very rich man in his town. When another rich man lost all his money and was preparing to sell his daughters into slavery because he had no money for their dowries, Santa Clause dropped bags of gold down the other man's chimney to cover the dowries and save the girls. She didn't have an explanation for the costume or the elves. Or the Northward migration. Anyway, there's a lovely church, statues, etc.






That last one was Hannah (Maine), by the way.

And a very tilted orange tree.

Inside the church:





Later - desert after lunch. Yedigun is a fizzy orange-flavored drink, sort of like Fanta. It's a little bit like how I've heard soft drinks from the fifties described - almost painfully carbonated, and with a strange aftertaste that some say can cause hallucinations.


I don't know why there's a monkey on the bottle...

From Demre, we drove to Kekova , for our if-weather-permitting trip to the so-called Sunken City (no, not Atlantis. Atlantis is in the Pegasus Galaxy. Everyone knows that). Which involved taking a very small boat into very big waters (go with it. It's for contrast) in the middle of an awful lot of wind and rain. And, because this was Turkiye, there was disco blasting from the boat's speakers. You could feel the decking vibrating under your feet as the wind tried to toss you overboard. Good times!






But there was good scenary - lots of little isolated seaside towns - and the ruins of the Sunken City (which I know absolutely nothing about, save that it was a city that...well...sank at some point). And the problem with trying to look at (or photograph) it is that most of it is underwater, on account of the "sunken" thing. But it's still pretty cool: we're sailing along, and you're looking at the shoreline, going "Gosh, that could be a door...wait, it was a door. Wow."




On the way back, someone decided that the sea was too rough to go all the way back to the Kekova, so the bus came to one of the little isolated seaside towns and met us halfway.




And from there, we drove to the lovely little resort town of Kaş.