Travelpalooza - Part III

27th January; Antalya. After breakfast full day excursion to Perge- Aspendos , before leaving visit the Old Harbour of Antalya and then continue to the Acropolis of Perge, drive to the City of Aspendos to visit the Agora, The Basilica Fountains, and the Theatre. Afternoon return back trip to the hotel. Dinner and overnight.

And this...is not what we did at all, really. After breakfast, we did hit Perge, and then Aspendos; drove back to the city of Antalya (in the state of Antalya) and toured the city, had dinner and overnight. We did see the Agora and the theater, but I'm not sure what "Basilica Fountains" are. The long-suffering guide occasionally got a little confused.

So day three started out all nice and normal-like.

Tinkerbell was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the bus:


There were stunning pullover spots so we could gawk at the sea:




And then, abruptly, there were camel rides!


So apparently this guy and his camels (plural!) just chill in the parking lot of the scenic pull-out and ambush passing tourists with the opportunity to fulfill their latent sandal-epic fantasies?

Oookay.




No, I am not posting pictures of myself on the camel. This is because I looked stupid.

Having eventually gotten that out of our systems, and much to the relief of the long-suffering guide, who kept checking her watch - apparently she is opposed to have her tours derailed by camels - we hit the road again, and, many hours later, found the Acropolis of Perge. Or, rather, the remains of it.


And columns. Lots of columns.


And more columns!



My feet. This is kind of like a self-portrait. Also, the carving was very pretty.


How is this still standing? Gravity must not pull very hard there.


I want to say that this next photo is of the basilica of Zeus. Don't hold me to that. Our long-suffering guide's English occasionally (often) left a bit to be desired, so for a lot of the trip, we weren't really sure what we were looking at.


Standing under the arch of the maybe-basilica, shooting outwards:


I am not sure what you think you are doing here, guys...


Now: baths! Or the remains of baths. No longer suitable for bathing, sadly. Although if you look closely, this picture is actually another buffalo shot of me.


This next one...not so buffalo. Man, I look like I'm having fun! (And I was, really. It's just a bad picture. Blame Maeghan. She took it)


The really hot pools were heated by fires in underground chambers, tended by slaves. The floor of the pool is gone, and you can see the furnaces underneath here...


...And also Garet, who was apparently dead-set on giving the long-suffering guide a migraine.



And then I had to climb in, too. Of course.


From the parking lot: hobbit holes? You decide.


Once the guide had herded us back onto the bus, we drove an hour or two to the remains of the theater at Aspendos. It was huge - I think the guide said that it sat 40,000 - and, although you can't see it in my pictures, surrounded entirely by orange groves. Antalya is famous for its oranges.





And we put on a play! Maeghan and I organized: we gave our conscripted actors a brief storyline, and told them to improvise the rest. You'll probably have to bump the volume waaaay up to get any dialogue. Maeghan directed and gives the title. Julianna (Brazil) plays the princess. Maeghan (Ohio) plays her mother. Hannah (Maine) plays Julianna's turbaned lover. Amanda plays the Sorceress. I'm the stage manager and stand in for a dead body. Can the Rotex Chaperone was our cameraman. I'll upload the video when I get home from school and have a faster connection.

There was supposed to be a Chorus as well, but they were all distracted by the guy dressed up a gladiator. O well.



We managed to gather a small crowd of Korean tourists. They applauded appreciatively. And having succesfully completed our mission of staging a play in an ancient theater, we piled back on the bus and drove back to the hotel in Antalya. We had a tour of the town, which was quite picturesque, especially the harbor.






I took these pictures from the balcony (!) of the hotel, with the 15-second exposure (which entailed crawling around the balcony in my pajamas at two in the morning, with my camera and mini-tripod...I'm pretty sure Maeghan was laughing at me).



On the left-hand side of the last photo, you can see the minaret of the mosque just outside? Turns out that there were two other mosques within a block of the hotel. And when the azan (call to prayers) started at 6:15 the next morning...it was like the world's loudest alarm clock in stereo.

-

[Added later: Blogger, for some reason, isn't letting me upload the video at the moment. I'll try again later]

Travelganza - Part II

All right, campers, this one is going to be photo-heavy...

26th January: Pamukkale - Antalya After breakfast, swimming possibilities in Hot Springpool at the Hotel. Leaving the Hotel to visit the city, Plutonium, Theatre, Bath and Gymnasium. Later drive to continue to Antalya, arrival in Antalya in the afternoon Dinner and overnight at the Hotel in Antalya.

Well, seeing as we'd investigated the swimming possibilities the night before, we instead departed for the the ruins of the city as Pamukkale immediately after (eww) breakfast. In the middle of a drizzle, as usual.


By the time we reached the ruins, our drizzle was rapidly becoming a full-fledged downpour. To the shock and horror of just about everyone, I shucked my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and pulled on a pair of flip-flops. I hate wet shoes.


The local gift shop did quite well that day; we managed to buy out almost its entire stock of hats and umbrellas. (This makes three umbrellas I've purchased in this country, by the way.) And thus we set out, and were soaked to the skin within minutes. Fortunately, the rain let up almost immediately after we'd made it out of the Plutonium (city of the dead - it was probably a sign, in retrospect) and up into the city proper.


As the sun came out among the storm clouds, the whole area was hit with a burst of what Maeghan and I came to call "God-light" - the sort of light one sees in movies just before divine presence enters the scene. It looked like anything could have come out of that sky.



















I think they're doing Swan Lake.


Valerio's Mr. Rochester moment.



Valeria's Vogue shot.


"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeWitt."



I'm...not sure what Maeghan thinks she's doing here.


Emo trees!

Pamukkale translates as "cotton palace," (I think) and it's not referring to the mansions of the Deep South. Rather, to massive, chalky-white and deceptively fluffy-looking mineral formations left from the region's hot springs, such as the curiously-smelling ones we'd paddled in the night before. The mineral formations - massive versions of the sort you find on your bathroom faucets - are stunning.






And then - and this is genius - there's a truly awesome part where you get to wade in them!





For all of you who were complaining that there aren't enough pictures of me on this blog: here. Have a buffalo shot.


Mind you, the weather was still rather cold at this point, and the water cooled rapidly away from the spring mouth, but the channel along the edge of the terrace stayed warm as far as we ventured.




Afterwards, we all piled on the bus, where I managed not to gloat too badly over the fact that my flip-flop-clad feet, having quickly dried, were warm and toasty. The ones who'd worn their shoes? Not so lucky.

All right, perhaps in retrospect, I was overdoing the smugness:


Also, I seem to be imitating a tree. Hmmm...

Having left Pamukkale, we piled back onto the bus and departed for Antalya.

A rainbow outside the city...


A truly disturbing fountain outside a rest stop...


The least-appetizing sandwich I've ever seen...


And Valeria on the bus as we drove into Antalya for the night.


Tomorrow: camels!

Travelganza - Part I

25th January ; Istanbul – Pamukkale

Departure from Taksim Ataturk Kultur Merkezi 07.30 and Kadikoy Sogutlucesme at 08.00 in the morning. Drive to Pamukkale, arrival in Pamukkale in the afternoon, dinner and overnight at the Hotel.

So really, Day 1 was an awful lot of time on a bus. The best part of the day was when, as we drove along the crest of a minor mountain, our dear and patient and only occasionally erroneous guide turned on the bus's microphone to suggest that "if you look out the windows, you will see one of the stunning vistas our country has to offer..."


She meant the windows on the other side of the bus. And if that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is.

We finally arrived in Pamukkale after dark and in the middle of a drizzle that would follow us for the next few days. The hotel was...interesting; I believe I referred to it as Hotel Le Sketch in an email. I suspect that it had its heyday in the mid-eighties, and possibly its last good cleaning at the same time. Upon reaching our room, myself, Maeghan, and Ohio discovered that all the towels in our bathroom were embroidered with the names of other hotels (and, in one case, a national bank). The walls suggested a fight to the death involving large quantities of hot tea, and hinted that the interior decorator didn't realize that sanding and painting was supposed to follow mudding and taping.

We were also, apparently, in the garret room.




What's especially unfair is that I am the oldest one in that picture. By a good two years. This is also evidenced by the fact that when Chicago (the shady-looking one in yellow) decided to get especially annoying, I did not see fit to join the others in an improvised dogpile in retribution.

Instead, I documented it!


On the hotel's plus side, it did feature numerous hot springs, a swimming pool (which may have had small icebergs in it. We swam anyway) and a delightfully steamy sauna. We circuited from the cauldarium to the pool to the sauna and back again before realizing that we were chasing a group of beleagured Korean tourists, who simply wanted to relax, ahead of us. After that, we left them the cauldarium and dipped in and out of the pool and sauna. The cauldarium had smelled suspiciously of sprouts and cooked salmon, anyway.

Also, in the dining rooms, almost every wall featured at least one print of Kevin Carter's Pulitzer-winning photo of a starving girl in Sudan, watched by an expectant vulture. Carter himself, never able to reconcile the guilt of letting the girl die, later committed suicide. (Photo hosted by fbs-cs.org) Which was a sobering image to have surrounding you as you guiltily pondered throwing out your breakfast and running to a convenience store instead, because the food was truly terrible.

Fortunately, the hotels only got better from there.