Aside: Wow, I really need to work on catching up with these travel posts! After Turkey, we still have my last two weeks in France and then updates about being back in the States... I'll try to be more brief with my posts in the future. :)
On Thursday 9 May, Kris and I caught a regional flight from Istanbul to Izmir, located near the coast in eastern Turkey. From there, we jumped on a train to Selçuk, a town about an hour away, outside of which our 'hostel getaway' was located. The hostel was very nice, with a pool (which we didn't use :-/), fire pits, outdoor couches, a bar, hookah, and wonderful breakfasts and Turkish dinners. It was a great home base for our two and a half days in the region.
On our first full day, we arranged to take a mid-morning bus to Pamukkale, a magnificent natural wonder about three hours away by car. I had seen photos of the place and had heard that it was spectacular, so Kris and I were very excited to visit. Unfortunately, the bus was almost an hour late to pick us up, and the bus ride back was already arranged for mid-afternoon, so by the time we arrived in Pamukkale, we only had two full hours to explore the site instead of the four-ish that we were anticipating. Let's just say that I was a little more than upset about this, but Kris was a good s(up)port, however, and we charged up the hill to make the most of it.
As you can see from the photos, Pamukkale is an absolutely incredible, magical, and unique location on the planet. Naturally-formed calcite travertines have formed down a sloping basin, with beautiful, sky-blue water flowing down with it. Once you paid to enter the site, you had to remove your shoes so as to help preserve the purity of the travertines. The feeling of the hard calcite on your feet was like having them rubbed with a pumice stone, but a bit softer. At the end of the afternoon, our feet were SUPER soft! It felt like we had been at a spa. And with the water being so pleasant and the sunshine bringing the air temperature to the upper-70s, it almost felt like we were on a solid rock beach! Stunning, awe-inspiring, and relaxing all at once.
We climbed up the waterfall (which is a weird thing to think about doing) and from our high vantage point, we had great views of the entire basin, the fantastic snow-capped mountains in the distance, and a beautiful thunderstorm that was making its way across the sky. It was lovely to explore the travertines, and the nearby ruins of Hieropolis, with thunder rolling above us. Fortunately, we barely got rained on, and only for a few minutes.
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| The thermal pools at Hieropolis, complete with genuine Roman ruins! |
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At the top of the travertines.
Check out the lightning strike in the background that
I happened to catch! I'm proud of this one :) |
Even with just two hours to take it all in, Kris and I fell in love with Pamukkale. We both agreed that it is absolutely one of the most incredible interactions with nature we've ever had. If you visit Turkey, make sure not to miss this spot (but hopefully, you'll spend more time there than we were able to)!!
The next day, we hiked the 45-minute trail from our hostel to the ancient city of Ephesus. There were hoards of tourists all over the place, so it was rather easy to imagine Ephesus being a booming Roman city of 200,000+ back in the day! I had downloaded a Rick Steves audio tour, so we started up my iPod and wandered through, connected like Siamese twins via headphones. I'm sure we looked funny, but the audio tour was great! Here's some of what we saw along the way:
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| In the ancient city council amphitheater. |
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| The most important people in the council had seats with lion claws! |
Ancient directions (left to the doctor, right to the market), and ancient public bathrooms.
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| Beautiful poppies were everywhere! |
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| The Library of Celsus- amazing!! |
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| The amphitheater was huge |
Later that afternoon, we caught a dolmus (local van/bus) up to the hilltop town of Şirince, known for its wine and olive oil. It was a gorgeous little town, located all alone in the hills, but to its detriment, it catered completely to tourists! After walking through several streets and being bombarded by shop owners at every turn, we decided to 'head for the hills' and walk along the country roads. It was lovely to see the countryside, horses, goats, olive trees, and tortoises (!!). We wound up having a great afternoon!
Before we left for Cappadocia the following day, we stopped by the ruins of the Temple of Artemis, once one of the largest man-made structures of ancient days. Now, all that's left is a single pillar, poorly cobbled together, with a stork nest on top. A sad end for this bit of ancient history, but still quite stunning to see it standing all alone in a farmer's field.
Prepare yourself to visit the beautiful alien world of Cappadocia in central Turkey next! :)
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