I have been remiss in my blogging duties. My apologies, I didn't mean to leave you hangin' in the ice cold pension in Faralya.
To recap, we were staying in a village on the edge of Butterfly Valley, home to zero butterflies in November, had encountered a deadly bat in the dining room (or just a regular bat, whatever), and had slept in a room with no heat under a blanket that didn't quite cover the bed without anyone lying underneath it. We woke to find there was no hot water, and barely managed to wash our faces and feet without screams of pain, at least until the numbness set in. It was very Little House on the Prairie.
In the interest of time, and because we couldn't sleep in those conditions anyway, we set out for our hike into Butterfly Valley almost as soon as the sun crept over the horizon.
Our handy dandy guidebook said, and I quote, "be sure to wear proper shoes and keep to the marked trail."
Now, I don't know about you, but to me "proper shoes" means not wearing spiked heels to the beach or don't wear platform flip flops to a funeral. And "keep to the marked trail" means about the same thing as "keep to the paved road."
It's just a steep hike, right?
Lonely Planet is a big fat liar.
This was no hike. There were no steep hills along a paved, or even stepped, path. It wasn't winding down the cliff as you would drive down a mountain road.
No no, this was rock climbing. Or rather, on the descent, rappelling.
And it was only on select sections that they even deigned to provide a rope. Tied to a tree abuzz with the sound of a million angry bees. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at the bottom I was bruised and bloody with quite a large amount of dirt on my clothes. It was (mostly) worth it though.
After the long climb back to the top and a quick breakfast, we hopped in the car and hit the road. Again. Through the mountains. Again.
It seems that all of Turkey is mountain after mountain after mountain. The mountains even go right into the sea. And the roads, oh my god, the roads. Hairpin turns, unpaved roads, random road closures and detours through freakishly rural areas where the road seems to be not just an afterthought but a waaaayafterthought. And all the while, there's my husband, driving like he's Michael Schumacher.
I'm the kind of person who gets a little carsick. Not crazy-projectile-vomiting-as-soon-as-I-hit-the-seat carsick. Just must-look-out-the-windshield-at-all-times carsick. Can't sleep, can't read, can't even look at other people while talking to them.
But at some point while in Turkey, I developed the uncanny ability to fall asleep as soon as the vehicle started moving. Ten minutes into a bus ride through mountains (a bus for pete's sake!), I was asleep so hard my husband couldn't wake me. In the car leaving Butterfly Valley, we're driving through mountains at such a fast speed I have to hold onto the door to keep from being thrown around the car, and I'm actively reading a map when all of the sudden, bam! I fall asleep. I wasn't even tired! But the car started rolling, which is all I apparently needed. Like a baby who conks out as soon as you start walking him in the stroller. Kinda freaky, but a great way to catch up on sleep.
After a few hours we arrived in Denizli, a town which seems to exist solely to serve visitors to Pamukkale. Kind of like how you'd never go to the town of Niagara Falls, New York for any reason other than to see the falls.
Pamukkale is like another world. I've never seen anything like it before and probably never will again. There's a tiny village at the bottom of the hill, the ruins of an ancient city at the top, and between the two...
That's not snow. It's calcite, from thousands of years of mineral water seeping from the ground. No one we talked to, or our guidebook, really seemed to know exactly how these pools came to be. But when you're in the midst of it you really couldn't care less.
Do you remember when you were a kid, going to the toy store and staring, wide eyed, at the seemingly endless shelves of toys? Yeah it was kinda like that. One second we're giddy and the next we're in reverent awe.
Once we finished oohing and ahhing over the travertines, we had less than an hour to see the ruins before the park closed for the day. So we sped through, hitting the highlights, and basically just taking photos as we ran past.
Once we hightailed it back out of the park, we met the guy who was picking up our rental car and driving it back to Antalya. He dropped us at the bus station in Denizli and we asked at the desk how to get to downtown, where we would find the hotel recommended by the guy at the kabob place where we'd stopped for lunch. The guy from the bus company walked us out, deposited us on the correct shuttle bus, and told the driver what hotel we were going to. The driver then told us where to get off the bus and how exactly to get to our hotel from there, as well as where to wait for the shuttle back to the otogar in the morning. All very nice and polite, but the best was yet to come.
Being the super observant people that we are, we managed to walk right past our hotel. But, of course, a pastry shop caught our eye. We stopped in and, in between salivating over the various pastries on display, managed to convey what we were looking for to the non-English-speaking owner of the shop. He left his shop and led us a block back down the street to our hotel.
After getting settled in our room (and after assuring myself that there was in fact heat and hot water in our room) we decided to go back to the shop and actually try some of the pastries.
BEST decision of our trip. Best pistachio baklava ever in the world. Seriously. I would go back just for that baklava.
After gorging ourselves on sweets, we decided to attempt getting a recommendation for dinner. I mean, a man who makes pastries like that should know good food, right?
Once he figured out what we were trying to say with our elaborate gestures and our few (possibly made up) Turkish words, he again left his shop to escort us to dinner. He walked us several blocks away this time, way out of sight of his shop, led us into a restaurant, introduced us to the staff and told us what to order. And man, did we eat well that night.
The next morning, we took another 4+ hour bus ride to Selçuk. As soon as we arrived at the otogar, we checked with the bus company to see if they had any seats available on a bus to Istanbul that night. We'd only managed to get tickets for the next morning, meaning we'd have to pay for a hotel in Selçuk and have one less day in Istanbul. We lucked out and were able to exchange our tickets for the last two seats on an overnight bus.
One thing we had learned by this point was that Lonely Planet isn't worth crap when it comes to finding good food. It will point you in the direction of what used to be inexpensive food before the restaurant was featured in a guide book but now has crazily high prices. But it will not tell you where to find anything actually edible. Being in a hurry, though, we decided inedible food was better than no food at all. We headed to a place with the best kofte in town (this being a tiny town, we didn't have high hopes). It turned out to be so tasty we went back and had more for dinner!
And then we were off to Ephesus, the "best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean [meaning, Turkey] if not all of Europe".
To recap, we were staying in a village on the edge of Butterfly Valley, home to zero butterflies in November, had encountered a deadly bat in the dining room (or just a regular bat, whatever), and had slept in a room with no heat under a blanket that didn't quite cover the bed without anyone lying underneath it. We woke to find there was no hot water, and barely managed to wash our faces and feet without screams of pain, at least until the numbness set in. It was very Little House on the Prairie.
In the interest of time, and because we couldn't sleep in those conditions anyway, we set out for our hike into Butterfly Valley almost as soon as the sun crept over the horizon.
Our handy dandy guidebook said, and I quote, "be sure to wear proper shoes and keep to the marked trail."
Now, I don't know about you, but to me "proper shoes" means not wearing spiked heels to the beach or don't wear platform flip flops to a funeral. And "keep to the marked trail" means about the same thing as "keep to the paved road."
It's just a steep hike, right?
Lonely Planet is a big fat liar.
This was no hike. There were no steep hills along a paved, or even stepped, path. It wasn't winding down the cliff as you would drive down a mountain road.
No no, this was rock climbing. Or rather, on the descent, rappelling.
And it was only on select sections that they even deigned to provide a rope. Tied to a tree abuzz with the sound of a million angry bees. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at the bottom I was bruised and bloody with quite a large amount of dirt on my clothes. It was (mostly) worth it though.
After the long climb back to the top and a quick breakfast, we hopped in the car and hit the road. Again. Through the mountains. Again.
It seems that all of Turkey is mountain after mountain after mountain. The mountains even go right into the sea. And the roads, oh my god, the roads. Hairpin turns, unpaved roads, random road closures and detours through freakishly rural areas where the road seems to be not just an afterthought but a waaaayafterthought. And all the while, there's my husband, driving like he's Michael Schumacher.
I'm the kind of person who gets a little carsick. Not crazy-projectile-vomiting-as-soon-as-I-hit-the-seat carsick. Just must-look-out-the-windshield-at-all-times carsick. Can't sleep, can't read, can't even look at other people while talking to them.
But at some point while in Turkey, I developed the uncanny ability to fall asleep as soon as the vehicle started moving. Ten minutes into a bus ride through mountains (a bus for pete's sake!), I was asleep so hard my husband couldn't wake me. In the car leaving Butterfly Valley, we're driving through mountains at such a fast speed I have to hold onto the door to keep from being thrown around the car, and I'm actively reading a map when all of the sudden, bam! I fall asleep. I wasn't even tired! But the car started rolling, which is all I apparently needed. Like a baby who conks out as soon as you start walking him in the stroller. Kinda freaky, but a great way to catch up on sleep.
After a few hours we arrived in Denizli, a town which seems to exist solely to serve visitors to Pamukkale. Kind of like how you'd never go to the town of Niagara Falls, New York for any reason other than to see the falls.
Pamukkale is like another world. I've never seen anything like it before and probably never will again. There's a tiny village at the bottom of the hill, the ruins of an ancient city at the top, and between the two...
That's not snow. It's calcite, from thousands of years of mineral water seeping from the ground. No one we talked to, or our guidebook, really seemed to know exactly how these pools came to be. But when you're in the midst of it you really couldn't care less.
Do you remember when you were a kid, going to the toy store and staring, wide eyed, at the seemingly endless shelves of toys? Yeah it was kinda like that. One second we're giddy and the next we're in reverent awe.
I think the travertines were the single most photographed place of our entire trip.
The waters are said to have healing powers. I'm pretty sure it's now just a good way to pick up some kind of foot fungus, but hey, who am I to question ancient civilizations?
Once we finished oohing and ahhing over the travertines, we had less than an hour to see the ruins before the park closed for the day. So we sped through, hitting the highlights, and basically just taking photos as we ran past.
Once we hightailed it back out of the park, we met the guy who was picking up our rental car and driving it back to Antalya. He dropped us at the bus station in Denizli and we asked at the desk how to get to downtown, where we would find the hotel recommended by the guy at the kabob place where we'd stopped for lunch. The guy from the bus company walked us out, deposited us on the correct shuttle bus, and told the driver what hotel we were going to. The driver then told us where to get off the bus and how exactly to get to our hotel from there, as well as where to wait for the shuttle back to the otogar in the morning. All very nice and polite, but the best was yet to come.
Being the super observant people that we are, we managed to walk right past our hotel. But, of course, a pastry shop caught our eye. We stopped in and, in between salivating over the various pastries on display, managed to convey what we were looking for to the non-English-speaking owner of the shop. He left his shop and led us a block back down the street to our hotel.
After getting settled in our room (and after assuring myself that there was in fact heat and hot water in our room) we decided to go back to the shop and actually try some of the pastries.
BEST decision of our trip. Best pistachio baklava ever in the world. Seriously. I would go back just for that baklava.
After gorging ourselves on sweets, we decided to attempt getting a recommendation for dinner. I mean, a man who makes pastries like that should know good food, right?
Once he figured out what we were trying to say with our elaborate gestures and our few (possibly made up) Turkish words, he again left his shop to escort us to dinner. He walked us several blocks away this time, way out of sight of his shop, led us into a restaurant, introduced us to the staff and told us what to order. And man, did we eat well that night.
The next morning, we took another 4+ hour bus ride to Selçuk. As soon as we arrived at the otogar, we checked with the bus company to see if they had any seats available on a bus to Istanbul that night. We'd only managed to get tickets for the next morning, meaning we'd have to pay for a hotel in Selçuk and have one less day in Istanbul. We lucked out and were able to exchange our tickets for the last two seats on an overnight bus.
One thing we had learned by this point was that Lonely Planet isn't worth crap when it comes to finding good food. It will point you in the direction of what used to be inexpensive food before the restaurant was featured in a guide book but now has crazily high prices. But it will not tell you where to find anything actually edible. Being in a hurry, though, we decided inedible food was better than no food at all. We headed to a place with the best kofte in town (this being a tiny town, we didn't have high hopes). It turned out to be so tasty we went back and had more for dinner!
And then we were off to Ephesus, the "best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean [meaning, Turkey] if not all of Europe".
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| I'm not going to lie. The cats were one of the best parts. |
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| Check out that walkway! They did not skimp on ornamentation back in the day. |
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| Using the toilet was the social event. |
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| Library of Celsus |
Once the site closed, we still had about 5 hours to kill before our bus. Easier said than done. Selçuk is not an exciting town. There are no little cafes to sit and chill, there are no cute little shops to wander around, there is not much of anything except overpriced creepy bars and an internet cafe. We wandered the streets for as long as we could stand in the cold, then wasted more than an hour in the internet cafe. Which is where I was when I learned Kim Kardashian was getting a divorce, by the way. Because you know that's one of those important events in history we'll still be talking about in 20 years...or not.
What felt like many many hours later, we boarded the bus for the 11 hour overnight ride to Istanbul. As we drove through the countryside, we noticed there tons of trucks and roadside pens full of sheep. It was cute and intriguing for about a minute before we realized that weekend was the holiday of Kurban Bayrami during which every family sacrifices a sheep...
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