{"id":152,"date":"2010-11-30T21:39:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T15:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/?p=152"},"modified":"2010-11-30T21:39:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T15:39:35","slug":"a-holiday-from-travelling-and-some-pretty-amazing-ruins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"A holiday from travelling and some pretty amazing ruins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We weren\u2019t sure whether to head straight down to Syria next or to travel up the Mediterranean and Aegean coast to Istanbul which would mean crossing half of the country to get to the Syrian border. After all it\u2019s almost winter and maybe not the best time of the year to go to the beach for a swim… Plus a lot of pensions shut down in Turkey from November until May and it can be hard to find a place with heating and especially hot water. But it was so warm in Cappadocia during the day that we decided to give it a try and headed down to Antalya, the main transport hub for the Turkish Mediterranean coast or the Turkish Riviera as it is often called.<\/p>\n

The Turkish Mediterranean is just as beautiful as the Italian Riviera but also as developed since tourism has been heavily pushed since the 1980s.There are stretches along the coast where you can see one hotel next to the other but there are also some pretty secluded bays where you feel you have the whole place for yourself. For the people who like a break from the beach there is snorkeling, diving, paragliding, boat trips (not during low season though) and for a bit of culture there are various several thousand year old ruins dotted along the coast. We can understand why this area is so popular.<\/p>\n

The main attraction of Antalya is its old quarter, the Kaldeici. It\u2019s nice with cobbled alleys, old stone buildings, a picturesque harbour and a promenade with a view of the hilly coast. However, it did feel like it was only there for tourists and we were wondering if the only locals living there were hotel, pension or souvenir shop owners. All the signs were either in English or German and prices were listed first in Euro and then in Turkish Lira. Turkey (especially Western Turkey) must be the only country in the world where people automatically address foreign tourists in German, then try English and then French. Not surprisingly, since there is a strong Turkish-German connection with German being taught in schools and a lot of people having family working in Germany or Austria or even having worked there themselves. This was all very weird to us and it was ok for a day but the souvenir shops got a bit too much for us after a while. So we decided to move on further to Olympos, a popular backpacker beach place to take a holiday from travelling \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Olympos is a village which is entirely made up of a collection of wooden bungalows or tree-houses as the locals confusingly call them. We were obviously expecting huts in trees <\/em>but tree-houses seems to mean huts made out of trees<\/em>. We got ourselves a nice little bungalow in a quiet tree-house camp surrounded by orange trees and roosters that luckily like us\u00a0weren’t\u00a0creatures of morning either. Unfortunately James woke up the next day with a nasty cold which he still\u00a0hasn’t\u00a0managed to entirely shake off. The one time we get to a beach after months of travelling inland and dreaming of jumping into the sea, he can\u2019t go into the water. Well at least Olympos in low season is the ideal place when you\u2019re sick on the road. Fresh orange juice in the morning, delicious home cooked food, perfect sunny warm weather during the day and comfy cushion areas to lounge around all the day.<\/p>\n

The sea was beautiful – crystal clear and incredibly warm. We were told that this was very unusual for this time of the year. The water was even warmer than any day in Sydney! So warm in fact that I\u00a0didn’t\u00a0need to faff around forever to get in or maybe that was because there is some weird sea monster hiding at the shore only to bite you when you want to hop in. Honestly I\u2019m not making this up. Something, maybe a crab, bit me twice and left with me with a bleeding cut. It seems that\u2019s what it takes for me to jump in and not do the monkey dance for like half an hour.<\/p>\n

We also checked out Mount Olympos where the Eternal Flames of Chimera can be found. In a way they are just like bonfires but the interesting bit is that it\u2019s actually a natural phenomenon. The gas flames in the rocks have been apparently burning for thousands of years and attract a big crowd of visitors.<\/p>\n

As soon as James started to feel a bit better and I started to get very restless, we headed to the little fishing town Kas. Kas is like a mini version of Antalya but with more of a local atmosphere and really nice people. We ended up staying a couple of days to give James a bit more time to recover and just hang about out in town. Literally hang out. On our last day we decided to try out paragliding which is very popular in this area. It was absolutely amazing and not scary at all. You feel like you\u2019re on a big swing and you get the best aerial view of the Turkish Mediterranean coast you can think of. Check out this short video clip James took:<\/p>\n

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After a week on the coast we decided to travel inland to Pamukkale famous for its thermal travertine pools and the Roman city of Hierapolis. When you first see the travertine pools from the distance there a bit underwhelming. They look a bit like massive piles of dirty snow. But when you get closer and you walk between them up the hill they\u2019re pretty nice. Some of the pools look like white cascades of white rock and the water is crystal blue and quite warm. Most people go for a dip in the thermal pools of the old Hierapolis bathhouse but we found the entry fee a bit steep. Instead we went for a dip in the travertine pools which weirdly caused a lot of attention among other tourists. Especially Chinese and Japanese tourists made us pose for quite a few pictures …<\/p>\n

At Hierapolis the amphitheatre was pretty impressive but not as impressive as Ephesus, our next stop. Ephesus or Efes, as the Turkish call it, is one of the best preserved ancient cities in the Mediterranean. Part of the city has been reconstructed during the last three decades and we can only imagine how difficult it must have been to put the ruins together from the little pieces lying around in the grass. The reconstructions totally pays off. Walking along the streets aligned with well preserved columns and ruins is like a time warp. Maybe that\u2019s because we\u2019re so familiar with Greek and Roman history through school, books and movies. There is something special about sitting in the massive amphitheater and you know that Nero instructed some of the extensions to the theatre. Or when you check out the facade of the Central library where Marc Anthony used to stroll through the building and plan battle strategies. As much as I hated Latin in school (Latin is a mandatory subject in many Austrian high schools even today) I did love learning about the history but not the years of translating the ancient texts at the time.<\/p>\n

Following the battle theme we travel up to the Gallipoli Peninsula where the Australian and New Zealand forces fought against the Turkish during WWI. This is an important event in history for these countries and we were interested in seeing the commemorative sites around Anzac cove especially since living in Australia and walking past the Anzac memorial every day to work. But when checking out tours (it\u2019s too vast an area to explore by public transport or on foot), they didn\u2019t sound great and the weather was cold and gloomy. We got the impression that you spent most of the time on the bus and are only taken to very few of the major sights. It seems you\u2019re best off renting a car but that was exceeding our travel budget. Hard heartedly we decided to give it a miss and to make our way straight to Istanbul to feel some European ground under our feet for a few days before heading to Syria.<\/p>\n

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We weren\u2019t sure whether to head straight down to Syria next or to travel up the Mediterranean and Aegean coast to Istanbul which would mean crossing half of the country to get to the Syrian border. After all it\u2019s almost winter and maybe not the best time of the year to go to the beach … Continue reading A holiday from travelling and some pretty amazing ruins<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}