Turkey

Nathaniel and I went to Turkey on his Spring break in 2000. Like Japan, this was his choice. He wanted to do something different. We had a great time. The people were friendly, the food great, the women beautiful (OK to note on a boys only trip.). Everything was inexpensive. The antiquities were astounding. Turkey is loaded with ruins of Persian, Greek, Roman, Crusader, and various other civilizations. We want to go back. Nathaniel wants to live there.

We started in Adana and traveled west about 450 kilometers to Atalya, then returned. The drive was spectacular, curving roads among mountains with frequent views of the blue, deep blue Mediterranean.

	This is the Pub at the hotel where we stayed just outside (walking distance) the gate at Mildenhall, England. Our trip over was great. We went by AMC. We could not get on the flight to Incirlik, Turkey so we took the one that went to Iceland (the same one we took in 1999) and on to Mildenhall.  When we got to England we asked about flights to Incirlik. The man said, "We never have flights to Incirlik! However, there is one tomorrow morning at 8:00." It was a KC-135 tanker. We sat on troop seats and slept on the floor.
	After getting our rental car on Incirlik AB, near Adana, we motored to Kizkalesi. The first part of the drive was on a super-super highway with hardly any cars ( high tolls, little indigenous traffic). We spent much of the next day seeing ruins, then drove a short way to Tasucu. We figured we better make some time the next day so we drove almost to Alanya. The next day we reached our farthest point, almost 450 km, at Antalya. Here we stayed in a 5 star hotel for about $100 (special pre-season deal). We then returned to Adana in two days, spent a night at another 5 star hotel in Adana, then returned to base to find our flight delayed a day.
	This is the big Mosque in Adana. Adana is the largest city in southeastern Turkey and is where we started our travels. It is a very modern city. The driving is a little different, kind of like southern Italy. One of the striking things is the presence of mosques vice churches. Turkey is definitely a Muslim country, although they try to keep it secular. In the cities the women are all dressed in beautiful, stylish western clothes. In the villages they are attired in peasant garb and have their heads covered.
	This is the view from our hotel room our first night in Turkey. This Crusader Castle is on an island just off shore. There is another fortress on the coast that used to be connected to this one. We stayed in Kizkalesi, the small adjacent town. The room cost about $50 (make that 50,000 Lira). We spent some time after dinner sitting in a Turkish coffee shop and talking to the proprietor. They had Turkish music on TV, sung by beautiful women in western clothes, but very different sounding.
	That evening we had dinner at a seafood restaurant in the next town. The restaurant was right on the water in a picturesque cove. We picked out our own fish and were served a huge (and in this unusual instance, expensive) meal. It was delicious. Nathaniel had a close brush with eating the eyeball which had been left in his obviously whole fish. There were tons of fresh vegetables, more than we could eat. Since we were there in early Spring there were few other tourists and we had the place to ourselves.
	Kanlidivane was the first antiquities site we visited. It consisted of a deep chasm surrounded by ruins. About a mile down the road was a necropolis which contained several of these reliefs next to tombs dug into the rocks.
	I thought this was kind of picturesque. A cow is nonchalantly grazing around a bunch of toppled roman columns. This was in Dioceasarea where we also saw an intact city gate and the temple below.
	Dioceasarea was up in the hills. We had to drive quite a ways to get there. Once again we were the only tourists to be seen this time of year. Dioceasarea was very well preserved. This is the temple of Zeus Olbios. We tried to find Pasli on the way back but drove around in circles without finding it (see below).
	Here is a close up of the columns of the temple of Zeus Olbios. It is nice to be able to point out to kids that they are looking at examples of the things they learned about in their readings or at school.
	Pasli was one of the more intriguing places we visited. Pasli is a well preserved Roman city with a temple tomb of a Persian governor. It was in the guide book but we could not find it. We totally missed it on the way down the coast and tried again on the way back. It supposedly featured "the outstanding Phallus of Priapus," god of fertility. We drove up and down a narrow dirt road and finally starting asking questions of the local peasants. One, leading a horse, told us to go back down the road 5 Kilometers. We did that and found nothing. Luckily we spotted another peasant who, after our repeated enunciations of the word "Pasli," replied by pointing to a field on the other side of a wall, gesturing widely, and saying, "Pasli." We had found it! Then we searched for the Phallus for hours and never found it. We were amazed that everywhere we walked it seemed to be hollow under us. There were several holes leading to large rooms filled with water. Apparently much of Pasli is now buried. There were lots of walls, arches, tombs, etc.
	This is to give you an idea of the casual nature of antiquities in Turkey. We and the other tourists were walking right over this beautiful mosaic. (For here in Perge we found other tourists for the first time, Germans mostly.) I guess when you have so many, and indeed you cannot go a block without bumping into something incredibly old, you take them a bit for granted.
	Perge also had a very well preserved Roman bath house. You could see the pipes that brought in the water, the furnaces where it was heated, and the three rooms of calidarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium. Here is the calidarium. Notice the ducts under the floor where the fires were built to heat the water in the pool above. Those people knew how to live.
	The Aspendos amphitheater was very striking. It was large and well preserved. They still use if for live performances a couple of times a year. Aspendos is, along with Perge, a real tourist attraction not too far outside of the large city of Atalya. Atalya already had lots of German tourists early in April. We stayed in a 5 star hotel for about $100. It had a beautiful view and Nathaniel saw his first topless German sunbathers.
	Here is Nathaniel enjoying some good Turkish bread. The night before we had a great meal sitting outside at a restaurant on the street behind him. The next morning we failed to find a breakfast place so Nathaniel went with the bread shop offerings.