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| Pretty much all there is to say about Denizli. |
I have to admit: I was sold on visiting Pamukkale ("pa-MOO-keh-lay") — with its calcium-white hillside, travertine pools and Roman ruins — before we even left Istanbul by the travel poster hanging in the lobby of our hotel. And then we figured out that it's more or less halfway from Olympos to Istanbul ... But that doesn't mean we got there in a timely fashion: We certainly did not catch our 10 o'clock bus out of Olympos (and barely made the noon), and we had to cool our heels for a few hours in Antalya wrestling with disobedient ATM machines* while waiting for our bus.
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| Okay, the pension in Denizli may not look so bad; but fortunately you can't smell it (Photo: Mark). |
Oh, and because it was late in the day we couldn't get a bus all the way to Pamukkale, ending our travel day instead in the city of Denizli, famous for its ... um ... poultry. And since we arrived late in the evening & didn't have any clever ideas for accommodations, we had to spend the night — as I suppose must happen at least once every trip — in a real fleabag near the bus station (Anne: Think "Henry IV"). But at least we were able to address the kebab deficiency in our diets that night.
In the morning we jumped on a Dolmus (shuttle bus) and within an hour we were being touted by a Pamukkale hotel manager — who, in this case, represented the hotel we were headed for anyway.
BTW since we reached Pamukkale on the morning of April 1, and we were already
booked into our Istanbul hotel for the night of the 2nd (with our
flights to Amsterdam the next day), we were faced with a choice: Spend a mere
half a day exploring Pamukkale and then rush back for yet another unpleasant
overnight bus ride, OR ... spend a full 24 hours, and then catch a flight
from Denizli to Istanbul! We never would've considered the possibility that
it might be affordable to fly had not Jo & Helen (from the Olympos eclipse
group) told us how cheaply they flew from Istanbul to Antalya! And
sure enough, after we checked into the Venus Hotel we used their computer
to log into the Turkish Air web site — and procured a pair of one-way
tickets to Istanbul for about $60 each! Of course, getting to the airport
was to prove a bit tricky in itself — turned out the Denizli airport
wasn't actually in the city of Denizli 14 miles away, but another 60
miles further south! — but the extra time in Pamukkale was well worth
it.
*It wasn't until we met up in Istanbul that Mark realized
that his bank did not permit ATM withdrawals in foreign countries, so for
10 days we performed a balancing act with my ATM card and his credit card.
Then, in Antalya, Mark's ATM card inexplicably started working — on
the same day that mine stopped.
Pamukkale
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| Entering Pamukkale (that's the second balloon ride we've seen in Turkey). |
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| Fenduk, the Venus Hotel's deranged (but adorable) mutt. |
So Pamukkale is more or less like any other town in southwestern Turkey ... at least, like any town that has a hot spring with water laden with minerals, so much so that it coats whatever it flows over — rock, dirt, flora — with thick layers of brilliant white calcium. Thus, Pamukkale is (I'm totally guessing here) one of Turkey's most touristed natural wonder. And while it was great to explore, we had to do so while dodging huge clumps of tourists (mostly German, tho' we noted more Turkish tourists here, especially school groups, than any other spot we visited).
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| "Pamukkale" is Turkish for "Cotten Castle." |
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| On a sunny day in Pamukkale, sun glasses are a very good idea. |
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| Looks like tasty frosting, but believe me, you wouldn't want fall down it ... |
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| ... 'cause it's rough stuff. |
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| To preserve the travertine, the rule is bare feet only (surprisingly, it's not too hard on the tootsies). An easy stroll up the hill leads you to ... |
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| ... A series of artificial pools (the more natural pools, which you'll see shortly, are off limits these days to give the worn-out travertine a chance to heal). |
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| Check it out: There were tadpoles living in the milky water! Some Turkish teenagers told us they were fish, not tadpoles; never did get to the bottom of it. |
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| German tourists cool their feet in one of the channels used to carry the water to wherever it's needed. |
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| The famous (and less artificial) travertine pools. |
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| Closeup. |
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| Another look. |
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| Looking back down at Pamukkale. |
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| Someone was making a pretty good living flying tourists over the travertines in an ultralight; the aerial assault was nonstop. |
Of course, any time you mix hot springs and ancient Romans, you get a spa. And not just a spa, an entire city — in this case, the city of Hierapolis. Although most of what's left are only scattered remains, some artifacts such as the baths survive above the limestone hills. In fact the baths are the best maintained of the ruins and are the center of tourist-cash-acquiring activities: They're enclosed and roofed, and lined with dozens of souvenir shops & food stands. Oh, and lots and lots of cats.
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| The pools are still there (complete with underwater ruins); and you can swim in them if you cough up the equivalent of fifteen bucks. |
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| Mark — the Evil Controller of Cats. |
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| Outside again, we explored the best Hierapolis has to offer: The theater. |
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| Many bits of the theater, which presumably fell off during one earthquake or another, are on display out front like some ancient yard sale. |
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| The view from the cheap seats. |
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| The theater grounds. |
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| Stone wall. |
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| Ancient aquaduct. |
At sunset we headed back to the travertine pools looking for that tourism-poster shot ...
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The water was turned off in this area. |
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That poster looked something like this. |
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| That evening Mark made yet another friend, who followed us over a mile to our hotel & hung around outside for quite a while. |
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| Last photo of the evening. I always enjoy seeing the moon for the first time after an eclipse; kind of like running into an old lover. |
We returned to the hotel & had the best meal we had in Turkey: Traditional multi-course Turkish repast, home cooked by our manager's mother (with tasty Turkish wine). The following morning we had a few hours left to explore ...
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| One fun thing about photography in Pamakkule: Kids here are not shy about having their picture taken ("Photo? Photo???") The schoolgirls (lower left) sang their school fight song for us. |
Throughout our stay we had lots of kids approach us wanting to meet foreigners. One ten-year-old boy, at the urging of his father, practiced his English on me. Always eager to help the young people, the conversation went something like this:
Boy: Hello, my name is Ramazhan. What is your name?
Me: Hello Ramazhan, my pumpernickel octopus indemnifying quarterhorse. And you?
DISCLAIMER: This story may or may not be true.
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| Turns out if you find the right way in, you can sneak past the admission booth. |
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| Did I mention that the limestone coats everything in its path? The folks who manage the travertines do so by constantly redirecting the flow of the water into different channels, and over whatever surface needs it. |
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| More tasty limestone frosting. |
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| Lower down, some baby pools incubating. |
By lunchtime it was time to go; 1 dolmus, 1 taxi, 1 bus, 1 plane and 2 trams later we were enjoying some late-night kebabs in the Sultanahmet.
Back in Istanbul ...We had separate flights to Amsterdam;
Mark's was early the next morning, but I had about four hours for some final
exploration (and eating).
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| Donar kebab: The best meal $1.50 can buy. |
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| Istanbul's Galata tower. To the left is the Galata Bridge (which you may remember in neon in update #1). |
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| Fishing from the Galata bridge. (Walking a little further on, I met another shoe-shine kid who wanted to shine my sneakers, for free of course; "Don't break my heart! Don't break my heart!" he cried as I walked on ...) |
My final act, less than an hour before my shuttle to the airport: Nearly getting run over by a motorcyclist who was zipping along the wrong way down a one-way street.
Some parting observations ...
- Keeping pets is definitely not the norm in Turkey; when we would stoop down to pet a cat or dog, we often got stared at as if we were nuts.
- You can find all sorts of wares for sale on the streets of Istanbul and other cities; things you'd expect like food, t-shirts, toys & cigarettes — but we also saw some really unexpected items, such as cell phones, power tools ... and I can't get the guns in the subway malls out of my mind ...
- Mark really enjoyed devising techniques to mess with the touts in Istanbul; he discovered, for example, that instead of getting snippy, a broad smile and bright "Thank you!" was usually enough to leave them in their tracks scratching their heads. One day I bought a big bag of lokum (Turkish candy), way more than we could eat as it turned out — so Mark took possession, and the next tout got a big smile and the gift of lokum unexpectedly thrust into his hands; he was so nonplussed he forgot what he was trying to sell us.
- BTW the reason I ended up with 5 times as much candy as I wanted, I learned, is the vendors' technique of overselling: they just pile it on having figured out that most tourists, stymied by the language barrier, will just pay up rather than protest. So I was quite proud of myself when, on our last night as we walked past the Blue Mosque to our hotel, I told the chestnut vendor that he could give me twice as much if he wanted to — but I was only going to pay for what I asked for. Grumbling, he emptied half of the chestnuts from the little white bag.
Bonus pictures
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| Lots of residences in Turkey have solar water heaters — even in big apartment buildings (where they must compete for sunlight in a forest of satellite dishes). |
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| Mark, in case you don't believe me that bad weather delayed my leg from Munich to Amsterdam ... |
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