We’ve had another day visiting building rubble. We visited the PMD ruins, properly known as Priene, Miletus and Didyma. These were 3 large cities close to Ephesus that existed at the same time as Ephesus. However, unlike Ephesus they don’t get much tourist traffic and so it is possible to have a reasonable wander around them without tripping over other people. They haven’t been excavated to the same extent as Ephesus and I think that the amount we were quoted was something like 2%. The first stop was at Priene which lies partly up a fairly steep and craggy hill. The main features of interest at Priene are the Temple of Athena and a theatre. The Temple of Athena sits in a position on the hill with good views out over the surrounding plain. There ... read more

The idea of sending unwanted clothes back home wasn’t such a good one. After having to unpack the box that we had carefully packaged it turned out that it was going to cost us too much – certainly more than the value of the clothes in the package. Tonight’s job is to now repack our packs to accommodate this excess. At least it will make us think twice about buying new “stuff”. Our bus trip to Pamukkale was both interesting and uneventful. The first leg was by mini-bus to Marmaris where we changed to a large coach for the second leg to a large town called Denezli. Both of these legs were extremely picturesque. The first leg, along the Datça Peninsula, was along/over mountain ranges with views to small, quiet rocky coves. Occasionally there would be ... read more

Our last couple of days have been very lazy. We left Gennardi on the bus after a leisurely breakfast and farewells to our hosts, George and Barbara (both Greek). We even got hugs and kisses when we left. A couple of hours later we were back in Rhodes Town and finding our way to our overnight accommodation. Pretty much straight away we went back to the harbour so that we could book our ferry tickets to Symi and then on to Datça in Turkey. That completed, we had a bit more of a walk through the old part of Rhodes. We’d been into the old town a couple of time previously but even then we still found parts that we hadn’t seen previously. The next morning we had a relatively early start. We checked out of ... read more

It’s ages since we wrote anything on this blog but Deb’s conference is over now and we are back to our “normal” life of following our own timetable. At our last entry we were still in Kaş but ready to hit the road the next morning to travel to Fethiye. We left Kaş as planned and had a pleasant 2 hour bus trip to Fethiye. At the Fethiye bus station we were met by the owner of guest house that we had booked into for the next few nights. This surprised us as we hadn’t arranged it but apparently he hangs out at the bus station all day waiting for his guests to arrive and to arrange transport to the guest house for them. The guest house was a 10 minute walk from the marina, restaurant ... read more

Bloody hell, it’s hot. The weather geek in me says that because we are now at the coast it should be cooler than inland locations. Wrong. The little thermometer attached to my day pack (I did mention weather geek) told me that it was 38°C in the shade earlier today. After 4 wonderful days in Urgup, we left the town 2 days ago and travelled to the southern Mediterranean coastline by bus. This was a 10 hour bus trip but thankfully relatively interesting. After the interesting terrain around Urgup the terrain flattened out to very flat countryside. They appeared to be growing wheat and other crops but these were growing in very rocky, unappealing looking countryside. The largest city that we travelled through was Konya, which is the centre of the “Whirling Dervishes” – these are ... read more