It was our last day at the Tree houses in Olympos and I made the most of it by doing nothing all day! I just hung out in the lounges, read, and played backgammon (I can’t get enough!) It was a nice change of pace, I mean don’t get me wrong it’s amazing to see lots of old things and to have new experiences, but having a day just to relax and peace out was well worth it. Marcus went with Hasan to a nearby beach, and Taylee and Brett went Scuba diving that morning, so Bex, Fatih and I just enjoyed ourselves. I got to talk to one of Faith’s friends, Emre, on the phone who is also a tour guide for Fez Travel, and he was a few days behind us in Kusadasi with ... read more

This morning we got up and started our drive to Olympos, a backwoods town in the valley of the mountains. On the way there we stopped outside of Kas to go swimming. I thought it was odd that we were stopping randomly in the middle of our drive to go swimming, until I saw exactly where it was. Before it was announced that this particular area was where we were swimming I was already drooling over the water. As we drove along the coast we could look down and see the water as it clashed against the rocks below, but at one point there was a nice beach and the water was a beautiful deep blue, but right where it hit the beach it was an amazing light blue. It is very difficult to describe; we ... read more

We drove to Fethiye and on the way we stopped at Turkey’s second largest canyon, Saklikent Gorge. We get to the Gorge and we had a few options of what we could do. I decided to opt out of tubing down the freezing cold rapids that come from the mountain and instead we (Dora, Fatih, and Hasan who also didn’t go) lounged in a shaded lounge right on the river and drank cay. There was also a little mini waterfall right behind me, I felt like a queen! (I stuck my toes in the water and it was freezing! I am glad I made the decision I did!) Not long after we were sitting down, the others who were tubing floated past us, they were in for a treat as there is a mud bath at ... read more

I woke up and said happy birthday to myself, I am now a quarter century old! (One foot in the grave as I say) I was really excited since we were visiting Pamukkale today and we would get to “paddle” in the thermal pools there, I had heard that you couldn’t swim in them so I didn’t bring my swimmers, but wore something I could get wet in if need be. ¬Yesterday on the bus Taylee asked how old I was and I told her that I would be 25 the next day, so they were all excited for my birthday as well! I got on Facebook and was so happy to see that I already had birthday wishes, even though with the time differenc it was almost 1 am in the States, it made my ... read more

I got up and finished packing my stuff up that had magically exploded out of my backpack that night, then went down for the free Turkish breakfast (not quite as good at the Apricot Hotels, but it still covered the basics : tomatoes, olives, cheese, cucumber, yogurt, rose hip jam, tea, etc) then it was on the road again! We stopped at Troy which my Dad said would be a complete waste of time since it’s just a bunch of stones and you have to use your imagination. I actually found it kind of interesting with there being 9 Troy’s since they had to rebuild after disasters. At one point we were all standing and looking at a couple walls that were labeled with which one was from which Troy and there was a PVC ... read more