Antique Theatre and The Maussoleum, Bodrum

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With the weather looking pretty drab again today we caught the bus into Bodrum ... eventually. This morning the bus picked us up and then went down into the next village along the coast. A group of potential passengers wanted the driver to wait five minutes for the last member of their party. The bus drivers here are pretty relaxed, but he wouldn't agree that request. In the end, he agreed to wait for a minute and they raced off to tell the last member of their group to hurry up!!

With the bus full, we headed back up to the main road where the driver turned back towards Torba. What the??? Anyway it turned out that he had picked up another driver who he had to take back to Torba because that was where the bus was parked!! After the driver jumped out we did a U-turn and, finally, we were off to Bodrum. At the bus station we changed to a Gümbet bus to take us to the Oasis Shopping Centre where we thought we could fill in a couple of hours. This was a big disappointment as it was very quiet and really didn't have much to look at!!

It was Ataturk's Birthday today so we weren't sure if shops would be open or closed or if there would be lots of celebrations marking the occasion. In the end, if I hadn't read it somewhere, we wouldn't have known - so any celebrations, in this part of Turkey anyway, were very low key.

From Oasis, Kath and Albert decided to walk down into Gümbet to check it out. We decided to try to find the Ruins of Pedasa. According to our map these were supposed to be just up the hill a bit from the shopping centre. Pedasa is to be the best preserved Lelegian city site that still exists. The note on the map indicates that excavation works on the site are still in progress. Sometimes, even with a guide book and/or a map, you just cannot find what you are looking for!! We walked up the hill and around a corner and up the hill a bit more and we never came across anything that looked like city ruins or an archeological dig for that matter!!!

So, we walked back down the hill and headed for the site of the Antique Theatre. We knew exactly where to find this because we could see the ruins of the amphitheater from the bus as we rode between Bodrum and Gümbet!! The theatre was built in the 4th Century B.C. in the Hellenistic style and dates to the Mausselos period.

We climbed up into the seating rows with plans to take a photo back down over the harbour and castle ... until I saw ANOTHER SNAKE disappearing into a crack. This makes the second snake I have seen in two months which is way too many snakes for me!! This one was a light brown snake about the same size as the green tree snake that I sighted in Cairns!!! Well, maybe it was the same size ... I really only saw its tail disappearing. Ugh!!

From the theatre we crossed the highway - for another photo of the harbour and castle - before making our way past one of the ubiquitous water cisterns down to The Maussoleum. The site of one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, The Maussoleum was the monumental tomb of Maussolos, the King of Caria. As is the case with many Mediterranean antiquities, the best relics from The Maussoleum can be found in the British Museum!!

From The Maussoleum we walked back to the bus station where we boarded a bus to take us back to Torba. The minibuses are proving to be a pretty cheap and effective way to travel around the Bodrum peninsula.

Back at the resort we had Turkish pancakes for lunch again and then sat on the sun-beds down on the beach again for a couple of hours. At 5.00pm I headed for the Spa & Wellness centre for another massage. This afternoon I was massaged by the guy who massaged Bernie earlier in the week. He did a hot rock/medical massage which was ... different. I can't say that I was all that excited about the hot rocks, especially not the very hot one that almost scalded my left calf. And even though he was a bloke, he didn't massage as firmly as Betut!! All in all, I was quite disappointed that Betut wasn't there today.

Tonight we dined at the China Garden which is, of course, the Voyage's Chinese restaurant. Once again the Turkish interpretation of Chinese food was somewhat different from the Australian version!! None-the-less we had an enjoyable meal but, with no live entertainment, there was nowhere near the same amount of atmosphere as we enjoyed at the Mexican restaurant.

No cards tonight, because the UAFA final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich was being televised. With the scores level at the 90 minute mark the match went extra time and then to a penalty shoot out before Chelsea prevailed. I was still reading when the match finished so I was able to tell Bernie that I thought Chelsea won ... since he dozed off before the end!! Mind you with non-English commentary and players in red strips falling all over the pitch in anguish and players in blue strips falling all over the pitch in relief, it was hard to tell who won. Fortunately they cut to a shot of the engraver starting to engrave the cup and I was sure it looked like he was engraving a 'C' for Chelsea.

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