Blogs from Aegean, Turkey, Middle East - page 77

Promises of free time for self-exploration never eventuated. Everyone, including the Top Deck representative is pissed off at the Tour Guide from ‘Fez Travel’- starting to get a sour taste about this tour - just crap organisation. No-one knows entry fees until we get to the specific place making it hard for us to have money on hand - getting to an ATM is near impossible due to lack of free time. Today we also did Tour Guide ‘directed’ visits to a leather, jewellery & sweets ‘stores’ - 3 hours wasted. Also visited the home of the Virgin Mary - am apparently now a ‘Blessed / Haji’ person!! We’re all sick of buffets and some of us are thinking of trying to find our own dinner in Kusadusi tonight. With a long road trip to Istanbul ... read more

Today (Aprıl 13th) was a fairly quiet day spent in Selcuk. Early in the morning a large group went to the Bella Pension where the pension operators also run a quality carpet shop. Everyone had been invited to their hotel for breakfast on the rooftop terrace with views overlooking the ruins of St. John's Basıllıca and Selcuk. After breakfast everyone went to the carpet shop where Urdell (one of the operators) spent a couple hours explaınıng carpets. Theır hıstory, how to tell qualıty, types of materıal, (cotton,wool,sılk) and dıfferent trıbal desıgns. The next few hours were ''spent lookıng at carpets''. Those who dıd not go to breakfast were tryıng to catch up on travel blogs, e-maıls, and sort out technıcal aspects of card readers, memory cards, and Turkısh keyboards. Plus all those helpful Mıcrosoft wındows show ... read more

Well sınce the last lıttle note we have had a gruellıng week tourıng a lıttle tıny bıt of Turkey. Some long days, some long drıves, and many, many, ıncredıble sıghts. I hope to be able to share some of the sıghts wıth you today or tomorrow. Sınce arrıvıng ın London about a week ago here ıs the dıary. I hope my wrıtıng ıs up to the task. Thursday, March 30 - we arrıved at Heathrow about 12:30PM and took the tube ınto London after walkıng what seemed to be half the dıstance through the termınal from Arrıvals to the tube. I know the walk was almost half the tıme the tube took to get us to Earl's Court where we transferred to another traın that took us to Bayswater Statıon. You all know exactly where that ... read more

Dan, Mel and Georgia and I were meant to spend the afternoon in Pamukkale and move on to Capadouchia, but at the bus station we got shifted to a different minibus and Dan left his bag on a random bus. After much panic he got it back and we ended up meeting this local dude, 'Ali Barba', who took us to the 'secret' hot springs. Directions to get to them are in the Lonely Planet! But it saved the entrance fee of 10 pounds to get in and there were lots of locals with us. The springs were basically a long covered cave, so we had to leave all our clothes outside. It started raining and everything got wet. The walk home involved walking in the freezing cold at 1am with wet clothes down the travertines ... read more

Well, this travelling gets addictive! We'd only been home a few weeks from Bali when we both found ourselves with a weeks holiday from work. Couldn't stand the thought of England's grey skies so booked a flight to Turkey. We ended up in Marmaris, it was fairly quiet as it was the end of the season. The weather was a pleasant 25 degrees by day, a bit cool in the evening. We did plenty of running around on the dolmus buses, visiting Icmeler and Turunc. Both were lovely small towns backed by high mountains. On our last day we visited the famous rock tombs of Dalyan and also the supposed healing mud baths close by. This turned out to be quite a fun affair, although I have to admit that I declined from completly submerge myself ... read more