Olympos, Kas

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Olympos, Kas

Today after brekky (not for me) we packed up our gear and left it downstairs and headed off on foot to explore the ruins of ancient Olympos. To get there we turned right after the bridge, walked along the beach for a bit, and then headed in through the next valley. Paid a few lira for our tickets and right there beside the ticket booth were a couple of tombs cut into the rock. It's a long fairly narrow valley with a stream flowing through the middle of it and lots of trees. There must have been quite a community there as there are still ruins of many buildings and a few burial areas. We saw a church, a theatre, a roman baths, some water ways built of the rock, etc etc. Explored for a couple of hours, had a cold sprite at the far end, and finally wandered back out onto the beach. By now there were heaps of people sitting on the beach and in the water.  We wandered back towards the Ciralı end and Jeff had another swim.  Then we walked back to the hotel, got there about 1:30. Saban rang to book us a minibus and we sat in the shade by the pool to wait for our pick-up. They arrived and drove us the 6 or 7 km up the mountain to the main road. No sooner had we unloaded our luggage than a bus came past and the driver flagged it down for us, so we were on the next bus and straight on our way. We had a good trip and managed to get seats on the lefthand side so we had great views of the coastline. The road wound down out of mountains and through some valleys seemingly filled with large plastic greenhouses where they must grow masses of veggies - I guess someone has to keep up the supply of  tomatoes and cucumbers eaten at every meal! Then around the coast with bay after bay plunging straight from the mountains into the Mediterranean. In a little under three hours we arrived in Kaş.

It was a fairly short walk around a few streets to the Hideaway Hotel, at the edge of town. What a lovely, welcoming place. Ahmet met us and showed us to our room, 307. From our balcony we had a view to the nearby roman amphitheatre and also out over the water. He also took us up to the terrace - what great spot, with views back over the town, to the west towards the amphitheatre, and most importantly, south over the Mediterranean and out to the nearby Greek Island of Meis (also known as Kastellorizo).  We decided to stay in, caught a great sunset from the terrace and had a light meal of soup and mezes.

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