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Published: September 13th 2006
Wow, what a week its been! We crossed the border from Syria into Turkey (eventually after a about a three hour wait!). Joy was EXTREMELY relieved to have survived the middle east and to have returned to a relatively "normal" country, where the toilets, food and shops are much more like at home.
First stop in Turkey was Capadocia , the strange landscape that looks like another planet!! We spent 3 nights sleeping in a cave at a caravan park. The rock in the Capadocia area is so soft that caves can be created using just hand tools, and the locals have built cave houses for 1000's of years. Many of the houses are several stories built into the cliff faces with internal stairways. We spent a full day touring the area including some climbs to the top of houses built into cliffs and to an underground city where the bottom level is 80m below ground. Joy was a bit worried about it collapsing like Beaconsfield so she didn't complete the underground tour!! Went to a turkish dance evening in another cave where they did a number of differnt traditionaly turkish dances including the whirling dirvishes. They'd obviously heard about
my superiour belly dancing skills, so when the time came to choose unsuspecting victims, I was one of the 4 guys who got to go up the front and dance with the belly dancer!! You'll be pleased to know that Joy has video evidence so you can have a laugh at me when we return home.
Next, we headed to the coast to the resort town of Oludeniz. You'd think you were in England judging by the number of English tourists, and the English pubs, except for the beautiful blue water and nice weather. The highlight of our stay was jumping off a 2000m high mountain!! We both went tandam paragliding which involved running off the side of a mountain with a parachute. It was heaps of fun and the views were amazing. They catch the thermal's and can actually climb higher than the moutaintop. After about 30 minutes we decended and landed on the beach. We then had to quickly run to catch our boat which took us round the coast for the day to heaps of beautiful swimming spots. For dinner one night we had a feast of camel steaks, cooked on the bbq...yum!!!
The next
day we had some truck problems so spent a few hours sitting in a little village in the middle of nowhere while Jacko, the driver (who thankfully is also a diesel mechanic), fixed the truck. Back on the road and made it to Selcuk, a nice little town just near the ancient city of Efes or Ephesus. The town had a big festival for the 80yr anniversay of turkish Independance so we enjoyed the festivities. Seeing how the locals celebrate big occasions was interesting. A lot of music and dancing. Ephesus was good, particuarly the theatre which seats 30,000 people.
Next stop was the city of Troy which despite what we'd heard about it being a let-down was really facinating. I guess if you were expecting to see the remains of the large wooden horse you would be disappointed, but the trojan war was only a small part of the city's history. Nine different cities have been built on the same site over the last 5,000 years and at some points you could see the ruins of many of these - one on top of the other. After Troy we caught the ferry accross the Dardanell's to Gallipoli where
we slept on the beach under the stars. Got up early the next morning for a tour of all of the main ANZAC sights. It was facinating to see the old trenches, in some places only 15m apart, and the museum had some good relics of the campaign - including several examples of 2 bullets that had struck each other in midflight and fused together.
After Gallipoli we drove to Istanbul and left the truck for the last time, thank goodness! No more bumping around. The Kumuka tour was fantastic and we'd highly recommend it to anyone. You could never see and experience as much as we have in such as short amount of time if you were trying to do it all yourself. Was sad to say goodbye to everyone that we'd spent the last 3 weeks with but we've got plenty more to be excited about.
We checked into our Hotel in Istanbul which was a really cute boutique hotel, some part of it are over 2,000 years old. We were taken on a tour of the basement which is the oldest part. Our daily breakfast was served on the rooftop terrace overlooking the old part
of Istanbul.
We met up with JW and Tefke, our friends from Holland who came to meet us and visit Istanbul together. We met them last year in the Whitsundays and have since met up with them in Berlin, Frankfurt and now Istanbul. Istanbul is an amazing city with some of the most worlds most famous landmarks and sights. We went to two of the Sultan's palaces from the old Ottoman Empire, which were incredible, especially the treasury. They have treasures that were gifted or plundered from India, Persia, Egypt, China and many European countries.
Spent yesterday exploring the Grand Bazaar, which was quite similar to the souqs of Jordan and Syria but much more touristy - hence lots more things that we wanted to buy. Joy and Tefke found plenty of things to practice their bargaining skills on!!
Made it safely to Holland. Spent a few hours exploring Amsterdam (while waiting for JW and Tefke's flight to arrive). Went to Anne Frank's house and the museum. Also wandered around the red light district (always a facinating experience!), tried on a pairs of clogs, ate chips and mayonnaise, and took millions of photos of canals.
Anyway,
it seems like we've timed our holiday well - missing train crashes north of Cairo, several bombings in Turkey, and crazy people attacking embassies in Damascus! We head to New York tomorrow. Hope all is ok back home.
Joy and Scott
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JW and Tefke
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Have fun!
Hi guys! We had so much fun in Istanbul and in the open air museum. Have fun in New York! JW and Tefke