Blogs from Pamukkale, Aegean, Turkey, Middle East - page 6

We stopped in Pamukkale for an afternoon and evening to wait for our night bus to Cappadocia. It was actually a pretty cool area with White hills, which are actually calcium deposits. There was also an ancient greek city to explore!... read more

Dag 224 og 225. Vi sto opp kl. 09 for aa komme oss tidlig avgaarde til Celcuk, og saa videre til Pamukkale. Dog kom vi oss ikke fra hotellet for klokken var 10.30, for vi maatte vente paa aa faa klesvasken tilbake. Vi gikk til minibuss-"stasjonen" og maatte lope de siste meterne for aa komme med bussen. Da vi kom til Selcuk var bussen gaatt for kun 2 minutter siden (vi hadde ikke sjekket i forkant), saa vi ventet til neste buss gikk, kl. 13. For aa fordrive tiden gikk vi rundt i Selcuks gater, blant annet for aa finne postkort. Bussen gikk naar den skulle, og da klokken var blitt 16.15 ble vi satt av og en minibuss sto klar til aa ta oss videre siste stykke. Det amerikanske paret vi traff i Istanbul anbefalte ... read more

"If you dare trample on these, be free" Aspawa Pension, Pamukkale - September 16th, Evening Kuşadası may be an unashamed fleshpot, but it does make a very convenient base for tracing the lines of Greek thought back to their very inception, with a man whose name is renowned worldwide and whose thoughts are hopelessly obscured by time. Thales of Miletus, and his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes with him, are known almost universally as the first philosophers because they were the first to cast off the tyranny of the arbitrary. As anybody who has tried will know all too well, the further back the filigree'd tracery of science is taken, the more impossible it becomes to make any sure statement, and so I shall make no pretensions to incontrovertible truth. Out of a wish for brevity and ... read more

Pamukkale is a three-hour drive from Selcuk, the majority of which I sleep right through. I’m not actually sure if the little town with nothing to do at the bottom of the mountains is Pamakkule, or if the actual attraction is called Pamakkule, but honestly I can’t be bothered right now. I start the walk up towards the calcium pools with a stroll (or sweaty hike in the blazing sun) through Heiropolis and its necropolis. OK the ruins are not impressive after what I saw yesterday at Ephesus, but the scenery was nice. Very Little House on the Prairie, except well with a lot of stones and old ruins that Laura Ingall Wilder definitely failed to tell us about. Near the top you come to a big expanse of what looks like glaciers and snow covering ... read more

15 April 2008 I've been in Turkey for almost a month now. My daughter, Shay, lives in Izmir, so that has been where I have spent the majority of my time. Izmir is a fairly modern city, by Turkish standards, and we even live above a Starbucks, which is still too expensive. For the most part, though, Turkey has been much easier on the wallet than the UK and Europe. Accomodations are inexpensive. After being here 2.5 weeks, I woke up one night with a cramp in my calf and when I stood up to massage it, I ended up passing out and hitting my eyebrow on the baseboard. Hard. I had a huge knot on my head and now I have a black eye and it is still swollen and sore, after a week. I ... read more