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Published: April 7th 2008
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April 5 - 6, 2008
Konya and Antalya, Turkey
We spent our Saturday morning in Konya prior to our 5 hour bus trip to Antalya on the south coast of Turkey. This city is a very important place for those of the Muslim faith as it has several important Mosques and some interesting historical Islamic artifacts and an important museum with many different, very old, copies of the Koran in many different forms.
This is a quiet city and we enjoyed a short walk through the downtown to Aladdin’s Park. We never quite figured out why, but this place has way too many candy stores all selling a few different version of the same sugar candy. Had to buy some of course just to try it.
Our afternoon bus trip was a very enjoyable 5 hour drive through the mountains that separate the center part of Turkey from the south Mediterranean coast to the city of Antalya. This is a nice trip with very nice scenery through a pine forest and a good road through an 1800 meter high mountain pass to the coast. ( High enough to have snow at the top ). There are very
nice farms, orchards and vineyards as well as many herders with their sheep and goats feeding in the mountains nearly all the way to Antalya.
Antalya is a beautiful resort city on the Mediterranean Sea with a huge agricultural business in the surrounding area with a mild climate and lots of water from the mountains in 5 major rivers.
Tomorrow we will be shown some of the historical part of Antalya with a guided tour.
April 6, 2008
Antalya
Today we visited some very interesting old ruins of the city of Perge that was settled by the Hittites around 1500 B.C. This city was developed further by the Romans and obviously was a very important city in its time. The ancient cities and farm areas were served by a very impressive 25 Km long stone aqueduct ( some very high ) system that channeled water from the mountain streams to the city and area. This city had running water, hot springs fed baths and a very sophisticated market and trading system and infrastructure. This is a very large site with only a few percent of the site uncovered to date.
We continued to the
very large amphitheater at Aspendos. This place had seating for 15,000 people and was used for theater and not for sporting events ( gladiators, etc ). Very impressive and in very good condition considering when it was built over a 1000 years ago.
We finished our tour today with a visit to a very nice waterfall in the city of Antalya that spills into the Mediterranean Sea. After the touring we spent some time with a walk through the local market.
This is a first class resort city with a lot of 4 and 5 star resorts. We think it would probably be too busy in the summer but it is a beautiful place
Tomorrow we take a short trip to the resort city of Cirali an hour west along the coast from Antalya.
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