Okay, enough of sounding like a travel agent - can you tell I've been filling out travel recommendation pages for Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com! Anyway, it was a good choice for a hotel.
We spent the next six days exploring the city and beyond. We walked, rode the city buses and trams, and took a tour out to the ruins of Perge, Aspendos, and Side. The people were incredibly friendly. Turkey is a mostly Muslim country, and the call to prayer could be heard five times a day. However, it is acceptable during prayer time to continue about your business if you are not Muslim. Hearing the call to prayer was a friendly reminder of my time in Saudi Arabia, and I still find the sing-song voice of the caller beautiful.
Our first day we explored the Old Town and beyond on foot.
Narrow cobblestone streets make up Old Town Kaleici
The beautiful harbor
View of the Mediterranean Sea
Notice the fortress in the background. The city of Antalya has been under many rulers throughout the centuries including Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk Turks, and the Ottoman. The fortress and surrounding city walls were built in the 2nd century BC when a Pergamon (Greek) king ordered his soldiers to find "heaven on earth" and they discovered the Antalya region. The king, King Attalos II, named the city Attaleia which later was changed to Antalya
The City Clock Tower is center. Note the mosque and minaret in the background on the right.
Hadrian's Gate built in honor of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 130 AD
Of interest, Paul of Tarsus (Paul in the Bible) visited Antalya in the second century with Barnabas as recorded in the book of Acts. "From Perga, Paul and Barnabas went down to Attalia and sailed from there to Antioch after preaching in Pisidia and Pamphylia" (Acts 14:25-26).
A Turkish attempt at McDonald's?? This food was better.
There were some very old and very detailed wooden doors throughout the old town.
Our second day we decided to hop on a city bus to the Upper Duden Waterfalls. We really didn't know what to expect, but what we found was amazing. Water played an important part in much of our history learning about the Antalya area - how water was transported by the Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago to how the City of Antalya currently uses the water and waterfalls as a local resource. It was a great day, especially when you throw in a camel ride!
Our next day in Turkey was ancient ruin tour day. We visited Perge, Aspendos, and Side - sites that reflected mostly Roman development, although some Greek as well. Along the way we stopped for a nice lunch at a Turkish restaurant on a filthy dirty river. Turns out they had had massive rains and flooding two weeks before and there was still a lot of silt in the river. Our tour guide was very good and had great information about the area and living in Antalya. We met several people on the trip including a husband and wife from India and Pakistan who live in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. They were also staying at our hotel and we had several opportunities to talk about Saudi. The husband has been to Jubail recently and it was fun to hear his impression of it and for him to hear my 30+ year old memories.
Perge
Water transportation canal - Roman style
Side - a beautiful site, but unfortunately very little is left and has been taken over by shops and restaurants
Lunch along the river
Everywhere we went - even in the middle of nowhere - people trying to sell us trinkets.
Aspendos
Greco-Roman Colliseum. Absolutely amazing, and the acoustics were still incredible.
Just imagine what these rocks have seen! Performances and battles between beast and man.
These are the lower Duden waterfalls - our last stop on the tour. This is where the water flows from the falls we went to the previous day. Powerful.
To round out our budding knowledge of the history of Antalya, we spent part of the next day at the Archaeological Museum of Antalya which contains over 80% of the dig findings from Perge and Side. Some of the more impressive pieces have found their way legally and illegally to other countries. Like the Greeks in their quest to bring the Elgon Marble Parthenon Friezes back to Greece from England, the Turks continue to try to get pieces from the United States and other countries as well.
The museum was full of coins, pottery, and other small bits found in digs. However, most impressive were the marble statues and the sarcophagi. Wow!
Great teaching tool - a visual archaeological timeline. It definitely helped our brains "see" where what we saw at the three sites we went to fit into history.
One of the adventures I like to have in any new city is to find an open air market. We had our choice of one every day of the week, so we went to one after the museum. Antalya has excellent public transportation and for a very reasonable price we rode the old tram to the city center and then the new tram for a kilometer or so. We knew we were in the right place because we saw no tourists and a lot of locals carrying bags of produce. The market was the size of a football field, held in a multi-story parking garage. The produce, nuts spices, and fish were on the first level. We think clothing was on the second level, but we never ventured up. It was noisy with people crying out their wares, and it was crowded. We purchases some nuts and way more honeycomb than we really wanted (kind of hard to get understood with sign language), but my favorite was the fish market which reminded me of Pike Place in Seattle with people tossing fish back and forth and everyone generally having a great time. Made me wonder which came first?!
The new tram
Afternoon Baklava at the 24-hour bakery next to the hotel
This is probably the best story of the trip. We only went into a few souvenir-ish type shops while in Antalya. We spent a bit of money at one of the shops on plates and backgammon sets. The first time we were there, the owner of the shop, Aaron, suggested an excellent place to eat. We went back a couple of days later because Angela wanted something, and Aaron suggested another restaurant, one more for the locals. He then offered to drive us there, so we invited him for dinner. The food was excellent and we learned about Aaron and a lot about Turkey.
Old tram
Old tram
As our last activity before heading back to Kiev, we took a boat tour on the Mediterranean. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the ride and soaked up the sun.
Castle Turret
Our last evening we spent at The Castle - an excellent restaurant recommended by friends in Kiev. It was our second time there because it was a definite need-to-repeat experience. Unlike the first time when we sat inside, we sat out on the patio enjoying the Mediterranean evening. The owner wrapped us in blankets to keep us warm as the cool set in.
Seafood Fettucini - this (among many other things) is why I gained weight on this trip!
Angela's chicken shashlik platter
While Kiev has stray dogs everywhere, Antalya has stray cats. I was befriended at The Castle. He was so enjoying the warm lap, that he actually growled when I had to put him down to leave.
And so, we are back in Kiev. It is now March 10 - this blog has taken me awhile to get out. We still have a significant amount of snow on the ground with the promise (or threat) of another snow storm at the beginning of next week. I'm one of the track coaches and we had planned on starting track mid March. I don't think that will be happening! Even though I joked about finally finding sun in Turkey, Ken, Angela, and I have really enjoyed the winter experience and none of us are sorry that there is still snow on the ground.
For inquiring minds, our summer travel dates:
All - Atlanta June 25 - June 29
Ken and Angela - East Coast trip June 29 - July 14
Kim - San Francisco Bay Area June 29 - July 8
Kim - Seattle July 8 - July 14
All - Chino, California July 15 - July 18
All- Santa Cruz July 19 - July 24/25
All - SF Bay Area - July 25 - August 1
All - Pentwater, Michigan - August 1 - August 14
Hope to see you! Take care and we'll talk soon!
Kim, Ken, and Angela
