Antalya, part 1

I really don't know how to begin to describe the trip to Antalya. What was expected to be a relaxing weekend lounging on the beaches of the mediterranean was just the opposite. It was not only the most intense 3 days of my life, but probably the most fun. Antalya is the kind of place that no one would believe unless I showed them pictures. Even then, pictures don't do it justice. Antalya is a city right on the Bay of Antalya on the Mediterranean. It is nestled in between a couple really big mountains. The population is around 1 million, and 3 million in the summer. Antalya is where the rich Europeans go to vacation. With miles of pristine pebble beaches and greek, lycian, and roman ruins all within an hour's drive, it's not a bad place to vacation. Luckily, Aaron, Katy, Craig the Scottish boy, and I timed our visit at the end of the tourist season, where the water was still warm.

I think the single craziest thing about our trip was that we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. In a way that turned out to be good. Since we didn't know what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised when we experienced things. The first thing we did when we got there was check into a pension in the old city of Antalya, Kaleici, and then find a cafe to relax. Friday morning we got up bright and early for a complimentary Turkish breakfast, and promptly rented 2 motorbikes (scooters). The rental was about $18 per day per scooter. The scooters were probably the single best idea we had other than actually going to Antalya. So, we decided to explore the city a bit. We succeeded in getting lost for a while. It took a while to get used to the agressive Asian driving, which is surprisingly similar to agressive European driving. We eventually made it to the pebble beaches of Konyaaltuh.

After the beaches, we decided it was a good idea to drive to Olympos. This turned out to be quite an ambitious undertaking. We thought it was only 45-50 kilometers. It turned out to be around 80 km. But, it was worth the drive at least. The road to olympos was a coastal/mountain highway. We were driving along the mediterranean, through mountain tunels and twisty, turny mountain swtichbacks. (The beach at Olympos) It was amazing. We skipped the chimaera due to time restraints, and went straight to the ruins of olympos. Olympos dates back to 100 B.C. where it was a member of the lycian league, then absorbed as a Roman Province. It is quite spread out, and requires a lot of hiking around to see everything.
The ruins are along a river/creek thing in a valley between huge mountains. We did a lot of hiking to get to the really good spots. We took a break at a nice overlook (that's aaron). I'm going to post one more picture and then save the story of the rest of the trip for another blog entry.




This is a picture of the gate to the temple at olympos: