Antalya, part 2

Day 2 started a little slower than we would have liked. Not one of the four of us managed to set alarm effectively. The result: almost missed breakfast and didn't get out of the door until 11. The plan for day 2: Hit up Lara (sandy) beach early and then drive to Aspendos. Unfortunately, like so many other parts of our trip, those plans didn't exactly work out well. We ended up spending the ENTIRE day on the beach, and that was alright too. We relaxed Saturday evening with a beautiful sunset. Aaron and I took the scooters out so that he could get used to driving and we could explore the city a little bit on our own. We left Craig and Katy in an internet cafe. We were looking for ataturk park but happened to come upon the Antalya Beach Park, which was a pretty cool place, different from most public parks I've been to in the sense that it was packed with clubs that had dance floors on the water. We walked around and looked at the beautiful people, listened to some live music, enjoyed some free (or not so free, I'm not sure) peanuts, and left.

Due to our event-less day on Saturday, we had a full plate of activities planned for Sunday. Among these are the Antalya Archaeology museum, the local cities of antiquity Perge and Aspendos. Due to time constraints we had to skip Termessos. Our scooters were due back to the rental place at 8 pm and our flight was scheduled to leave Antalya Intl. at 11:50 pm. First up was the Archaeology museum. We hit that up at 10 am (like I said, early day). The archaeology museum was great. It had tons and tons of artifacts excavated from the greco-roman ruins around the region. Most of the statues came from Perge, and they were in surprisingly good shape. You could see that many of them had to be reconstructed. The museum also housed a great collection of sarcophagi, many of which dated back thousands of years. It took us a good 2 hours to really experience the museum.


After the museum we hit the road to Aspendos, with our plan to hit up Perge on the way back (they are off the same highway), and maybe this waterfall thing too if we had time. The first thing you see when you get to Aspendos is the huge theatre, which is one of the best preserved theatres in the Mediterranean; they still hold concerts, plays, grease-wrestling events and other things there. Unfortunately we didn't get to attend the opera they had the previous Friday. Behind the theatre is the acropolis, which was pretty fallen apart, but it was still a blast to go off the beaten path and really explore the acropolis. In places like this you really have to use your imagination to see what the city would have looked like 2k years ago. It's amazing to think that people used to live there so long ago. It makes you wonder if in two thousand years will people be walking around our ruins? I think Aspendos was a pretty good site to start with, because it was impossible for me to be disappointed. If I had been to a place like Pompeii or Ephesus first I would be pretty disappointed by the ruins at Perge and Aspendos especially, but these places are amazing in their own way.

---

Perge, about 10 km outside of Antalya, was a metropolis in its time. After seen Aspendos, I was not expecting to find Perge to be in great shape. I was surprised, however to find what you can easily see as a city. Perge stretches really far out. There is the main part of city which is easily identifiable. There are huge roads, lined with columns that run through the main part of the city. Outside you can hike along sparse trails, or (like Aaron and I) make your own path and really explore how big the city is. We sat on the walls of the city and took some panoramic photos. I found 2 turtles too, but I don't think they would've made it home so I left them. There were vendors who lined the streets of the ancient city trying to sell us little trinkets that I've seen all over Turkey. I felt really bad, because they looked like they really needed us to buy something. However, if I bought something from everyone who needed me to buy something from them, eventually I would be out on the street selling trinkets. It was here, however, that we forced Craig the Scottish boy to buy an evil eye, because that poor kid had so many bad things happen to him on the trip.



We went out on a limb on the way back and a took the advice of the guy at our pension and visited a waterfall. Like almost everywhere we went, we really didn't know how to get there; we couldn't read street signs and did not have very good directions. Luckily, with my excellent sense of direction (or an amazing streak of good luck) we never got lost and actually managed to find this waterfall. I forget its name and probably wouldn't be able to spell it anyway. Nevertheless it was a cool waterfall, and here is a picture.

And....We finally made it back to Antalya, turned in the motorbikes and got some dinner. I finally was able to snap a photo of Hadrian's Gate, constructed in honor of the visit of Emperor Hadrianus (of which there are tons of statues in the archaeology museum). We chilled with Dude (we never learned his name so he became "Dude" for the duration of the trip) who owned the pension and he arranged a cab for us to the airport. He gave me a postcard for free (unfortunately I never was able to buy area-specific postcards)....Hopefully I can find some Antalya postcard somewhere in Istanbul. Speaking of postcards...I kind of need to mail some.... Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my trip. Stay tuned for more accounts of my exciting adventures.