Antalya, Turkey

We know that we will be glad that MJ has persisted with writing these blogs, but sometimes they are difficult to write. Surprisingly, this is one of them!

As we have previously mentioned, we were able to get a 7-night trip to Antalya in Turkey for the princely sum of €99 each. That cost would cover our flights from Munich and back, seven nights accommodation and breakfast every morning. Antalya – here we come!

Now, when preparing for this trip, we were looking at the projected weather in Antalya and, whilst it wasn’t super warm, it was predicting day-time temperatures in low to mid-teens. After about two weeks of snow and VERY cold weather, that seemed almost tropical! So we packed a few winter woollies, but we also packed some gear to wear in the warmer weather.

Because we had booked the trip via Nord-West Zeitung, we accepted that the guide would have all the information in German, but we had kind of hoped that the guide would have some English. Nope! None! I think that we scored the only Turkish guide who spoke German and NO English! Thankfully, as the main feature of this trip was the landscape, we would be able to survive. Though it is very daunting when you go to a tourist attraction and all the information is given in German. So maybe we didn’t get the full information for the Suffi Monastery or the Whirling Dervishes. But we managed to avoid the sales blurb in the jewellery factory, the carpet factory and the leatherwear factory, which was a score.

Our first day of playing tourist was going to Aspendos, which is reputed to be over 3000 years old – apparently it was first settled by the Greeks in 1000BC! But there have been coins found that have been dated as coming from Aspendos in 500BC! This means that the place is definitely 2500 years old!

OK, who studied Ancient History at school? Who remembers the Peloponnesian Wars? Who remembers Alexander the Great? Aspendos was part of the wars and was occupied by Alexander after he captured Perge. Now THAT is old! These days, there is an amazing example of a Theatre that dates from 155. It isn’t a proper Greek Amphitheatre but has aspects of an Amphitheatre. In the area, there is also an Aqueduct (or the remains of one) that was built by the Romans in the 3^rd Century, and a bridge over the Eurymedon River (it now has some unpronounceable Turkish name). Whilst it was fascinating to see all of these, it was painful to do it as part of a tour group! Stand here, look at this, you have 15 minutes to take photos… you get the picture.

Anyway, after our visit to Aspendos, we hit the road and drove to Cappadocia, which was a 515km road trip! The great thing for Nick was that he could sit back and relax as he didn’t have to drive! On the way to Cappadocia, we stopped at an underground city, which was a bit like the troglodytes in France – where people lived in caves underground. But, unlike Cooper Pedy in South Australia, I don’t think that they lived underground to avoid the heat! One thing I remember the guide saying was that, if the city was to be built with today’s technology, it would take about 2 years to build the entire complex! And it was done by hand hundreds of years ago! Totally amazing!

Sadly, our enthusiasm for our room didn’t extend to the rest of the hotel – food was VERY ordinary (or just plain yuk!), the WiFi didn’t work well through stone walls and, because of the weather, the stairs and pathways (of which there were a lot) were very icy and slippery. So it was decided to move on to another hotel, which was sadly, a modern box with very efficient WiFi and slightly better food – but no atmosphere!

One thing we discovered in Turkey is their attitude to coffee – you either ordered Turkish mud, oops I mean coffee or you got instant coffee. And the instant coffee was labelled and constantly referred to as Nescafe, but sadly, I don’t think it was even of that basic quality! In other words, the coffee in Turkey was painful!

When we knew that we were going to Cappadocia, Nick promised that we would do a balloon flight. For those of you who don’t know Nick – he doesn’t like heights. Yes, that’s right, a firefighter who doesn’t like to climb ladders!! Anyway, he promised that he would do the flight with me and our guide said that if you didn’t do a balloon flight in Cappadocia, then you were only seeing 50%. So, balloon flight, here we come! Yes, it was expensive, but certainly cheaper than a balloon flight in Brisbane and much more interesting. On the morning of our flight, we could count 40 balloons in the air, which was an amazing sight! It was freezing cold but well worth getting up so early (5:45am). We took lots of photos – don’t worry, we won’t bore you with all of them, just a small selection!

Another amazing place that we visited was an Open Air Museum at an area called Goreme. Apparently Paul (he of the Letters to the Corinthians, etc) decided that Goreme was a good place to train missionaries in the 4^th Century. There is some geological explanation involving volcanic erruptions, erosion, etc but the end result is the weirdest landscape of soft rock that can be easily carved with a hard-rock cap that makes a good strong roof. And in Goreme, these was turned to good advantage – there are lots of churches that were carved out of this stone and over the centuries were decorated with Frescoes. As some of these frescoes pre-date the Iconoclastic Era, they were badly damaged, ie faces irreparably wiped out.

What’s that? What is the Iconoscastic Era? It was a period during the 8^th Century when the Church (the Byzantium Church) said that there was more worship of the pictures than of religion itself and as a result religious images were banned. And scrubby little brown-nosers invaded the existing churches and tried to remove the figures from existing frescoes and pictures and did untold damage. Sadly, there was two periods like this between 726 – 841, but despite their best efforts there was some truly beautiful examples of this early religious art to be seen. We can certainly recommend that you visit the Tokali Church (Church of the Buckle) which has an amazing range of pictures that depict the life of Jesus on early from the moment of the Immaculate Conception to his Ascension into heaven, including the Miracle at Cana, the raising of Lazarus. There were some bits that I didn’t recognise, but a little bit of research told us that the 32 scenes depict the Gospel of James. Who?? I only know of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but there were other Gospels and not just in fiction. Wow, that makes reading stuff like Dan Brown even more interesting!

Time to return to Antalya, which meant driving through the Taurus Pass which was covered with snow and a bit hairy driving through, but our very competent driver managed it with no qualms. Once we were back in Antalya, we did a walking tour through the old part of Antalya and walked through Hadrian’s Gate (he was a busy emperor, wasn’t he?) and walked to a point where we had the most amazing view across the water which, in the late afternoon (ok, so 3pm) was gorgeous. However, we did discover that as the mountains (which were covered in snow) are just behind Antalya, and the wind blows down from the mountains, which means that whilst the air temperature might be 10°C, the wind-chill factor makes it about -2°C! In other words – unbelievably cold!

So after 7 days in a bus full of Germans, is MJ’s German any better?? No! Sadly, our guide spoke very quickly and had reams of information to share and it was like capturing every 10^th word on every 2^nd page! But our fellow-travellers were lovely and we had a great time, but have definitely decided that group tours are NOT for us!

It’s time to go back to Germany and get ready for our German Christmas… and more Christmas Markets!