Sightseeing in Selçuk and Ephesus

The next stop on our Turkish journey was Selçuk, near the east coast in an area rich with history as its right next to the ancient ruined city of Ephesus. We stayed in Selçuk for a couple of nights, and despite the town being geared toward tourism we really enjoyed our time there. You can see the photos we took of Selçuk and Ephesus here.

Arriving at Denizli from Pamukkale at the bus station, we asked one of the bus boys for a bus to Selçuk, and he told us to run after him so we could catch a bus that had left 5 minutes ago. He managed to stop it at some traffic lights across the road from the bus station – much to the delight of the cars stuck behind it, we quickly boarded the bus and were on our way shortly afterwards. The drive west had less interesting scenery than our other journeys – mostly flat farmland, and hills; but like our previous bus journeys with the ‘Pamukkale‘ bus company we received free water, coffee, and soft drinks.
On arrival, we avoided the accommodation ‘touts’ – people who’s job it is to push you into staying at their hotel. But outside the information centre, we confessed to not having anywhere to stay to a group of Turkish men who were sitting around chatting, one of whom had a friend who ran a pansiyon (guest-house). As it was in our guidebook as being OK, so we went with him to check it out. It looked acceptable, and so we took it, but before he left, he passed us his business card for his carpet shop around the corner, and got us to promise to drop by and take a look (no obligation to buy of course)… ahh, so that was his game!
After dropping off our belongings, we grabbed lunch, then walked to the site of one of the ancient wonders of the world – the Temple of Artemis. The site was huge, but a little disappointing, because while you could get an idea of the size of the temple, there was only minimal foundations left along with a single column. The site was free, but as a result it was ravaged with sellers of trinkets and postcards – who we managed to avoid.
Our next stop was the museum, which housed some interesting artifacts from Ephesus, and the Temple of Artemis. After leaving the museum, we walked through the centre of town and saw some tall columns which are what remain of an aqueduct.

We were on our way to see the ruined Basilica of St. John when a few teenage guys asked us if we were going to see the kale (castle in Turkish; pronounced as kalee). We intended to go up there, so I said yes. He then said the way we were going was closed, but down this other way was open. Thinking he was directing me to the entrance, we walked down the path, and soon enough two of the guys caught up to us and walked along with us and chatted with us; they turned out to be Kurdish. I kept my wits about me, but thought they were likely wanting to be our guides to earn some money. As we got further along, I got more apprehensive, as the path turned to dirt, so I refused to go any further. In response, one of the guys ran ahead and showed us the “door” – which was a hole in the fence. They were wanting to show us around the closed site (for a price of course). The vision of being caught by a guard and being put into a Turkish cell came to mind, especially as the Kurdish guys looked like they could easily outrun us and any guards, so we had to turn down their persistent appeals of “Door open, no problem”. I gave them some small change for their trouble though.
Once we got back to the road, we walked up to the real entrance, where what the teenage Kurds said was confirmed – the castle was indeed shut off to the public, but we could still enter St. John’s Basilica.
The Basilica, built in the 6th century over the grave of John the Apostle was one of the grandest basilicas of its time, until it was sacked by the Mongol hoards. Despite being in mostly ruins, it still retained an impressive aura about it, that was at least partially due to the restoration work that had been performed on it. Later on, we grabbed some pides for dinner in town, where we were given some complimentary Turkish tea.

After a sizable breakfast in the morning – complete with figs, we headed down to the otogar to catch a dolmuş to the ancient city of Ephesus. We boarded one no problem, but it only dropped us off at the turnoff to Ephesus – still 1 km walk from the lower entrance. Once we left the dolmuş, we were immediately accosted by a taxi driver who offered to take us to the upper entrance. His pitch was that by taking a taxi, we could walk downhill, and would only have to walk one direction through the ruins… for 15TL. We said it was too much, and made to walk off, so he dropped it to 12 TL. I tried to get him down to 10 TL, and it didn’t work, but seeing the logic in his argument, we took the taxi.
Arriving at the upper entrance, we were shocked at the number of tour groups gathering near the entrance. There were so many just standing around that we had to squeeze past a couple of large groups just to get to the ticket booth. Once inside, we rented a single audio guide to share between us (they had separate ear-pieces), and were on our way.
Ephesus was a cultural and commercial centre during the Greek and Roman eras, and was important in early Christian history. The site itself is huge, although tourists are restricted to almost a single path through it to preserve the ruins as much as possible.
We found the ruins to be not quite as enjoyable as we’d expected – it may have just been the throngs of tourists that spoilt it, but our enjoyment was muted. Having said that, the Library was very impressive, and despite being heavily restored with concrete, the massive Theatre was too. We also liked seeing the ruins of the church of Saint Mary, where Tanya was surprised to see a lizard pop out from a ruined wall.

Once we left Ephesus, we wandered a kilometre and a half along a back-road to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers where we had restricted views of the cave and surrounding catacombs. Its said that back in 250 A.D, seven Christians fled to the cave to hide from persecution, and ended up sleeping for 200 years. When they awoke, they found that the Roman Empire had converted to a Christian Roman Empire.
We grabbed some ice creams at a stall outside the cave; then found our way back to Selçuk via a disused stony road – where we passed a man on a donkey riding the other way.
After resting up at our pansiyon, we headed down to the large old mosque in town – İsa Bey Mosque, which was constructed in the 14th century. It had a large, walled courtyard which was nice to wander, and as we got there in between prayer times we were able to enter the mosque itself. While it was void of many decorations inside, the sheer size of the space made up for it.
As we had some free time after the mosque, we opted to visit the carpet seller who showed us to our accommodation the day before. We decided beforehand on how much we wanted to spend and that we should probably not buy anything. When we turned up, he greeted us warmly, showed us into his shop and served us apple tea. We chatted for a bit before he started showing us carpets, kilims and embroidery – mostly originating from central to eastern Turkey. Nothing really caught my eye, until he showed us one that I liked… and I could tell Tanya liked too. We eventually eliminated the other carpets, even thought there was one large Armenian one that Tanya quite liked, but was too big (and expensive) for us. We weren’t sure we wanted to buy it at first, but after discussing it between ourselves, we decided to go for it. The price had started at 845TL, but after our umming and ahhing, he brought it down to 750TL. I then tried my hand at haggling, and got it down to 670TL, which we shook on.
After handing over the cash, we chatted a bit, and his cousin told us a story of two Texans who he met in Selçuk that looked petrified. He went to ask them if they were OK – they thought he was going to kill them as they seemed afraid of all Muslims, and when asked why they came to Turkey, they couldn’t answer.

Before we left, they wrapped the carpet in a conveniently sized package, so we could fit it into my pack and made it easier to travel to our next destination the next day – Izmir.

Muğla and Pamukkale

We started our journey through Turkey at Marmaris, in the south-east of the country, but quickly moved to the regional capital of Muğla, and then onto the major tourist destination of Pamukkale.
We found Turkey to be a friendly country, with strangers who always seemed willing to help us out or give directions if we seemed lost (most of them weren’t looking for a customer). We also found their bus services to be excellent. The Turks really know how to do first class bus service, and they’re cheap too! We noticed more poverty in Turkey than Greece, but on the whole their towns and cities looked very well looked after. One recurring theme we noticed in every town or city was that there was multiple monuments and streets dedicated to the national hero and Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Atatürk – we couldn’t escape him, no matter where we went.
As for Muğla and Pamukkale, we found Muğla to be a nice town as a break from the tourist trail, and Pamukkale to be one of the outstanding highlights of our holiday. You can see the photos we took of both places here.

We arrived in Turkey at Marmaris’ port and made it through Turkish customs with a free visa (due to our NZ passports – cost of the visa depends on the nationality of your passport), and shortly made it into the centre. Marmaris is one of the large resort areas on the Turkish Aegean coast, and as we had no wish to stay in an over-touristy, over-priced, and over-valued resort area we headed straight to the otogar (bus station). On our walk, we changed some of our Euros to Turkish Lira (which at the time was about equivalent to the New Zealand Dollar).

At the otogar, we bought tickets to Muğla – a small and not very touristy city a little bit inland, close to Marmaris. When boarding our bus, the bus-boy looked at us a bit funny and doubled checked our tickets, ‘Muğla?’ he asked when we confirmed, he just smiled and shook his head… we found out why when we arrived, as the Muğla tourist industry is minimal, but we were going there for four reasons:

1. To get away from tourists (even if we couldn’t escape ourselves)
2. To see how Turkey really is, away from the tourist centres
3. It was on the way to our next destination
4. We had read it had some impressive old Ottoman houses and a good museum.

The scenery on the trip up had a colour that I hadn’t expected to see – green. The mountain ranges on the way over were completely covered in pine forest. This was in stark contrast to Greece, which could only muster up sparse scrub at best.
After our hour bus ride on the comfortable, air-conditioned coach, we arrived at Muğla which had wide boulevards leading into the town where we passed a large roundabout which had a statue of Atatürk at its centre. We found a hotel just outside a covered vegetable market, and went off in search of food.
We ate at a kebab shop run by a friendly owner and a teenage waiter. An old man who was passing through, greeted us, shook our hands and asked where we were from before moving on his way with a goodbye. After finishing our kebabs the owner offered some complimentary Turkish teas, and the waiter entertained us as he tried to help us pronounce some of the more complicated Turkish words like ‘allahaısmarladık’ (goodbye).
From the kebab shop, we toured around a few of the old Ottoman streets, but we felt a bit weird looking around a residential neighbourhood, as they were peoples’ homes. The houses themselves varied in shape and size, but we found the chimney tops to be quite intriguing as they were shaped in a kind of triangle at the sides to let the smoke out.
From the houses, we moved onto the museum. While small, it had an array of interesting exhibits – the most interesting was both the fossils of large mammals from about 9 million years ago, as well as some gravestones of various Roman Gladiators. Each gravestone had an animated carving of the deceased gladiator in his armour, armed with his chosen weapon.
We basically just wandered around the town after that. When we went out for a meal that night we found it more flavourful than the Greek food we’d been eating.

In the morning, we arrived at the bus station just in time to catch one leaving for Denizli – the closest main centre to Pamukkale. The two and a half hour trip was comfortable with the conductor offering us water, tea, coffee and Pepsi for free during the journey. The scenery was more pine forested mountains, with a couple of expansive farmed plains to break things up. Once in Denizli, to reach Pamukkale we had to brave a dolmuş minibus – a shared taxi that has a set route and a set price, but will pick you up and drop you off where you like on that route.
Arriving in Pamukkale, we searched for a hotel and shortly found one that turned out to be quite nice, and good value. After a late lunch at the hotel, we decided to brave the hordes and brave the slopes of Pamukkale. We had been warned at lunch by an American couple that they were shocked by the amount worn by some tourists and how disrespectful people were, they also suggested that we might want to take togs up.

Pamukkale is many things in one – the first thing you see is that the hill of Pamukkale is coated in brilliant white calcium carbonate deposits on all sides, which are formed from the calcium rich volcanic springs that issue from the top. The deposits form travertine pools that line the unusually beautiful hill side. Drawn by the supposed healing waters, the ancient Greeks built the ancient city of Hierapolis, of which there are still extensive ruins. A modern ‘ancient pool’ has also been constructed that tourists can go swimming in and sample these healing waters. To top it off, there is a fantastic view of the valley below.
The walk up involved walking over the calcium deposits that had formed over the path, and occasionally paddling in the artificial travertine’s that had been formed on the path up. This had to be done barefoot, as some of the calcium deposits were quite slippery, plus there was water flowing over much of the path. Our fellow tourists packed the path on the way up, some of the women were posing (porn star like) for photographs in bikinis and one of them was bizarrely throwing mud over herself for the picture – within clear sight of an obviously conservative Muslim family … so wrong. Also wrong were the large number of obese people wandering around the ruins at the top of the hill in swim wear that may have fit them 30kg ago.

The scenic view from the top made up for this however – we could see down the hill, over the white and blue travertines to the expansive valley below. The ruins of Hierapolis are extensive, and after admiring the view, we starting to check them out. We began with the Nymphaeum – a temple / fountain for nymphs, and then moved up to view the theatre which looked impressive from below, but even better once we made it inside. The huge theatre was in excellent condition, and at first I thought it must have been restored heavily but signs at the theatre showed that only minimal restoration took place as it was already in good condition.
After the theatre we headed to the pools, and took a swim in the untreated warm spring water. The pools had a gravel bottom, and they had put ancient marble carvings such as stone blocks and columns at the bottom of the pool, which made it interesting to swim in, and not as tacky as it sounds. While we were at the pools, I heard a Turkish photographer try to sell a some photos to an English man. “No thanks” was his response, which the photographer found insulting. “No thanks? No thanks? How rude.” he muttered. I’m thinking he thought it was meant as “No thanks to you” – a much more insulting translation.
As we left the pools, the sun was just setting in a brilliant deep red over the valley. It was magnificent to watch. In the twilight we walked amongst some more ruins of Hierapolis before heading back down the now empty path. Our feet were quite sore by the end of it – due to the rough calcium walkway, but some sore feet were worth it for such a great afternoon.

In the morning, we caught a bus out of town; our next destination? Selçuk.

Rocky Rhodes

We spent a total of 4 nights on the island of Rhodes, and most of our time there was spent in the old city of Rhodes. While the old city was structurally amazing with its huge old stone walls, moats, cobbled streets and alleyways; we found that large parts of it felt spoilt by rampant tourism and the commercialisation resulting from it. It was usual to walk down a street of shops selling tacky souvenirs and then turn into a street of overpriced restaurants, each with their own tout, who would try their best to entice us to sit down, have a cocktail and eat a burger or pizza. Having said that, once we learnt to avoid those areas, we enjoyed wandering the twisting and turning medieval streets and alleyways. We took quite a few photos while in Rhodes, all of which can be seen here.

Once we arrived on the island early in the evening, and made it through the chaos of retrieving our bags and disembarking the catamaran, we entered the cobbled, walled old city of Rhodes. Our quest for accommodation took us through a large section of the old town, both through the tourist areas as well as many back streets that still had an amazing ye-olde charm to them. On one of these back streets we found a hotel with a spare room (on the 4th attempt). After checking in, we had an meal a short walk from the hotel.

In the morning, upon visiting the tourist office, we found out that there was a bus leaving for Lindos shortly; a town half way down the east coast of Rhodes. As our timing was good, we opted to visit there for the day.
Lindos was an hour on the bus away, so we got to see some of the Rhodes countryside which was less arid and mountainous than Kalymnos. When we arrived just out of the town, you could have mistaken the place for a tourist Mecca, as all the tour buses arrived at the same time as us. The road down and the first few streets into the entirely pedestrianised town was swarming with tourists. We purposely steered away from the crowds, which were heading for the acropolis on the hill overlooking the town and soon came out at a deserted square with an ancient theatre, which allowed us time and space the appreciate the uniformly white buildings of the town.

We found an almost empty restaurant for lunch which had tasty food and indifferent service, before we tackled the acropolis. We found entry to be free for the day, but wouldn’t have minded paying for the interesting ruins – both Byzantine and ancient Greek. The acropolis also had great views over the town and both beaches from the top.
After returning to the town we grabbed and ice cream each, and caught the bus back. Due to the bus being full I ended up sitting next to a talkative elderly Hungarian woman on the way back. Later on at the hotel, we hung out on the rooftop-garden and watched the sun set. That night we had an excellent meal with a good amount of ouzo.

We woke up a bit later in the morning, but eventually made it down to the Palace of the Grand Master, which had free entry for the day. While it looked marvellous and authentic on the outside, the inside was a hodge podge of different styles and mosaics from different eras adorning the floors of vast halls – all of which had no obvious purpose other than to impress. There was also some plaques dedicated to the Italian king and fascist supporter Victor Emmanuel III, as it was rebuilt from ruins by the Italians in the mid 1930’s.
After leaving the palace, we walked down the restored Gothic street of the Knights – the street where the knights of St John had their lodgings back when they ruled Rhodes – it was a bit touristy, but quite pretty. Down the end of the street we found the Archaeological Museum (also free on the day), which had numerous artifacts and history on the area.
We found somewhere to eat after leaving the museum, then took a walk around the old city and stumbled upon an entrance to the moat that surrounds the city where we were surprised to find an amphitheatre. We next explored around the walls and entered a few of the gates, some of which looked magnificent on approach.

The next morning, we checked out the Clock tower. It had great views of the old city, and we got a complimentary drink as part of ticket entry too. We also looked in at the nearby Ottoman Library, an old library holding some of the Ottoman documents about Rhodes, dating from when the Ottomans ruled the island.
After that, we decided to explore outside the walled city a bit, so headed to the lighthouse. It actually turned out to be an old fort, that saw a large number of battles when the Ottomans sieged Rhodes back in the 16th Century. We then took a walk along the waterfront and saw a beach full of older, fat sunburned Europeans – not very inviting. While wandering around the modern part of the city, we came across a large specialist umbrella shop that only sold umbrellas, and bought one, as it was a good price.
After returning to the old town, we found a nice glass jewellery store we had seen the day before. After much deliberating, Tanya ended up making a couple of purchases. Later on, after our evening meal, we tried and failed to find some Greek dancing which was supposed to be on that night, but once we found where we thought it should be, it looked closed and deserted.

We rose early the next morning to allow ourselves time to catch the hydrofoil to Turkey. We made it to the docks and through customs in plenty of time to board. As we pulled out of the Rhodes port we waved goodbye to Greece, and only 50 minutes later, we were welcoming Turkish soil beneath our feet in Marmaris.

Calm Kalymnos

We spent our next 3 nights on the Greek island of Kalymnos. Kalymnos is a small, mountainous island off the coast of Turkey, and is very popular with rock climbers, as well as some of your normal tourists (like us). However, with our slim physiques, we were mistaken for climbers more than once during our stay. We enjoyed Kalymnos, as we used the 3 days to do very little but laze in the sun, which made a change from our usual frantic touring. We didn’t take too many photos while on the island, but you can see the ones we did take here.

From Athens, we flew in a small Olympic Airlines plane across the Aegean Sea to Kalymnos’ only airport. Arriving mid-afternoon, we got a taxi to the beach resort area of Myrties in the north west of the island. On hearing that we didn’t have accommodation booked, our driver suggested a place which turned out to be cheap and not too bad looking, so we took it.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the coast, through a couple of beach resort areas admiring the tall barren cliffs that towered above. There was also an island just 800 meters off coast called Telendos; and toward the end of our walk we watched the sun set behind it.
Like much of the accommodation in and around Myrties, the place we were staying also had a restaurant, so we opted to have a meal there that night.

The next morning was spent lazing around in the sun, reading books. A tasty lunch was had at a neighbouring restaurant, after which we decided to be a bit more active.
We took the ferry boat across the water to the island of Telendos where we went for a short wander and saw an old ruined Byzantine Christian Church. A bit further along, the walk turned into more of a hike along the cliffs as the path all but disappeared. Before we turned back to the main village, we came across a small herd of goats among the cliffs.
That evening, we sat down at a restaurant on Telendos, drank a couple of beers and tried the islands special Kalymnian Salad, which tasted great!

In the morning, we caught the local bus to the main town on the island – Pothia. Its quite large for such a small island, and supposedly houses 16000 of the 17000 island residents. We checked timetables for boats to Rhodes (our next destination) and walked around the town, which had some atmospheric back streets. After having lunch at a waterfront cafe, we caught the bus back to Myrties so we could lay in the sun some more and have a swim in the cool sea.
Later, that evening, we had our dinner at an Italian restaurant, which looked nice upon entering, but turned out to be not very good, mainly as the service was disappointing and food was average. We washed away the bad taste with some cocktails and ice cream at a kitsch, eighties styled garden bar near our accommodation, where we received excellent, friendly service.

The next morning was the last morning we had on the island, but as we had plenty of time before our boat left, we lounged around on the beach until midday. We caught the bus to Pothia, where we had some very nice pizza for lunch at a restaurant. Shortly after, with pizza in our bellies, we boarded a catamaran for our 3 hour cruise to Rhodes (via the islands of Kos and Symi).

Nafplion and its Neighbours

Our next two days of our holiday were spent at the sea side town of Nafplion, where we based ourselves to visit a couple of the ancient sites that are in the area – Mycenae and Tiryns. We really enjoyed the old town of Nafplion because despite it being very popular with tourists, the town hasn’t suffered too much from it, and still retains a lively and authentic Greek atmosphere. You can check out all of our photos of Nafplion and the ancient sites here.

When we went to buy bus tickets from the Sparti bus station, we found out that there were no direct buses to Nafplion, so we ended up having to bus to Korinthos (modern Corinth) first, and change buses for Nafplion – luckily we didn’t have to wait long. After a few hours on buses, we were in the old part of Nafplion, and quickly found a hotel to stay at.
We took a look around the old town to begin with, and found the pedestrianised streets interesting to roam, as the buildings had quite a bit of character. There were many restaurants and shops to cater to all us tourists, but we ignored them and walked out along the waterfront area and admired the view out. Later that night, we had a meal at a restaurant where we were serenaded by a couple of traditional Greek musicians.

The next morning, we caught a bus to Mycenae, which was the capital of the ancient Mycenaean civilisation. The Mycenaeans and their king, Agamemnon, are best known as the Greeks described in Homer’s Iliad who sacked Troy in the Trojan War.
Despite being over 3500 years old, Mycenae’s ruins are still an impressive sight perched at the top of a hill, mainly due to the gigantic stone blocks that were used to construct the walls. We found the underground passage and the Tomb of Clytemnestra to be the highlights of the site, as both were pretty much completely intact. The tomb was a tall 15 meters high inside and shaped like a beehive.

On the bus ride back, we jumped off early in the town of Argos for some lunch before catching another bus to allow us to get to the ancient fortress of Tiryns.
Tiryns is another Mycenaean site, which used to sit by the sea, but as the sea has receded over the last 3300 years its been left high and dry. The remains of its walls are larger and more impressive than those at Mycenae and the site is similar in many ways, but we found that it didn’t quite have the variety of the more popular Mycenae, as Tiryns is mostly just walls.

Once we caught the bus back and arrived in Nafplion, we decided to scale the high cliffs that towered over Nafplion to get to the Palamidi – the huge fortress at the top of the 216m climb. It was completed by the Venetians in 1714, who had captured Nafplion from the Ottomans, but lost it just over a year later in 1715. Once we made it to the top of the 1000 or so step climb, we found the little breath we had left was taken away by the awesome panoramic view of the surrounding area. We managed to walk around most of the huge fortress and found it to be possibly the best castle we’ve been to, as its not just one castle, but 6 or 7 separate bastions, all in excellent condition.

After making it back down, we rested up at our hotel before finding a place to eat. We chose a rough looking taverna where the chef ended up taking our order by memory and offered to show us his kitchen if we weren’t sure what we were having. I declined, thinking he was joking, but I later saw a couple being ushered into the kitchen to have a look. Later, after enjoying a very tasty meal, I asked for the bill from a waiter, who brought out an black pad and pen and asked, “So, what did you have?”.

In the morning, we caught a bus back to Athens, and then the metro to the airport in time to board a small plane to be flown the island of Kalymnos.

Delphi, Sparti and Mystra

We visited Delphi for just one night, and Sparti for one night too. We hadn’t planned to visit Sparti initially, but the poor bus connections to Olympia from Delphi made us change our mind last minute. Still, we didn’t regret our change of plans as we got to visit the ruined medieval city of Mystra instead.
We took photos as always; you can see the photos of Delphi here, and the photos of Sparti and Mystra here.

We arrived in Modern Delphi by bus from Athens in the early afternoon, and quickly found a hotel. Our room was basic and cheap, but it was clean and had a fantastic view of the valley below the town from the balcony, as it’s sited on the slopes of a mountain in a rural area. After dropping off our bags, we had some lunch in town, then walked through the town to get to ancient Delphi. The modern town was quite touristy, as you’d expect, but its still very picturesque due to the great outlooks over the valley and up the mountain.

Ancient Delphi was only a short 1km walk from our hotel, so we were quickly at the base of the ruins. We were able to walk half way up through the sanctuary before we were stopped short due to the rest of the ruins being roped off due to “Technical Issues”. We were told of this before we ascended, but it was still disappointing only being able to glimpse the pillars of the Temple of Apollo, and see a few seats of the Theatre. The ruins we could see were reasonably interesting, but its draw is that it is the site that had the most prestigious oracle in Ancient Greece.
After leaving the Delphi sanctuary, we crossed the road and went down the hill to see more ruins, of which the most interesting and photogenic was the Tholos. We then headed to the Delphi Archaeological Museum that’s sited next to the sanctuary to house the ancient artifacts that have been discovered in Delphi. It was a well set out and informative museum and had some interesting exhibits like The Charioteer and The Sphinx of Naxos among others.
We came out to rain, so headed back to our hotel room before we headed out for a meal where they had a basketball match of Greece VS Turkey on TV, Greece won to the relief of the locals watching it.

In the morning we headed to the bus ticket office to see about getting a bus to Olympia, but found that there wasn’t a bus until 1:15pm – over 4 hours of waiting and we’d have to change buses half way to get there. We didn’t like this idea, so jumped on the next bus back to Athens, as we knew the bus connections there were excellent. On the way back to the big city we decided to go to Sparti instead due to it being close to Mystra. On arrival at the Athens bus station, we found we had to transfer to another bus station for the Sparti bus, and they didn’t have buses between them! So, soon after a taxi ride to the other bus station, we were on our way to Sparti.

As we got close to Sparti, we entered a fierce thunderstorm complete with torrents of rain, which didn’t let up even after we’d got off the bus at the bus station in Sparti. We had to get a taxi to the centre of town where we found a hotel no problem. Once the rain had stopped, we ventured out to look around some of the town.
Sparti is the modern town of ancient Sparta. The ruins of ancient Sparta lie just out of the border of the town, so the town itself is all modern, and its streets are set up on the grid pattern as it was rebuilt recently – in the 19th century.
We walked down to look at what’s left of the ruins of Ancient Sparta, which we found out was not much. Once we made it to the centre of the ruins, the heavens opened up again, and as we hadn’t brought any jackets or umbrellas with us on holiday, we managed to get soaked on our run back to our hotel. Once we’d dried off, we had a great meal at a classic Greek restaurant.

In the morning, we walked down to a bus stop to catch a bus to the medieval city of Mystra. Once we made it to the bus stop, it started pouring down with rain again, but we had the cover of the bus stop this time. 20 minutes later the rain had stopped and the bus pulled up. It was a short drive to Mystra, but unfortunately the driver misunderstood where we going at dropped us off in modern town – 10 minutes walk downhill from the old ruined town. On the walk up, a friendly local dog joined us for the walk up to the entrance, but didn’t follow us in.
Mystra was at its height in the 14th century under the Byzantine Empire, but its now mostly in ruins. The exceptions are the churches, monasteries, a convent and a palace(closed for restoration) which have been maintained and repaired over the years, some of which have excellent Orthodox Christian paintings adorning their walls and ceilings. As we ascended through the ruins that are on the side of a hill we would periodically pop inside a church and have a look around. It was a very different way to explore a ruined city.
Luckily the rain held off during our visit, and overcast sky made the energetic climb to the ruined citadel at the summit comfortable. The citadel had great views over Mystra and the Spartan landscape.On our climb down we also visited the convent which is the only place in Mystra that remains inhabited (no pun intended). We made it down to the bottom of the ruins just in time for the bus back to Sparti around midday.
Mystra was one of our favourite places we visited in Greece, and I’d highly recommend a visit if in Greece and don’t mind an uphill walk.

Back in Sparti, we worked out how to get to our next destination – Nafplio which turned out to be another indirect bus connection. More on that in the next post…

Ancient Athens

We boarded our British Airways flight to Athens with low expectations on how easy it would be to get by without knowing any Greek, and a little worried that the Greeks might be as unfriendly and unhelpful as we found the Italians to be. Over the next 3 nights in Athens we found out how wrong our expectations were, as many Greeks (in the tourist areas at least) speak some English, and the ones who don’t speak any that we encountered were happy enough to try to comminicate with us regardless.
We ended up enjoying Athens more than I thought we would, and we took quite a few photos too, which I’ve uploaded here.

The plane we were in on the flight over gave us flashbacks to the eighties, because of the huge old flickering CRT screens embedded in the ceiling of the corridors. I distinctly remember being in an aircraft at the age of 5 that was laid out in the same manner. Still, the flight went OK and we arrived in Athens in the late afternoon. We took the efficient Athens Metro to get into the centre of the city. The Metro was very modern – it was likely upgraded for the 2004 Olympics.
By the time we checked into our hotel, it was getting late, so we popped out into the dimly lit streets and bought some filled pita wraps for dinner, and some very tasty icecream for dessert.

We went hard the next day, starting early with a visit to Athens main tourist attraction: The Acropolis. Since we arrived early there wasn’t too many people exploring the ancient ruins, but to our surprise there were plenty of stray dogs in and around the Acropolis. None of the dogs were threatening, and most were just sunbathing in the sun. We nick-named them and all other stray dogs in Greece “Acropolis dogs”. While touring around the Acropolis we saw a large theatre – Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the imposing and impressive (even with it’s scaffolding) Parthenon, as well as many other old and well preserved structures. The views over Athens were excellent from the top as well, and we got a better idea of just how big the city is.
On our way down, we encountered many large tour groups that were making their ascent which made us glad that we’d seen it early. Speaking of tour groups, this is probably the best place to relay a brilliant story that another couple of New Zealanders told us later in our holiday of when they were up on the Acropolis and were standing among a tour group of large Americans. They were listening in to their conversations and heard things like “Jeeze! You’d think they’d have air-conditioning up here!” when a large American woman turned to them and asked:
“Say, which cruise ship are you guys on?”
“We’re not on a cruise ship.” the couple answered.
“You’re not on a cruise ship?… Oh!” she said surprised.
“So which cruise ship are you on?” the NZ couple asked.
“Huh… I don’t know!”
“So where’s your next port, where are you going next?”
The american woman turned to confer with her friend for this one, but turned back to annouce: “We don’t know!”. Classic.

After we descended from the Acropolis, we entered the Ancient Agora (marketplace) which was the commercial and cultural centre of Athens in ancient times. Much of buildings that remain of the Agora are little more than low walls or foundations, the exceptions being the well preserved Temple of Hephaestus which had great views over the Agora, and a 10th century church – The Church of the Holy Apostles which had some interesting 17th century paintings preserved on some of its walls.
Our next stop on our Athens tour was Hadrian’s Library. The library, while quite large and having a couple of large walls remaining, wasn’t that interesting to be honest, so we quickly moved on to our next stop: The Roman Agora. It wasn’t as large as the Ancient one, but it did have a large arch still standing and the Tower of the Winds which had some interesting carvings on a frieze around its top.

We continued with our explorations by visting Hadrian’s Arch which was right next to our next stop the Temple of Zeus. The Temple of Olympian Zeus had some supremely massive columns re-erected on it’s base that gives a good idea of just how enormous the temple would have been.
After all the ruins we’d seen, we opted to do something a bit different and walked around some of the streets in the tourist area where we ate some lunch, then bought a couple of Olympic airline tickets for our trip to Kalymnos in a week. We were amused by the computer equipment in the airline office, which was extremely dated: green screens and old style printers – the ones with little holes on the sides of the printer paper.
Feeling slightly worn out, we decided to relax in the National Gardens, where we also saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier complete with traditionally dressed guards at attention, before looking at the Zappeion.
We looked around some shops next, and a couple of old churches in the area before finding something to eat for dinner.
We were both dead tired after such an active day, and so returned to our hotel for a good nights sleep.

In the morning, we went straight to the National Archaeological Museum. They had a huge number of ancient sculptures, pottery and other artefacts. One of the more memorable items was a reconstructed bronze statue of a horse with a little boy riding it an action pose. Once we left the museum we grabbed some lunch before returning to our hotel room for a siesta (we were still shattered from the day before!). In the afternoon, we wandered around some of the streets and saw the National Library, Athens University and the Academy. When we went out to find a restaurant that evening, it was pouring down with rain as a thunderstorm had just moved in. We ate our meal feeling a little more than damp.

We checked out the next morning, and got a taxi with a chatty Greek driver to the bus station so we could make it to our next destination: Delphi.

Back from another holiday

We’ve just returned from holiday, in which we visted both Greece and Turkey over 4 weeks. We had a fantastic time in both countries, and had some great adventures which I’ll be posting up here real soon.

We started out in Athens and spent 1 week on the mainland before getting a flight to the Dodecanese Islands (Greek) off the coast of Turkey for another week. Our final 2 weeks, were in Turkey where we travelled up from Marmaris in the south west of Turkey to our final destination of Istanbul in the north west, and stopped at many places on the way up.
People in both countries were friendly and hospitable, and we had very little trouble using public transport to get to all the places we wanted to.

I’ve been uploading some of the 700ish photos we took in the 4 weeks, so if you’re keen to see them now, you can check them out here.
Otherwise, look out for the upcoming posts…

A Scotland Summer

We spent the final leg of tour travelling all around Scotland; at least the parts that we could get to in 6 days of driving. Despite the rain, we enjoyed our time in Scotland, but I think we would have enjoyed it more if we hadn’t already been travelling for 3 and a half weeks beforehand. Some more photos were taken on our tour which can be seen here.

The car we rented for our Scotland adventuring was a new VW Polo, which apart from a couple of really annoying design ‘features’ (automatic indicators, and reverse gear next to first gear) was great to drive.
After we managed to navigate our way around all the road works and out of Edinburgh, we were heading north to check out St Andrews (the town this time). We found St Andrews to be a very pretty old medieval town, with tidy streets, a ruined castle, a ruined cathedral and a bizarre fascination with golf. We only stopped for lunch, and a short wander around the town before we were heading north again.

Opting to drive through the city of Dundee, we stuck to the coastal road until we saw a turn off to a castle. The view approaching Dunnottar Castle was striking, as the ruined castle sat atop a high outcrop of rock, with it’s back to the sea: a perfect defensive position. Inside the castle was just as impressive, as the ruined buildings had an interesting history and great views too.
By the time we left the castle, it was starting to get a bit late, so we decided to stop in the neighbouring town of Stonehaven for the night. We had a quick look around Stonehaven that night, and it was very peaceful – not too many other tourists about.

In the morning, we continued our drive north, turning inland when we missed out another Scottish city – Aberdeen. We briefly stopped in the small town of Inverurie to pick up some lunch, and to get directions to some of the most impressive standing stones as we had read there were plenty to see in the area.
We did a bit of car orienteering through the back roads of Aberdeenshire’s farmland to find the stones of the Easter Aquhorthies, The Maiden Stone and the Loanhead of Daviot. Each site was thousands of years old and offered something a bit different from each other.
Once we’d seen the stones we continued west toward Inverness, but stopped very briefly to in the town of Forres to see yet another standing stone – Sueno’s Stone. This one was over 6 metres tall, housed in a glass case, and had depictions of a battle scene all along one side.

A little further along the road, we turned off to see a castle that was being run by the Scottish National Trust – Brodie Castle. Our first surprise was to see that they charged £2 for parking – the first non-free rural attraction we’d encountered on holiday to charge for parking. With no prices for the castle on display at the car park, I had to walk 200m to the marginally interesting castle to see the £8.50 per adult price tag. Disgusted by the overpricing performed by the Scottish National Trust, we drove on. As a comparison, the privately owned Dunnottar Castle we saw the day before was only £5 each with free parking.

A little further down the road, we arrived at the field where the (in)famous Battle of Culloden was fought in 1746 between the Scottish Jacobite forces, and the British Government. The Scots badly lost the battle, and as a result of the uprising, the British passed laws against their clan system which lead to the Highland Clearances – still a sore topic for many Scots today.
On arrival at the battle field, we found it was also run by the Scottish National Trust, and so came with a £2 parking fee and no indication of the real cost of entering. I found on entering the lobby, by talking to a women on the desk, that it cost an astronomical £10 each for an audio-visual presentation and audio-guide. She was nice enough to mention that we can walk around the field for free though, so that’s exactly what we did. While it was interesting, and a little moving to see some of the memorials scattered around, it was just as exciting as walking around any other field.
Leaving the car park, we made the short drive to Inverness where we were to stay the night. We had a little trouble finding somewhere to stay in the popular tourist town, but as it was flush with B&B’s everywhere, we found somewhere soon enough.
We looked around Inverness a little bit in the evening, and saw its castle, and a few churches before retiring for the night. It was an OK town, but I think its popularity owes more to it’s location near to popular tourist attractions than the town itself.

We drove north-west from Inverness in the morning to drive around some of the Highlands. Our first stop was the scenic Rogie Falls which was nestled in a forest. We didn’t stop anywhere else until we reached the port town of Ullapool. The town struck me as being a quintessential small Scottish seaside town, and has some great scenery in its surrounding area to boot. The town provided free parking and free internet access which was a nice change from all the other British towns we’d visited. We had fish and chips, and bought some really cheap (and good) second hand books on our walk around the town.
After leaving Ullapool we drove in circular loop south of the town around Wester Ross on the A832 which eventually brought us back close to Inverness. The circular drive offered some great coastal scenery, and would have had some fantastic mountainous scenery except for the low cloud that kept them from our sight.
At the end of our drive around Wester Ross, we headed south to stay the night on the shores of Loch Ness at the town of Drumnadrochit.

After leaving Drumnadrochit the next morning, we drove toward the Isle of Skye. On the way, we stopped to tour the privately run Eilean Donan Castle on the shores of Loch Duich. It was pretty good as castles go, and had been restored from ruin and rubble early last century.
Shortly after leaving the castle, we crossed the bridge over to the Isle of Skye.
Skye is large island off the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, and we found it to have a barren, rugged beauty accentuated by soaring hills and a notable lack of trees.
On arrival, we stopped briefly at the town of Broadford to pick up some lunch, then headed north passing through the uninteresting town of Portree. We continued around the large peninsula of Trotternish mainly around one track roads. We only made one notable stop around the peninsula, and that was to see Kilt Rock and Mealt Falls at a scenic spot near the top of Skye.
After we had made our way around the peninsula, we headed west and tried to find somewhere to stay in Dunvegan. We weren’t in luck, as every place we looked at had ‘No Vacancies’ signs hanging outside. It took us about an hour of looking, and we ended up driving south of Dunvegan a bit before somewhere we asked at said that she didn’t have any left, but did know of someone who did. It was a twin bed room, but we would have taken anything by that point. Our eventual hosts, Nan and Ted, who were very friendly and welcoming, informed us that everything was booked out because a wedding and reception was being held in Dunvegan Castle that night.

In the morning, we decided to head south to leave the island, but this time we’d head over on a car ferry instead of the bridge (by suggestion of the other guests at Nan and Ted’s). The road to the ferry was one of the most beautiful drives on the island, but it was very hilly and was all one track road. At one point I accidentally managed to scare Tanya by singing along to ‘portending to doom’ orchestral music while driving a little quickly down a steep, windy one car wide road – “DUN DUN DUN DUN”.
By the time we arrived at the end of the road, Tanya had recovered, and we boarded the small car ferry. The ferry was surprisingly interesting, as it had a turntable for the cars – something to do with the strong tides they get; and a resident border collie who took his job very seriously by helping the two ferry staff pull the rope on board, and keeping a look out for invading seals on the trip over.
After leaving the ferry, we drove up to join back with the main road, but not before stopping to admire the view of the Five Sisters of Kintail mountain range. We drove on south past Loch Lochy (no really), ending up at the tourist town of Fort William.
We had trouble finding accommodation in Fort William as well, as it was the beginning of a Bank Holiday weekend, so we had to settle for another twin room. I didn’t like Fort William much. I think it was because the weather was horrible, and the people were less friendly than Skye. We couldn’t wait to leave.

The poor weather continued on through the morning, so we didn’t get to see the highest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis. On the drive south east, I found the landscape to hold the kind of scenery that you might see on postcards of Scotland, but it was still spoilt by the rain.
We arrived in the town of Stirling in the afternoon where the weather was fine, and decided to stay the night. Determined not to stay in another twin room for the night, we immediately started looking for accommodation in the early afternoon, and found something pretty quickly. After checking into our room at the B&B, we headed up a nearby hill to look at the landmark at the top: The Wallace Monument. The monument is a tall tower, built in the 19th century as a memorial to the revolutionary leader: William Wallace, recently made famous by the film Braveheart.
We headed up the tower after paying our entrance fee, and looked through a few of the displays on different floors on the way up.
When we finally got to the top, we had some great views over the surrounding area, and was very windy.
After we made it back down, we headed to the centre of Stirling to see the Castle. We got there a bit too late, just as they had stopped letting people in, so we had to settle with seeing it from the outside.
Later, for dinner, we drove into the nearby town of Bridge of Allan. We found the town to be very pretty, and had a relaxing meal there.

The next day was our last morning in Scotland, as we had to return our rental car by midday. We drove straight down to Edinburgh, braved the roadworks and crazy traffic that resulted from it, and got the car returned in time.
Since we had about an hour before our train back to London, Tanya had organised to meet up with her Dad’s cousin, Barbara, who works in Edinburgh. Barbara was very welcoming, and was nice enough to take us out to lunch. It was refreshing to hear the New Zealand accent again!
After lunch we bade farewell to Barbara and walked down to the station where we got on the train to take us back to London.
Holiday over!

Enjoying Edinburgh – Tanya’s Revenge

You may notice a slight difference in the rather colourful and poetic prose normally included in this blog, that is because Sean has become infected with a painful disease often refereed to as writers monotony and has elected to delegate the responsibility of writing this post to his wonderful, charming and very modest fiancée. If reading anything not written by Sean disgusts you, or you are only interested in photo’s then the Edinburgh photos are here, and the Lochnaw Castle photos are here; otherwise, join with me in exploring our time in Edinburgh and all things Scottish, but you have been warned…

After the rather traumatic experience of travelling on what can best be described as the Ryanair party plane (fortunately not involving an additional charge for landing safely) we were tired, disorientated and grumpy! This lead to a small miscommunication error with an airport bus driver between “St Andrews in town” and “St Andrews the town“, involving a scenic detour. Once we changed buses, we were on our way to Edinburgh city. After successfully arriving in the city, the only thing that interested us was checking in, eating and recovering from the experience.

In the morning we awoke bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for a full day of touring (actually, I awoke bright eyed, the best Sean could achieve was awake). Although we had booked three full days in the city, two of those days were already booked with other events, therefore Edinburgh would be seen in a whirlwind adventure.
From our accommodation we walked up the Royal Mile toward our first stop of the day, Edinburgh Castle. We were struck by the beauty of the setting, a collage of all things magnificent from the sunlit hills and glistening sea to the spires and architecture of medieval and Georgian buildings from both the old and new towns.

Edinburgh Castle is nestled at the top of a glacier worn ancient volcano, which obviously had a strong defencive position and is still used by the military. The grounds inside the castle walls hold a hodge-podge collection of buildings from a variety of time periods and for different purposes; from the oldest building on the site St Margaret’s Chapel built in 1130, through to the youngest building being the Scottish National War Memorial – rebuilt from the stone of the previous royal castle and a fitting memorial to those who served. Other highlights the castle offered included the Great Hall, the castle vaults and prison, military museums, the Royal Palace including the Honours of Scotland (for those less educated, this is the Royal bling) and the Stone of Destiny.
Our last act at the castle was to watch the one o’clock gun, a large artillery gun fire – no words can describe the verbosity of the explosion and the pounding that follows as your heart decides to duck for cover.

After a quick wee bite to eat we joined The Edinburgh Tour essentially a tour bus, a bit touristy but we have found when you want to see a lot in a short space of time, this is the best way to do so. From the Waverley Bridge departure point we covered the old and new towns, and also took in the key sights including the Scottish Parliament, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the wonderful mountainous scenery including the Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat, a number of interesting churches and a mosque, the University, a few museums and a number of houses lived in at one point in time by well known people.

After completing the bus tour, there was still a little time to do something else, so we decided on the Writers’ Museum which contains the manuscripts and other memorabilia belonging to the Scottish writers Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson</a. The museum itself was interesting although it seemed like a bit of a rabbit warren. I left re-affirming my vow that I need to read some more books.

Sean and I had specifically timed our trip to be in Edinburgh for The Gathering – a two day gathering of all the Scottish clans with people travelling from around the world to attend. The Saturday night event was a Clan March to the castle followed by a Pageant. The March and Pageant could only be attended if you had purchased a ‘passport’, as I was too cheap to spend the £100 each to purchase said passport (yes, I am Scottish, why do you ask?), we elected to watch the parade instead.
While we awaited in eager anticipation of what approached, we both discussed what we wanted to see: people in kilts (although both of us hoped the weather would not be too gusty), pipers, drummers, little children playing in the band, some patriotic oldies being pushed along, some flags and we also would not be too adverse to receiving whiskey and shortbread – although we did think this last request unlikely.

Given our wish-list, we were not disappointed; we were also well entertained with the music, the drunks that managed to accidentally stumble into the parade and the people madly waving non-Scottish flags screaming “we are Scotland”. Probably the highlight of the parade was the crowd, specifically one man – in Scottish dress, who, as every clan went past would yell “come on [clan name] let’s hear ya! Ha!”, the passing clan previously looking bored would revive and shout “Ha!” with fist punching air action; at which point he would take a photo.
After the final clan passed, we elected to have another early night and head to bed after our evening meal, ready for our day at The Gathering.

Sunday was spent encapsulated in all things Scottish; I liked to think of this as an appropriate return for all the family outings I have been on with Sean. We started our day in the clan village, meeting some of the Agnew’s (my grandmother on Dad’s side was an Agnew) at the Agnew tent. Some of the people manning the tent were going to see a well known act, the Red Hot Chilly Pipers; I was amazed The Gathering had been able to sign such a big act until I reheard what they said. That aside, the pipers were really entertaining and the crowd swelled to massive proportions which reflected their showmanship.

Once the set was over, we then drifted around to see what else was on offer, there was a highland dancing stage and also a person showing the audience some highland dancing moves. We didn’t stay there for long and decided to move onto something bigger and heavier … the World Highland Games Heavy Event. This can only be described as unique and entertaining to watch; it consists of a multitude of strength disciplines: putting the stone (shot put), throwing the hammer for height (memorably described by the commentator as “like throwing a seven year old over a double decker bus”) and throwing the hammer for distance (hammer throw).

Half way through the event I realised that we should line up for the talk by Diana Gabaldon – author of the historic romance Crosstitch series. Unfortunately Diana Gabaldon’s tent was full and we were denied entry – although Sean managed to hold his disappointment well. We then toured the remaining tents that we hadn’t seen including the ‘Scotland lives’ tent – focusing on genealogy and tracing your family roots, there were also some tents with information provided by the National Trust for Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage. Finally we wandered into the ‘Flavour of Scotland’ area, this was the farmers market of Scottish goods; and where we were able to buy some shortbread and taste some Scotch Whiskey (Talisker).

As the day came to a close we returned to the Highland games area to watch the remainder of the games, including the caber toss. The caber toss was scary to watch as a comparatively tiny man carried, ran and then thew a full grown tree 180 degrees from where they started – this event was won by a kiwi. We then decided to leave the park to get ready for the evening event – meeting up with the Agnew clan for canapes and drinks and viewing of the Agnew family portraits. The event was great, and we ended up going out for dinner and drinks later with some of the clan members.

Monday was spent travelling down with the Agnews (and back) to Lochnaw Castle, on the Rhins of Galloway. The castle was previously Agnew family property, but was then sold when it was in Trust and transferred between a number of eccentrics and castle renovators. It was then purchased by Mr and Mrs Anderson who have obviously put a lot of time, love and money into the restoration of the castle to its former glory (with some modern conveniences included).
It was thoroughly enjoyable to tour the castle and the surrounding area and I consider it will be spectacular once completed. The trip also included a trip to the Agnew Monument, and the Agnew tomb. Overall a spectacular day out, and highly enjoyable, although it was a long day on the bus!

The following day, we picked up our rental car in Edinburgh, ready for our Scottish adventure.