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…