We explored more of Istanbul in the final few days of our holiday; read on for our impressions, or click here to see all of the photos we took of Turkey’s largest city.

(Continued from part 1)

The next morning, we headed down to the docks to get on a tour down the Bosphorus. We found a tour that looked reasonable and hopped on the boat for a two hour cruise between the two continents. There wasn’t any commentary as everyone spoke a different language, but we were able to match up the key sites such as Dolmabahçe Palace, Çırağan Sarayı and Ortaköy to sections in our guidebook. It was a nice way to spend the morning, and once we left the boat, we found ourselves back outside the spice bazaar.
It was busy, but a whole lot easier to move in the bazaar than the day before. We opted to buy some spices and Turkish delights from one merchant, and a range of teas from another.
After we left the spice market, we found ourselves standing next to an impressive looking mosque – Yeni Cami, so we entered to look around. It was busy with locals inside, as well as a few tourists but the decorations were quite stunning. It felt even slightly more impressive than the Blue Mosque, just because it felt more frequented and alive.
We next had an afternoon meal on a terrace a few storeys up on cushions and carpets before heading back toward the centre. On our way back, we spent some time in Gülhane Parkı, a public park next to Topkapi Palace. The area was busy, but it still managed to have a relaxing atmosphere (even with the armed guards). By the time we got back to our accommodation it was starting to get dark.

In the morning, we immediately set off to see Yerebatan Sarayı – the Basilica Cistern. It’s a huge underground cistern, built by the Byzantines nearly 1500 years ago, and its still mostly intact. The cavern roof is held up by literally hundreds of stone columns, and there are fish (some huge) in the water. Some of the columns have interesting carvings – 2 of the bases have Medusa heads at the bottom, so must have been reused to build the columns.
After finishing at the ‘Sunken Palace’ we returned to the Grand Bazaar to do some more shopping. We ended up buying some clothes for the following day, a Turkish tea set of glasses and some small chess pieces for our backgammon board. We left the bazaar and grabbed lunch at a small cafe/restaurant where we ate some Turkish pancakes (Gözleme) that were made in front of us by a Turkish woman.

After dropping off our bazaar booty, we made a bee-line for the Cağaloğlu Hamam to try out a Turkish bath. The hamam we choose was quite a touristy one, and the price reflected that, but we both opted for assisted baths.
My bath consisted of stripping down in a private room in the men’s section and donning a cloth/towel around my waist to keep my privates private. I was then led through some doors and finally into the main steamy bath room. Once my glasses cleared, I could see the large room was completely decked out from floor to ceiling in marble. There was a central raised marble podium where a couple of guys were lying, and all around the octagonal room large basins jutted out from the wall with a couple of old style Ottoman taps above each. On top of that, there were Roman style columns everywhere.
I had a bit of time to myself beforehand so I just admired the room. The ceiling dome had stars cut out of it to allow light in – the only light source for the room, which made it a little gloomy. Once my assigned assistant came in, he threw water over me, then rubbed me almost all over (missing the privates) with an exfoliant glove, washed me over with soap and finally rinsed me down. I felt pretty clean and good at the end, but some of the washing process felt a little demeaning (like a dog getting a bath), and verged just a little bit on the homosexual. If I was to return to a Turkish bath, I think I’d opt to wash myself.
Tanya’s experience was mostly similar to mine, but she received a massage instead of a scrub down.
After we’d finished up at the Hamam we visited the north shore of the Golden Horn. We started with an ascent up the Galata Tower, which had 360 degree views over Istanbul but we’d unfortunately left our camera at our accommodation. Many others hadn’t though, and it was packed at the top.
After the tower, we walked through the main modern shopping street in Taksim and found a vegetarian restaurant where we ate our evening meal.

By our last day in Istanbul we had completed all the major sights we had wanted to see, so we spent our final morning wandering around some of the more modern areas.
We started with Istanbul University. The buildings were very grandiose, and the gardens were immaculate, but unfortunately we couldn’t see further in than the gates as there were guards preventing entry. This may be due to past problems with political activity in the area.
We then decided to wander further up the road to the Süleymaniye Camii, which was designed by Mimar Sinan (the Christopher Wren of the Ottomans). The mosque itself was mostly closed due to renovation; however, we were able to visit the tombs of Süleyman the Magnificent and Mimar Sinan. We found comparing them interesting, as they are at opposite ends of the spectrum: the formers tomb was lavishly decorated with ebony, ivory, silver and jade; while the later is a simple but expertly made hand carved tomb.

With our last couple of hours in the city, we had a bite to eat and wandered along the uninteresting waterfront. Eventually we caught a taxi to Ataturk airport and were soon on our way back to London; our month long holiday having come to a close.

Istanbul was the final destination on our tour of Turkey, and it more than lived up to our expectations. It is a busy, bustling city, and is extremely popular with tourists for good reason. It houses many, varied sights from throughout its long history, most of which we got to see in our 4 day stay. We utilised our camera to capture the sights as always; you can see our photos of Istanbul here.

We arrived at the otogar by bus from Bursa, well outside the centre. We had prearranged a transfer, but were dropped off in an unknown area, off of our tourist map. Luckily, there was a tram going into the tourist centre, so once we figured out you needed to buy tokens to enter the gate, we were on our way to Sultanahmet.
After settling into our accommodation, we decided to explore the tourist area of Sultanahmet; our first stop was the Hippodrome, a long and narrow park, formerly the cultural focus of the Byzantine Empire. Very little remains now except three columns – Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpentine Column and Column of Constantine; along with swarms of tourists, buzzing with the sound of camera clicks.
Once we escaped from the infestation of tourists at the Hippodrome, we walked past the outside of the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, in search of a vaccine for our hunger pains (lunch), and then visited the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum at the Hippodrome which housed a wide collection of Islamic art such as ceramics, calligraphy and carpets.

After leaving the museum and wandering around some of Istanbul’s streets we found ourselves outside the famous Grand Bazaar. To describe the bazaar as busy was an understatement with its 66 streets and alleys packed with tourists and locals trying to grab a bargain. The covered sections of the bazaar are decorated magnificently; almost like an Ottoman version of a ye olde shopping mall. After entering the bazaar, we very quickly became lost, as many shops sold the same things, so one part of the bazaar often looked much like another. We ended up buying some clothes (for Sean), a couple of bookmarks and a wooden backgammon set – even though neither of us knew how to play.
That evening, we treated ourselves to a sumptuous meal at a rooftop restaurant, which had an excellent view of the Blue Mosque, lit up at night.

The next morning we awoke early and went straight to the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmet Mosque), which was already crowded by tour groups queueing to take a look inside. The Blue Mosque is named after the predominantly blue tiles that decorate the building, the result of this lavish decoration can only be described as impressive, even with the huge ‘elephant foot’ pillars that in some ways obscure the view from different angles. The large domes overhead were also spectacular, but not as blue as expected.
After leaving the mosque, we crossed over the the Hagia Sophia. The building was originally used as a cathedral under the Holy Roman Empire (Byzantine) in the 6th Century, and then as a mosque when the Ottomans took over. It was the hugest building of the time and has recently been established as a museum. The space inside was gigantic, but as they were doing restoration of the dome, it wasn’t as impressive looking as it would have been without the scaffolding. The walls were lavishly decorated with fresco’s reflecting its various uses (as both a cathedral and a mosque) with both styles on display. After we left the huge building we visited a few of the sultans tombs – some of whom had opted to be enshrined next to the Hagia Sophia. They were intricately decorated and as the sultan was often entombed with his wives, and children, there were many sarcophagi – one sultans tomb had more than 70 sarcophagi!

After a lunch of pides, we decided to tackle the Topkapı Palace, where the sultan and his harem used to reside. The Palace grounds are huge, taking up a sizeable portion of the peninsula. We started by looking around the 2nd courtyard, and divan, where the sultan listened into his advisor’s meetings. We then made our way into the harem area, which was shut off to the rest of the world in Ottoman times. Many rooms were sumptuously decorated, mostly with tiles. I noticed that it lacked a bit of the shine and elegance it must have once had, but it was still obvious that the sultans had more than enough money to burn. Apart from the harem, the rest of the palace consisted of large courtyards with many large decorated rooms, and terraces with impressive outlooks over the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. There were also a couple of exhibits; one of various Muslim relics (like the tooth and sword of Muhammad), and the other exhibited the items that were in the sultans treasury such as enormous diamonds (one being the 5th biggest in the world), jewel encrusted daggers, thrones, etc.

After leaving the palace, we wandered up the street and bought some Turkish ice cream, which was served up by scooping it out with a sword. The ice cream was a different texture to normal – more like a cross between jelly and ice cream, and just a little chewy.
We decided to head to the spice market next, but when we got there we found it packed solid with people – due to it being a Saturday. Despite the crowd, we entered to see piles of different spices and teas on sale at separate stalls through the market. The crowd was a bit too much for us however, so we just went with the flow until we were spat out the other side. We opted to return on a different day to sample their wares. Once we made it out of the crowd, we jumped on a tram to save the uphill walk back, and rested up in our room before heading out for a meal.

(continued in part 2…)

We stayed in Bursa, the old early capital of the Ottoman empire for 2 nights. Bursa is sited beneath the imposing Mount Uludağ, and we found the city to be green and well laid out. We didn’t take many photos while in the city, but the ones we did take can be seen here.

Departing from Çannakkale, we had another long bus journey to the city of Bursa. We arrived at the bus station, which is about 10km out of the central city, and easily travelled into the center to find accommodation for two nights; no problem. After checking in, we had a look around the town centre and Bazaar, which was well laid out and quite pretty, before we grabbed some food and had an early night.

In the morning we immediately set off to see the popular Yeşil Camii (mosque) before it became flooded with tourists. When we arrived, it was pretty much empty, so we started by looking at Yeşil Türbe – the tomb across from the mosque which was tiled and decorated magnificently. We next entered the mosque (in the correct attire) which was sumptuously carpeted. It was peaceful inside the almost empty building – there was only one other person there.
There was another mosque nearby, Yıldırım Bayezid Camii, so we wandered down to see that. We had to walk past a large Turkish graveyard to get there – which look similar to European graveyards. As it seemed to be prayer time, we stayed out of this mosque and just wandered the courtyard, and peered in at the tombs.
After looking out at the great view over Bursa from outside the mosque, we headed back toward the centre and chose to make it three mosques in a row. The large Ulu Camii has twenty domes and an expansive interior. It was built under the reign of Sultan Bayezid I, as he had promised to build twenty mosques for the victory at the Battle of Nicopolis, but copped out by building one large twenty domed mosque instead. Inside, it was busy due to its central location with people praying and reading the Koran, but retained a peaceful atmosphere. The large şadırvan pool in the centre, illuminated by the skylight above really made it memorable.
We decided to do something different next so walked across town to the Kültür Parki (culture park). The park was mostly empty, green and expansive. We ate lunch there and wandered around for a while. They had outdoor free gym-like equipment set in an adult playground – we tried it out, laughing at ourselves.
Later on, after getting back to our hotel, we tried to book accommodation in Istanbul by ringing all the places in our guidebook, but we found that all were full. Hoping we’d find a place to stay the next day, we retired for the night.

In the morning we caught a bus to the otogar, where we jumped on a coach to Istanbul. The trip was more interesting that the others because half way through, our bus boarded a ferry for about 45 minutes across the Sea of Marmara. Once we reached the opposite shore, the bus began driving into Turkeys largest city…

The main purpose of our two night stay in Çanakkale was to take a day trip to the Gallipoli peninsula to see the World War I ANZAC memorials, but we found the town itself had a couple of other things going for it, and was a nice place to stay to boot. We took many photos on Gallipoli and a couple of others in Çanakkale too; all of which can be seen here.

We arrived in Çanakkale at about 4pm after a long bus journey from Izmir. Accommodation was sparse, so we ended up organising to stay in two different hotels for our two nights in Çanakkale.
We elected to spend the remainder of the day exploring the area, this included a walk along the quay, and snapping some rather touristy shots of a wooden horse used in the movie Troy (the ancient site of Troy is nearby), we also stopped to grab a bite to eat as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After taking in the remainder of the waterside, we decided to call it a night as we were both shattered.

The next morning, after a great nights sleep, we checked out the Çimenlik park (maintained by the navy) which had many old cannons, torpedoes and mines lining its path and an old WWI mine laying boat which has been converted into a museum, as well as an old Ottoman fortress that had been guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles. After the park, we headed back to our hotel because the ANZAC tour we’d booked ourselves on was about to start. Joining another NZ couple at the hotel, we boarded the boat that took us over the strait to Gallipoli. Once we arrived at the other side we were met by our tour guide, a young Turkish guy (mid-twenties?). Once our full group had been assembled, we were quickly on our way. The tour guide turned out to be really informative and helped give some perspective, time-line and history to match with the sights we visited. The places we visited were: ANZAC cove, Lone Pine (Aussie memorial), Chunuk Bair(NZ memorial), a Turkish graveyard and memorial, the Nek (battlefield), and some trenches and tunnels from that battles that are still visible. After visiting Gallipoli, we both have a better appreciation for the magnitude of the lives lost on the peninsula, but it’s still difficult to fully appreciate what it must have been like for the young soldiers (some as young as 14).

The tour eventually finished at 5:30pm, and we were back for the 6pm boat to Çanakkale. We then checked into our other hotel (bags were moved for us), where that night I was eaten alive by a swarm of mosquitoes (Tanya only received 1 bite). In the morning I was tired and very itchy!
The next day, we boarded another bus for the long journey to the city of Bursa.

We opted to stay a couple of nights in Izmir to take a look at Turkey’s third largest city, and so we could travel out to nearby Sardis.
Izmir has history going back 5000 years, and prior to the Ottoman Turks taking over, it was known as Smyrna. Despite a long and interesting history, there isn’t much visible in the city itself, as most of it was destroyed by fire after the Turks retook the city from the Greek army in 1922.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to Sardis, and we found Izmir to be the least enjoyable Turkish city we visited. This was definitely a low point in our holiday, but it wasn’t all bad, as Izmir was not completely without some redeeming features. We didn’t take many photos of Izmir, but the few we did take can be seen here.

We arrived from Selçuk at the Izmir bus station, 8km outside the city. We found the station to be huge and confusing and it took us a lot of walking around and asking many Turks for directions before we found the buses to the centre. Luckily, the ticket operator spoke good English, so we were on the correct bus to the centre of Izmir quickly.
We alighted from our bus, near to where we planned to look for our hotel, but we had trouble finding the recommended one we were interested in, even though a friendly American NATO trooper in civvies tried to help us out. We eventually settled on a slightly overpriced hotel across from the Hilton.
After dropping off our gear, we wondered around part of the long waterfront for a bit until we reached Konak Square, where we saw the clock tower, and the tiny Konak Cammi. We moved onto look at a couple of museums which were pretty good, but didn’t have too much in them for a city the size of Izmir.
In the late afternoon, we were feeling a bit down, which I think was a culmination tiredness due to our constant travelling, the problems at the bus station, not being able to find an open information center and finding Izmir to be a bit unfriendly – even though as we sat on a bench, one local said to us: “Hello, welcome to Turkey”.
That night we headed down to the lively bar/cafe and restaurant area which was packed full of locals. Every restaurant we passed looked full at first, but we eventually found a bar that served food with outdoor seating which looked good value, but what we didn’t realise until we sat down that there was no English on the menus or on the waiters’ lips. It was an interesting experience ordering our meals through guess work, but our meals turned out OK for bar food.

The next day, we woke up late, but still wanted to head Sardis as a day trip. We didn’t feel like trying to get a bus, as that would likely involve getting to the confusing otogar and back again, so we tried the rail station instead.
When we asked at the train station, we found the next train was in 3 hours, so we gave up on Sardis, and instead decided to look around the main park where we lazed around for a while, as we found it a relaxing place to be.
After the park, we took a look around the bazaar where we got shuffled into another carpet/leather shop. We made it clear that we weren’t going to buy, but they still insisted on sitting us down for some apple tea and a chat before we left. After the bazaar we walked up the waterfront which was quite nice and found a restaurant that my dad recommended, which we returned to later that night. It was pretty good and we both enjoyed it, even though I had developed a stomach ache a bit earlier.
That night, neither of us got hardly any sleep – my stomach ache had turned into stomach cramps and a fever, and we were both kept up by a large group who seemed to have booked out almost the entire hotel returned late and rowdy from whatever party they had been at, and considered it a good idea to perform their favourite songs to us.

In the morning, we both awoke a bit worse for wear. My fever had abated but I still wasn’t well, and Tanya wasn’t feeling her best either. We caught a bus via a free transfer to the otogar, but not before I walked into a pharmacy and after communicating my symptoms through the art of mime, purchased some recommended mystery pills.
The bus trip north was a long 6 hours, and we both had a bit of nausea on the trip. We were glad to arrive in Çannakkale in the mid-afternoon.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.