Pamukkale, and Bella's sweet 16th!

Our bus trip to Pamukkale was uneventful until we arrived in Denizli and they moved us onto a Dolmus for the "free" transfer to Pamukkale.  The only problem was, the Dolmus was four seats short - they moved us into a car but we insisted on having the kids with us which the Turks thought was hilarious!  When we got into Pamukkale I wanted to get our flights back to Istanbul organised right away.  I'd tried to book online but the price went from 378 try to 378 AUD, more than double, every time I wanted to finalise the booking, so using a local travel agency seemed like the go.  There was some drama with our credit card - because the agency was doing the transaction as "mail order" the bank in Australia refused to approve it, so we had to go and get a cash advance.  Money is getting quite low at this point in our travels!  (Buying carpets willy nilly doesn't help but there you go.  Done now!) We checked into our pension which we'd chosen because they said they took mastercard.  It turns out that they don't.  We weren't impressed, and they knew it!  However it was a nice place, clean and comfortable, with a good breakfast - Sinta Teresa House Hotel.  Our friends Lachy and Amanda were staying around the corner (at a place I'd looked at, but didn't book because it didn't take credit cards!!) so we met up for dinner and had another fun night.

Greg and I were very keen to go out to Aphrodisias, an ancient city which apparently was opened to the public in the late 70s but wasn't anything we had heard about on our last visit.  It's a good 90 minute drive from Pamukkale, and you are just dropped off - no tour is offered!  Greg had picked up a book while we were walking around Pamukkale (a village which incidentally we could barely recognise, it has grown so much - except for the travertine falls of course!) and it was very helpful.  We decided to go on the 12th of January as the museum is closed on Mondays (and it is reputedly the best museum in Western Anatolia!  We couldn't find out who the competition is though!) - Bella's 16th birthday.  I don't think a trip to visit ruins was high on her list when she planned her 16th birthday, however they were AMAZING and we all loved them, an absolute must to visit if you are in the area.  The museum IS very good but the real draw card are the fabulous ruins.  We were especially captivated with the stadium, built to hold 30,000 people - it was filled with energy from all the athletic events held there, you could almost feel the excitement in the air!  Liam kindly did a run from one end to the other so I could show the size of the stadium in my photos; a group of Turkish people also touring the ruins cheered him on as he panted his way back!  There was probably only about 20 people in total at the ruins (another good thing) so we had them to ourselves a lot of the time.  That night, we met up with Amanda and Lachy again for a special Turkish birthday dinner.  We really wanted to have the candle in a piece of baklava but the restaurant was sold out, they came up with a chocolate roll cake and I'd bought a candle with me from the UK, so we were able to sing Bella Happy Birthday and make her feel special.  Liam could hardly believe it, but Lachy and Amanda were heading out that night to Cappadocia - (we would have loved to have gone, but time and money limit us now) how could they leave us?  We have enjoyed their company and we hope they come and visit us in Darwin soon!

Today our tour took us to Karahayit, Hierapolis (ancient Roman ruins above the travertine hill), to Cleopatra's pool and down the travertines for a late lunch in Pamukkale and - surprise! - a visit to a Onyx factory.  For information purposes only, of course.  Our stop in Karahayit was brief - just to show us the famous "red" water which is actually quite clear (although apparently the iron comes out when the water is left to sit) and long enough for Liam to befriend another cat!  Our guide walked us through the Hierapolis ruins and while we probably could have done it ourselves, it was handy to have her point everything out.  The tour didn't include the Hierapolis amphitheatre, however we had two hours "free time" so while the kids leapt into Cleopatra's pool Greg and I took a quick trek up to admire it.  A lot of restoration has been done on it so it's quite impressive.  However the absolute highlight for the kids was Cleopatra's Pool.  They have you over a barrel: you have to pay an extra 32 try per person to go into the pool, which is outrageous really, but if you are there, the opportunity to swim in a naturally heated pool filled with ancient Roman ruins (not to mention, actually swum in by Cleopatra herself!) is very hard to resist.  So we didn't!  Walking down the travertine hill is interesting.  The calcium carbonate dissolves in the mineralised water and creates the "cotton candy" white hill side that Pamukkale is famous for. You have to carry your shoes and are limited as to where you can walk - to try to avoid damaging the travertine. The brown bits are very slippery but I'm pleased to report that we all made it down without getting wet!  Lunch was great but the drink prices were a rip off.  After the tour we had an hour hanging around until our transfer to Denizli airport.  As we left, it was getting dark, and the air was full of smoke.  The locals say it's fog but it seems quite clearly to be smog, as the acrid smoke of plastic and other smelly things being burnt was in the air every evening we were there

.  It's interesting with so much rubbish being burnt that there is still so much more lying around!  Pamukkale really is a grubby little village.  Our only concern with our flight back to Istanbul was that we were only allowed 15kg of luggage per person, but with some judicious re-packing we managed to get under that amount - carrying my carpet as hand luggage.  Luckily for us they didn't weigh the hand luggage!!  So now we are back in Istanbul for three days!