April 13, Pamukkale and Hierapolis.

The innkeeper arranged a tour for me to Pamukkale, famous for its calcium springs, and Hierapolis, a city located above the springs that dates to pre-Roman times, was destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt several times. At 80TL (about $50), including lunch and admissions, it seemed pretty reaqsonable. A taxi picked me up, took me to the tour company office, where I and two other clients were loaded on a narrow little mini-bus, two seats along the left and one along the right; total capacity about 20 persons; very narrow seats with little leg-room and no place to put bags, water bottles, jackets, etc. except on one's lap. We went to another B&B where we picked up enough other passengers that the bus was almost full. It was a full 3 hours to the destination; we picked up our tour guide along the way, then stopped at a road stop (which did not sell cimits, the little rolls I like - and I had neglected to pick any up before leaving.) The other passengers included people from the U.S. and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Europe; nice people, although the layout of the bus did not allow for much socializing. The weather was heavily overcast and cool when we set out, although it cleared not long after noon.

When we reached the destination, we first stopped at a resort restaurant for a buffet meal. I started with salad (excellent) and soup (totally tasteless - after about 1/3 of a bowl I gave up on it), then had some bulgar wheat and a bit of fairly good chicken, with a beer. Dessert looked interesting, but the three small ones I tried were fairly tasteless, so I gave up on them as well.

After lunch we drove back up the road to an entry gate that led directly into the Hierapolis necropolis (graveyard, basically), which was lined with tombs, many half destroyed by the many earthquakes, representing several styles of tomb architecture; I took a number of pictures here. Then we entered the remains of the city itself, which was very interesting. The guide told us that until recently the site was not protected, and people were in the habit of just pulling in with a truck and carting off whole truckloads of marble, which more or less completed the destruction started by the earthquakes. Still, there were enough partial structures standing to give a very good sense of what the city was like in its prime, during the years immediately before and after conversion of the empire to Christianity. Among the many interesting sights: two gates, one Roman era and one Byzantine, parts of several fountains, remnants of the agora, a large theater built into the side of a hill, and the remains of a church built over St. Stephen's tomb.

The guide more or less hurried us through the initial part of the tour, although he provided good information about everything we saw - but by lagging behind then hurrying to catch up I was able to get most of the photos I wanted. Part of his constraints - he had three groups; several wanted to swim for an hour in the mineral water pool (at 25 TL, over $15, it seemed a bit steep to me, but I'm not all that enthusiastic about swimming). Another group wanted to spend a lot of time at the mineral springs, where the springs have formed spectacular terraces. Most of these are startlingly white, since they are formed of pure calcite, but about 50 years ago, private companies were allowed to built luxury hotels above the springs and capture the water for their swimming pools; the result was that the terraces quickly turned brownish-grey, as a result of weathering (about half are still this color). A few years ago the hotels were forced to close, and now the water flows down over the terraces again, but the guide said it would take 150 years for the area to renew itself to its original state.

More interesting to me were the ruins above the springs. I climbed up toward the theater, passing some interesting ruins of a nymphaem and a plutonium, then climbed to the top of the theater itself, which affords a great view out over the lower parts of the city ruins as well as across the plains below. Then I continued up the road that passes by the stadium passed through and along the ruins of the old city wall, climbed up a trail to St Stephen's Martyrium, still very impressive even in its ruined state. Below the Martyrium is another ruined structure, with signs warning of its danger; I believe this is the old cave that still emits poison gas (and has apparently done in several incautious tourists). The guide said it was once used to "cure" demented patients - if, I suppose, they survived the cure. I took some pictures but, of course, stayed well away.

I found a trail nearby that led across the hill to a couple of other Roman era structures, down through the area that used to be the agora, but now has only a handful of marble columns and steps to provide hints of what it was once like, then retraced the route we had taken earlier in the day, more slowly, and taking time to wait out the huge tour groups so as to capture some of the pictures I had missed earlier - and to retake others in a late afternoon light.

The guidebook describes Hierapolis in a way that sounds like it isn't much, but for my money it is about as big, and about as well-preserved, as the better known Ephesus. The calcium springs area is worth looking at, and I took a couple of pictures that are pretty interesting, but there was no question in my mind about spending as much time as possible exploring the ruins of the ancient city. I only wish I had had a couple of days, so as to stay overnight in the region and also visit the nearbuy (a couiple of hours) Aphroditopolis with its marble temples.

It was a great day but it ended in an exhausting way. The guide had allowed two options for meeting back up, either at the necropolis gate or at the restaurant at the bottom of the calcite terraces where we had had lunch. We hung around for about 15 minutes after the appointed time to be sure everyone was there who wanted to be picked up there. Then we drove back toward the restaurant, and encountered a police barricade - earlier they had had a bicycle race there; I don''t know if the barricade was connected with that or not. In any event, the guide had to walk a hundred or two hundred meters to the restaurant to bring the others back. Then, he had promised two members of the group that he would drop them at the bus station to go on to their next town without returning to Selcuk - and it took about 20 minutes to find our way around the barricaded streets. We finally headed back to Selcuk about 5. The guide explained how we would be let off, then left us an hour out of town. However, the driver switched plans on us, and his English was not good enough to explain - he pulled into a tourist area, turned off the engine, and said, "Selcuk. Different bus." We were suspicious of it, since the guide had said nothing about changing busses; when the other bus came that driver spoke a bit better English, but it still wasn't clear what was happening, since half the tour members, whom I thought were also staying in Selcuk, stayed on the bus.

One of the other tourists talked with the other driver and said it was okay, that the original bus was going off to a different town before returning to Selcuk, a detour of about 25 km. I was still suspicious, but the bus did go to Selcuk. When we entered Selcuk, well after 8, we turned off the highway about 3 short blocks from my B&B, and I made the mistake of not asking to be let off there. They stopped a few blocks on in front of another guest house, then the driver took me around about half the town before stopping, in a street on the back side of Alihan's - I had to walk just as far as if I had got off with the others, but got there about 20 minutes later. I was pretty ticked, and very glad I did not contribute to the tip for the guide. I felt much better after a bit of food and a glass of beer. The tour was quite good, actually, but getting there and back was rather too much of a hassle.

This morning, April 15, I got up early, as usual. After breakfast I toured the small but interesting museum, that includes several items from the ":slope houses" in Ephesus. There was no-one there to sell tickets either when I arrived or whgen I left; they let me tour the place without paying. After that I walked back up to the castle above St. Jean's, and a couple of entrepreneurial little boys showed me a way to climb through the fence, so I got to see the castle after all, albeit rather illegally. The older boy asked for 10 lira each, but I gave him only 10 and said he'd have to share. I probably should have given him only 5, but it was rather interesting.

The trip back to the airport was much easier then the trip from the airport - I actually had a seat, and the schedule is such that I only arrived an hour and a half ahead of my flight, maybe a little extra, but not a long wait really.