Saturday, October 15, 2011

After yet another great Turkish breakfast (How will we wean ourselves off olives?!?), served  on the patio of our gorgeous hotel, we headed off for the ancient city of Aphrodisias.  A Turkish-born professor at NYU spent thirty years supervising and securing funding for the excavations of the site and the results are remarkable, indeed. Though there were prehistoric inhabitants 5,000 years ago, the evidence of their lives remain buried under mounds near the remarkable structures left by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and mediaeval inhabitants.  An enormous 30,000-seat arena, 

beautiful marble city council chamber that was constructed by a mini-theater, Roman bath complex, two agoras, 7,000-seat amphitheater, and remarkable Sebastion (pantheon to Roman emperors and mythological gods and goddesses) made it easy for us to imagine life in this city.  The fabulous gateway arch and Temple of Aphrodite were standouts.  Just trying to envision how the temple was converted to a Christian church in the early sixth century (requiring rearranging and moving the pillars!), was mind-boggling.  With the excellent museum containing first-class displays of some of the finds from the site, Aphrodisias  is an easy addition to our favorite ancient cities list.

 

 

Our destination tonight was the Aegean coast at Kusadasi, and our room faces the harbor in the very lively downtown area. This city is the port used by cruise ships with tourists headed to Ephesus.  The city sprawls, with high rise apartments and houses covering every bit of land on the approaches to the old town.  On the outskirts, there were scores of unfinished apartment towers – a testament, I suppose, to the economic downturn that has affected European holiday visitors, with whom this area is very popular.  We walked along the waterfront after our arrival, and then relaxed on our seafront balcony before going out to dinner in the old town.  We enjoyed pide (Turkish pizza) in a popular family-run restaurant, where most of the diners seemed to be local and know each other.  A walk around town after dinner, which seems to be one endless bazaar/bar, gave us the impression that this is a town that never sleeps.

With less than a week left on our trip, it feels like time for a few random observations

• All over the country, homes, hotels, commercial buildings, and high-rise apartments are all topped by hot water tanks attached to solar panels.  So, how come it works here and we’re not doing it on any great scale in the Great American Southwest??
• The country is served by an extensive network of buses and dolmuses (vans) that connect towns, small and large.  Each town has an otogar, or bus station, and it’s not uncommon to see people waiting by the roadside in the middle of nowhere for their transport into and between towns.
•  On toll roads, if you don’t have the local equivalent of an electronic Easy Pass, it’s possible to use a smart card, which can be purchased at banks and gas stations and pre-loaded with funds.  Just tap the card at the freeway entry and exit and the appropriate toll is deducted. There are no tool booths that take cash and to get on the road you have to prove you have an Easy Pass or Smart Card.
• Turkish roads are, for the most part, very good; Turkish drivers – not so much.  Posted speed limits, STOP (DUR) signs, and red lights are purely ornamental; they seem to have no effect on drivers’ behavior, whatsoever! Well they usually stop for red lights but not always and never for stop signs. In addition to the precipitous cutting in and out of lanes that is the norm, making left turns from right lanes and vice versa is an all-too-common practice.  The fact that Turkey has one of the world’s highest rates of traffic accidents comes as no surprise to us!