Tag: Pamukkale

A Short Break In Turkey, Placeholder & Links, 8 to 18 November 1995

There’s not a great deal of written material on this short trip to Turkey, which Janie and I enjoyed very much.

I have now, however, written up the holiday as best I can as an eight-part piece, starting with the Istanbul leg of the trip – click here or below:

A Short Visit To Turkey Part One: Two Full Days In Istanbul, 8 to 11 November 1995

Janie’s diary (see above) confirms how we flew out from Heathrow to Istanbul on 8 November and had arranged to be met at the airport and taken to our first hotel, the Sokullu Paşa Hotel.

It also shows that we booked a flight to Izmir lunchtime 11 November, with the Avis desk awaiting us there.

Our flights back to Heathrow on 18 November were 10:00 Izmir to Istanbul, then 13:45 to Heathrow arriving London at 16:00 GMT.

We had not arranged any accommodation for the Izmir week; we were playing it by ear on a fly-drive holiday. Seems fair enough in November, frankly.

Part of our purpose was to see Ros Elliot (who lived/lives near Izmir) and her plans were a bit up in the air, so booking ourselves up ahead of time would have been a bit daft.

There’s a good album of well-labelled photos – which you can already view – click here or below:

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A

From those photo labels and memory, I’ll write up the whole trip, hopefully before the end of February 2021.

A Short Visit To Turkey Part Six: Pamukkale To Fethiye Via Aphrodisias, 15 November 1995

Not yet sated with antiquities, we diverted to Aphrodisias ahead of driving to Fethiye for a bit of seaside towards the end of our trip.

We popped in to the Aphrodisias Museum before touring the site
You can just make out a tiny me in the theatre (above) and the odeum (below)
The ruined temple at Aphrodisias (above) and gymnasium (below)

The highlight of Aphrodisias, for me, was the exceptionally well-preserved stadium – see picture below and headline picture.

Janie was probably a bit “antiquitied -out” by the time we got to Aphrodisias, but that was OK because we were done with antiquities for this holiday. It was seaside from then on.

We hit the road from Aphrodisias to Fethiye

We weren’t going to make the same “arrive after dark mistake again and got to Fethiye in good time.

We found a comfortable, simple place to stay and an equally comfortable, simple place to eat tasty Turkish grub.

You can probably tell from these pictures that Fethiye – indeed the whole of that Aegean coast, was not exactly busy in November.

All the pictures from that holiday (just one or two from Aphrodisias and Fethiye are not shown in this piece) can be viewed on Flickr – click here or below.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A

A Short Visit To Turkey Part Five: A Morning At Leisure In Pamukkale, 15 November 1995

Swimming among the ruins at the Pamukkale Hotel

Writing more than 25 years later, I sense that Pamukkale has changed and become more resort/touristic than it was when we visited.

We stayed in a motel named The Palmyra Motel, I think at Ros’s recommendation.

The rooms in the Palmyra hotel had balconies onto pools of Pamukkale spa water

We enjoyed the facilities in our motel and also went into the centre of town to enjoy the sights…

…and even a swim amongst the Pamukkale ruins; something visitors were allowed to do for a small fee (paid to the Pamukkale Hotel) in those days.

This would not go down well with the health and safety brigade these days, I fear

The view from our motel into Pamukkale town

This was a memorable part of this holiday. We wished that we had allowed two nights at that motel to allow time to wallow in the views and wallow in the spa.

But instead we headed off around midday.

All the pictures from that holiday (just one or two from Pamukkale are not shown in this piece) can be viewed on Flickr – click here or below.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A

A Short Visit To Turkey Part Four: From Çanakkale To Pamukkale Via Troy, 14 November 1995

A rather unconvincing wooden Trojan Horse monument at Troy

We knew we were in for a long drive from Çanakkale to Pamukkale that day, but still wanted to see Troy before setting off on the longest leg of our road trip.

Having been spoilt the previous few days…

In truth, after Ephesus and Pergamon the previous couple of days, Troy was rather a disappointment.

…the ruins of Troy didn’t really hack it for us. View from the fake Trojan Horse

Troy has been built, razed and rebuilt many times, possibly not always in exactly the same place. There’s not a lot to see and it all seemed a bit confused/confusing/unconvincing. The wooden horse thing depicted above was a particular source of my de4rision on the day.

Excavated bridge into on of the old city’s was probably the highlight

Then the long drive to Pamukkale. It was billed as being over six hours and my goodness that’s what it took. We shared the driving and/but needed the odd pit stop, so we were really quite nervous towards the end of the drive as we realised that we had failed to get to our destination before dark and would be driving the last 45 minutes or so in darkness.

But get there we did. I think Ros had recommended the place we stayed and by gosh that was relaxing and fun. But that’s for the next write up.

Here and below is a link to all the photographs we took on that trip to Turkey, although, as it happens, all four from Troy have found their way into the above piece.

023 The Great Library and stuff at Ephesus T_1995_G1_Photo32_30A