29th June – Beysehir to Pamukkale

Today we have a 360 km drive to Pamukkale  and on the way we drive on some great MG roads & pass another lake, not quite as big as Beysehir Lake.

Our first stop today is at the ancient city of Sagalassos.   An associate of Tony’s, Mustafa, works with a couple of Turkish archaeological sites and he meets us here and introduces us to Peter who is a Belgium from the Leuven University in Belgium who are performing all of the archaeological work on the site.  His knowledge is amazing as he gives us the history of Sagalassos and explains each of the areas that we visit.  We start at the lower Agora ( market place & public square) with baths off to one side.

We walk up to the main fountain which is still working today with water from the mountains behind the site.  This is a magnificent area and would have had shops around the outside of the square.

We then walk to see a monument that would have been built by a prominent resident of the city.

We look over to the place where the ashes of the deceased were placed in the niches of the rock face.

We get a magnificent view down into the valley and up to the theatre.

We walk up to an upper fountain that has beautiful cold mountain water flowing into it so we can all refill our water bottles.

We then walk up to the next level where we visit the library with it’s lovely mosaic tiled floor.

Next We are shown a bakery and a dry cleaners.  The archaeologists found a big press that was used to press the clothes and the cold water fountain is just below them.

We then walk up to the theatre at the top of the city.  Peter, Tony & Mustafa pose for a photo at the theatre.

Mustafa provides us with a beautiful meatball & salad roll and a drink for our lunch that we eat while looking at the ruins.

Back on the road again we make our way to our hotel at Pamukkale and after we check in we meet our guide who leads us to visit the ancient city of Hierapolis which has the biggest Necropolis in Anatolia of some 1200 graves. There is also an impressive colonnade and theatre.

The temperature today is forecast for 42 so it’s very hot and we get some welcome respite from it when we visit Cleopatra’s pool and have a lemonade.

We visit the travertine pools which are made from the calcium deposits from the water as it flows down the face of the mountain.  They call this the cotton mountain as it’s really white which makes the water look very blue.

After our dinner we soak in one of the hot spring pools in our hotel and talk to another guest at the hotel who is the Chinese ambassador to Kenya who is holidaying in Turkey.