Sunday 30 January 2022
Our hotel was directly opposite the lower, southern entrance to the Travertines of Pamukkale, but the hotel owner advised us to get a taxi to the eastern gate. Visitors have to remove their shoes and socks to walk in the thermal pools, so if you enter and exit via the southern entrance, you need to remove your shoes and socks twice. At the time, this made perfect sense to us, although we decided to walk to the eastern entrance rather than get a taxi.
Friday 28 January 2022
Afew miles outside of Selçuk is the ancient city of Ephesus. One of the largest Roman archaeological sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Visitors can walk up Harbor street from the old harbour to the Great Theatre and try to imagine a twenty-four thousand capacity crowd sitting on the marble seats entertained by performers on the stage.
Thursday 27 January 2022
After we visited the Basilica Of Saint John, I popped into a Tourist Information office to see if it would be possible to walk to Ephesus from Selçuk. After much discussion with the staff about why we would want to do such a bizarre thing as walk, the nice man in the information office took out a tourist map and drew the best route to walk there on the map.
Wednesday 26 January 2022
We caught the morning train to Selçuk, arriving around 12:30 pm. When we stepped down from the train, the first thing we noticed was the remains of a Byzantine Aqueduct crossing the square in front of the station and an old fortress overlooking the town from a nearby hill.
Tuesday 25 January 2022
I wanted to go to Bergama. I really wanted to go to Bergama to see the ancient city of Pergamon. I spent an hour going back and forth between the bus companies in Çanakkale but only had limited success. Two of the companies would drop us off a the Bergama Bus Station on their way to Izmir, but none of them would pick us up from Bergama a few days later from the same bus station. They all just said it was not possible.
Sunday 23 January 2022
Today was a travel day. We needed to get a Taxi to the Greater Istanbul Bus Station (Esenler Otogarı) and then buy a ticket for Çanakkale. It had snowed again overnight, this time more heavily, and we didn’t think the Taxis would be able to get down the steep, narrow and now icy streets. That meant we had to walk up them to the main road, which we did slowly and carefully.