Orient Palace Hotel Alanya

Day 53<br><br>Not much to say today. I was pretty lazy for some reason and did not leave the hotel until 11am. Someone else had borrowed the hotel bicycle so I had to get the local bus out to Anemurium ('place of the winds') to see the ancient ruins built by the Byzantines. The city was founded in the 1st century AD but hit hard by an earthquake around 580. <br><br>Since it was 110 km / 3 hour ...

(English follows) <br>Nous avons fa&#305;t du raft&#305;ng dans la gorge de Kropulu. L'eau eta&#305;t bleue, bleue et bleue... et ple&#305;n de po&#305;ssons. Journee agreable passee en compagn&#305;e de nouveaux am&#305;s de Montreal, M&#305;chel et Suzanne avec qu&#305; on s'en va fa&#305;re ...

... schönen Halbrund die gute Akustik bei Konz**ten genießen. Von den Ruinen auf d** nahen Akropolis bietet sich ein weit** Blick üb** die Reste eines Stadions, und eine harmonische Landschaft aus Feld**n und Dörf**n vor ein** Hügelkette, die von den beeindruckenden Resten eines römischen Aquädukts durchschnitten w**den, samt Turmstationen für den Wass**druck, die alleine noch hi** **halten sind. "Allahu Acbar", so schallt zum Nachmittagsgebet d** Ruf d** Muezzine ...

... among others). According to our guide book Silifke is also known for the fact that Frederick Barbarossa died there. He drowned in the Goksu river while leading his troops on the third Crusade. Robert's history teacher at high school always told that he was thrown from his horse and fell into one of his sharp "tools of the trade", drowning is less glamorous for a warlord isn't it? Apart from birds and beautiful medieval castles, the Eastern ...

... no tours planned, just three days to relax. This gives us a chance to go through our photos and catch up on this blog. We also walk around the city and check it out. There are very few tourists in town and we are practically the only guests in the hotel. At an outdoor café, which atypically in a Muslim country had English bacon on the menu, we met a man and woman who are retired ex-pats: a man from England and a woman from Ireland. They have fallen in love with the place, but not ...

A quick consultation with our calendar confirms our worst fears - our year is rapidly coming to an end. We have less than three months to visit all of Europe, including our new change of plans. The original idea was to catch a ferry from Turkey to Greece, another from Greece to Italy and then tootle up through Italy and Austria to Slovakia. We are now planning to get to Slovakia through the back way. From Istanbul we'll go up through Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania ...

... were huge drops on these narrow parts where they had piled up sand to do the road at a later date. Damo's expert driving got us through and once we arrived in Alanya it was off for some drinks (only 2 each as $8 for a beer) before crashing at 2am. As it is really just a drinking place we didn't take any photos of Alanya. Alanya is a haven for Germans and Scandinavians ...

... open by the river. Ants and I chose the under the stars option and it was another relaxing evening playing with the puppies(tree house owners 4 fluffy wee things) and a couple of quiets after a scramble up the gorge. Yesterday was a drive day with only a short stop for lunch and a shop in Kos. We in Olympos now some more ruins and a relaxing day at the beach. Gotta fly so more latter Cy and Ants

... Tuesday mornýng headýng towards Anzac Cove to spend the nýght at the Banana Bar ýn tents on the shores of the Dardenalles or however you spell ýt. Next morn&#305;ng we had a gu&#305;ded tour of Gall&#305;pol&#305; wh&#305;ch was awesome to see w&#305;thout the crowds. From there we caught a ferry across the Dardenalles and then headed South to Troy to check out the ru&#305 ...

... is the only game in town during the summer, with a bunch of Aussies. This place is like no other. It's a pretty rustic place, yet you can tell that it's a complete meet market in the summer months. What I liked best about it was the fact that it lay at the base of a large rock mountain that they had illuminated with flood lights. Therefore, all you had to do was look up in this open air bar and see this majestic mountain looming over you. Kind of adds to the atmosphere. The next ...