Saphir Konakli

Day 53

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.

Since it was 110 km / 3 hour ...

(English follows)
Nous avons faıt du raftıng dans la gorge de Kropulu. L'eau etaıt bleue, bleue et bleue... et pleın de poıssons. Journee agreable passee en compagnıe de nouveaux amıs de Montreal, Mıchel et Suzanne avec quı on s'en va faıre ...

... 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 ...

Two nights in Silifke We stayed in the Lades Motel in Silifke which is the best place to stay for birdwatchers who want to sample the 320 species in the Goksu Delta, www.ladesmotel.com is the website. The guy who runs it, Nurullah Cinar (the "C" should be with one of those appendices hanging underneath), already for more than 30 years, is a pleasant chap, he knows his birds. Many organisations use his motel as a starting point or as a stop on birding trips. He ...

... 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 ...

... Damo felt energetic and even swam out to the castle while I lay like a lazy whale on the beach! From Kizkalesi we headed along the coast road towards Alanya. Unfortunately the coastal road was slow as it wound it and out so we made a decision to head inland. Not the best decision ever made on our part. It took us 9 hours and part of the road wasn't sealed and ...

... Roman ruins and an equally large amount of touristy shops and restaurants. I didn't care much for the commercialism (although the bellydance outfits were a little bit better quality) but the ruins were awesome, and the only part I saw that charged admission (the Roman Theater) was 5 Turkish Lira. That's less than 4 dollars/3 Euros/2 Pounds. Compare that with 11 Euros a head to get into the ruins in Rome!

... 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

... Obvıously not much left but pretty cool seeıng ıt was 2500BC. From Troy we headed further down the coast and pulled ınto some forestry where we bush camped for the nıght. Today was a road trıp to Salcuk - we2re havıng dınner wıth a carpet shop owner and hıs wıfe whıch should be pretty cool. We're stayıng ı ...

... u cant buy anything. Now dont get me wrong - I love a bit of the unspoilt villages as much the next person but just in the right doses! Maybe thats just the city boy in me at heart. Antalya - great place to while away a carefree day. But I guess it must be the old Catholic guilt complex in me or my innate masochistic suffering tendencies that makes me question (on some level) what I achieved today. Part of my problem when travelling is that I always ...