Venus Hotel Pamukkale

From Selçuk we headed to Pamukkale to see the geothermal hot springs and the large travertine pools. After being on the road for a couple of hours our bus blew a tire. Fortunately this happened in a small town and we were immediately escorted off of the bus and our driver found a shop to get us some tea (Turkish stress relief). We waited for about 45 minutes before a young teenager (Turkey's version of road side assistance - CAA/AAA) appeared on a bicycle carrying a large jack, pry bar, and s...

He Said: We reluctantly left our guesthouse in Pamukkale yesterday morning. The people who ran the Venus Hotel were unbelievably helpful and gracious. Actually, our experience with pretty everyone we have encountered in Turkey has been glowingly positive. People here have been universally warm, cordial, and helpful and really made our experience in this nation easy and pleasant. Our destination at the end of our smoky three-hour bus ride (which I'll leave to Katie tell you about) was the city...

After a fairly uncomfortable night's sleep at Ali's Pension we went downstairs to an even more uncomfortable breakfast, again feeling like interlopers in the family home. At checkout they tried to do some creative exchange rates with the Lira to the Euro (which is what they had quoted me in). The amount in Euros I was quoted should have exchanged to about 65 lira, but I was asked to pay 75 lira. I had outsmarted this though (I had expected some sort of trick like this) and I had the exact amo...

We got up really early one mornıng to see the sıghts of Paumkkale before we headed off to selcuk that afternoon. Tom was wıth us stıll after we had been shadowıng each others trıp from ıstanbul to Goreme to Olympos and fınally to Pamukkale too. We all clımbed the Travertınes (the famous terraced whıte pools you see on postcards whıch are made from calcıum and or lıme ın the water I thınk) bare foot of course so as not to damage the surface, theyre a lot bıgger than I fırst thought and we spen...

Packed up the car and said goodbye to everyone at Hotel Bella and headed east. We are now driving through flat, wide valleys between huge old mountain ranges - we had not realised just how mountainous Turkey is! And because the mountains are so old and eroded, the valleys are flat and clearly very fertile - there are garden plots and fields of crops all over these valley floors. All they need is water, which we've been told is plentiful as artesian water - cos there's certainly no surface wat...