28 September 2003 Sunday - Perge/Aspendos - 86 Photos

Today we drove around the Antalya area and saw the various Roman ruins. We started out at the ruins of Aspendos where we saw a huge Roman Stadium.

The best part of the day was when we visited the ruins of Perge,

a huge Roman city

that had a nice Roman bath,

with hollow floors (for steam) that were exposed.

It also had shops, towers and so forth. Mete gave us good lectures about each site we visited, and there was a lot to talk about, including the basic design that almost all Roman cities follow. Perge was very impressive for its size and quality, even in the light of our earlier trips to both Rome and Greece.

As we walked down the Agora, I noticed a tortoise walking around the ruins. I thought that was very cool, so I took a few pictures of it. I like turtles and tortoises.

Mete is always telling us tales of his more interesting exploits. Today, he told us about giving a tour to a blind man! The blind man would ask him to describe what he saw, and Mete would say things like, "We are standing in front of a ruined city. All around are pieces of carved rock, fallen columns and the remains of two large stone towers."

Then we saw the Roman Theater of Aspendos

which had cool corridors on the inside.

Next, we saw the remains of a large three-level Roman aqueduct,

and afterward, we went to lunch overlooking a river, and we sat for a very long time talking politics with a Canadian couple who were traveling on their own. They own their own business. It was very pleasant.

Then Mete took us to the Archaeology museum, where they had the bones of more unfortunate dudes buried in peculiar clay pots.

Apparently, the display was from a society where they buried the dead inside big clay pots. The museum also had some early Christian icons of Mary

and Jesus

that were pretty cool. The museum also had a collection of ancient Roman coffins that had beautiful stone carvings.

Oh, and I've got some bad news: Christmas is dead. This museum had bones from the real Saint Nicholas. I guess he isn't so jolly anymore.

We had Mete's company the entire day, even though we were only scheduled to have him half the day. So we think that Mete is being very good to us and giving us special care.

We walked around some more, this time with more confidence, taking pictures of Hadrian's Gate

and some of the locals, particularly, an old man who was obviously putting in long, hard hours as a shoe shine. I felt sorry for the poor guy and gave him some money to take his picture.

Then we walked all over-Ataturk Avenue-trying to find a restaurant called The Hisar. On the way, we stopped at a park and talked to some friendly teenage kids. We took a picture of a cool looking minaret.

Finally, we found the restaurant. It took a long time to find it, but we finally did. We ordered shrimp casserole and "fried shrimp" which turned out to be shrimp cooked in a kind of tomato salsa. It was very good. We were pretty happy with the Hisar restaurant.