Olympos

We stayed in Cirali, and we kept hearing that the ruins of Olympos were walking distance from our hotel, just down the beach. Well, while the beach was beautiful, it was hell for walking -- very deep, whether rocks or sand, exhausting to walk on without snowshoes -- and we couldn't get any information about other ways to find it. When we pulled into Cirali, we had seen a tiny little yellow sign with an arrow, pointing to Olympos. It was faded and didn't look all that helpful, but it was all we had. So on our last full day in Cirali, we drove to the parking lot at the entrance to Cirali, and took off on foot.

see what I mean? THAT is the sign to Olympos!!

this giant boulder is right on the beach; as you round it (coming from our hotel), there you are at Olympos. I absolutely love this giant boulder. I wonder who all has walked through the opening.

these ruins are just on the beach -- no idea what they were.

this was a church, with mosaic floors

architecture and ruins aren't really Marc's thing, as they are mine, but he really enjoyed the water and aqueducts. I enjoyed him enjoying them.

OK: to orient you. That's the Mediterranean in the distance, Olympos is behind me as I took the shot. I don't know what that ruin is in the foreground of the photo, but it was at the beach entrance to Olympos, so maybe a gate?

ah -- here's the mosaic floor I mentioned in the photo above, the one with me in it

I absolutely ADORE this sarcophagus. There's a story written on the face, in Greek of course, something about the ship taking the dead person. And the sun above.....Helios, I assume. Helios, who adored his cattle, if you believe The Odyssey.

Another sarcophagus -- this one was for one of the top guys in Olympos. Sorry not to be more precise. :)

Antimachos' sarcophagus -- enlarge the photo below, to read about it:

the Roman Temple gate - pretty tall and impressive!

no idea what this was -- but what a magnificent setting, right?

if you enlarge this, you can read about Olympos

It was an absolutely perfect day to do this exploring; the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was warm, but with a cool breeze. The ruins were in such a beautiful setting, it's easy to imagine the city that was once here. Marc was so patient, exploring all the old stuff with me.....it's definitely not his bag, but it's mine and I loved seeing it.

Apparently there are several different Mount Olymposes scattered around this part of Turkey and Greece; of course Mount Olympos was the home of the Gods -- Zeus, Ares, that whole gang -- so that just added another layer of pleasure to it, for me. On the flight to/from Turkey, and while we were there, I read The Odyssey and just loved it so much more than usual. The legend is that this Mount Olympos is where Poseidon stood when he threw the giant storm at Odysseus as he left Calypso's lair, enraged because Odysseus blinded his son, the Cyclops. We didn't go see Chimaera, the mountain with fire coming out, because it was a pain to get to and we heard that the fires are minimal now, and that there are loads of tourists there, but its presence gave another layer of imagination to how the ancient Greeks and Romans lived in this beautiful place.

Myra

the pretty little seaside town of Kumluca

Since we have this car, we took a roadtrip yesterday, down to Kale. Kale is the original home of Saint Nicholas (who knew!), but we went because of the ruins. It was a nice little drive down the coast, and since it was Friday, all the Turkish families were out having picnics. Friday is the holy day, and it seems to be what families do. They're big ordeals, with lots of cooking gear. One thing I'll always remember about Turkey is how much they love their flag; as a Texan, any people who love their flag feel like my tribe in some way. We read that you can be imprisoned for saying bad things about the flag or Ataturk. Anyway -- the abundance of flags in the photo above are just so Turkey.

the flag is even painted on the rock, on the side of this mountain

and they don't have ratty old rugs hanging over the balcony -- look at those gorgeous Turkish rugs!

Anyway, one of the things to see in Kale is the Lycian rock tombs at Myra. They're among Turkey's finest mountainside tomb ruins, and there is also a pretty sweet ancient Greco-Roman amphitheater. There were scores of giant tourbuses carrying German and Russian tourists (and, by the way, the town is pretty heavily Russian for some reason....more signs were in Russian than Turkish, it seemed!). Still, the site is so large it never felt too crowded to see what we wanted to see:

Three smiling faces -- well, I'm smiling anyway.

crawling around behind the theater

oops! Out of order.....we stopped along the side of the road for this beautiful panorama shot. So this is en route to Kale.

gorgeous stone carvings

here's a panorama shot I stitched together

but this also shows the theater

These honeycomb Lycian rock tombs. The dead were buried in these tombs up on the side of the mountain so they'd be closer to heaven. As Marc pointed out, it's not really all that much closer.

 but here, you can see their placement. there were others above the amphitheater too.

We didn't stop to see the St Nicholas museum in Kale, but we did stop at a little restaurant for lunch, and had Turkish pizza which was really great. It's shaped like a football -- oblong, pointed on both ends, and the edges are slightly folded over the filling, which is a kind of ground meat and spicy business. It's really good. When we asked the restaurant guy if he had an English menu, he smiled and said he's the English menu. We had a table on the sidewalk, and he walked me indoors to the food, and just described each item to me. It was sweet, and I liked him a lot.

Later we scouted out the location of Chimaera, the fire mountain, and had a nice little dinner, with Alanis Morissette as the soundtrack. Marc told the waiter that we're Canadian, so he seemed especially smiley as he asked us if we knew who was singing. We went back to that restaurant a couple of times, and the waiter always told us about the other Canadians who'd been there -- the night before, earlier that day. He was funny, and very nice, and seemed to enjoy talking to people. He told us he'd read something in the newspaper about how Canadians are the 3rd happiest people in the world, with Sweden ranked first. I asked where Turkey was ranked and he frowned, and said it was very low on the list, and he didn't know why. He launched into his philosophy of happiness, I think; I couldn't understand much of what he was saying, though I wanted to. He smiled, and I really liked him a lot.