Days 43-47: Kusadasi

It's not often that you find yourself on vacation thinking, "Hmm, this kind of reminds me of the time I was on vacation in... blah blah blah.", only to realize that you were thinking of a time earlier in the same vacation. Yes, that's how long I've been on vacation. When I arrived at the port city of Kusadasi, nestled around its picturesque bay along the blue waters of the Mediterranean, I thought of my adventures in Mallorca. It felt like a lifetime ago when I was in Mallorca. While Cappadocia was up in the mountains and getting rather cold this time of year, Kusadası was still basking in warm summer weather. Very popular as a cruise ship port, Kudasaki is the perfect home base for exploring Turkey's Aegean coast. Former home to Greek and Roman civilizations, Turkey's coast boasts a treasure trove of ancient ruins and Wonders of the Ancient World.

My first stop was the ruins of Hierapolis near the city of Pamukkale. The ruins are nice, but the main reason to visit the town are the thermal mineral springs nearby. The springs are famous for being rich in calcium, and over hundreds of years, flowed over the hillsides and formed spectacular formations called "cotton castles" that look like snow drifts in the middle of the desert. Nearby the cotton castles, there is an "antique pool" where you can swim among the ruins of Greek columns. They say that the waters have amazing healing powers, but the only thing they seemed to do for me was lighten my wallet about $10. Still, it's something you should do if you come all the way to Turkey.

The most famous ruins near Kusadasi are the ruins of Ephesus, once the capital of the region during the height of Greek civilization. Amazingly, the city was once a port but is now about 20km inland due to silt deposited by the Maeander River (the Büyük Menderes River in Turkish), the very river from which we get the term "meandering". The travel agency also arranged tours for me to visit Priene, Mileto, Didyma and Pergamon. At the time, it sounded like a good idea, but I quickly discovered that the human brain only has capacity for so many ancient ruins.

The middle of October is the low season for most of Turkey, and tourism really drops off sharply. While my days were spent on tours to the aforementioned sites, my nights were spent meandering (hehe, gotta use it, right?) around a mostly deserted Kusadasi. Despite that fact, I still managed to run into an Australian couple that I met in Cappadocia. Small world.