Travel Journal

2002-10-29

Konya

When we got back on the bus, the driver (Rafet) told me I was beautiful (beautiful happens to be one of the 8 words of Turkish I know) -- I think he liked the head scarf. :-)

We didn't spend much time in Konya, but I thought it was interesting -- it reminded me of western european cities somehow.

After the Mevlana Rumi mausoleum/museum, we headed out for the long drive across the mountains to Antalya, during which we ran across two goat herds -- we stopped to photograph one of them, and it turned out that the family was on their way back from spending 4 months in the mountains with their goats. They used to be nomads, but have now settled in a village. The other goat herd was particularly spectacular because they were actually walking in the road, and two of the rams were fighting! We were disappointed when one of the shepherds broke up the fight.

The scenery on the drive was spectacular -- for a while it reminded me of the hills in California wine country, north of San Francisco, but as we got higher up, gray rock and evergreens predominated.

We arrived in Antalya relatively early in the evening, and walked a short distance to Pensione Navona with our luggage. I had a very lazy evening -- the only productive thing I did was fix the pants of a fellow tour member; mostly I read a book (I'd gotten to the exciting part on the bus). John and I did go out for dinner, where the manager of the restaurant sat down with us for quite a while -- we discussed the vagaries of the stock market, the similarities between the Argentine financial situation and that of Turkey, and other more frivolous subjects (he asserted that his 7-year old son was following in his footsteps as a casanova)."

Tomb of Mevlana Rumi

Goatherding Family

A wet day

Because October 29 is the day of the founding of the republic (similar to the 4th of July in the US), we detoured on our way to the docks to see the parade. Every school sends a group to march in the parade, so we saw lots of kids in school uniforms, as well as several military units. Lisa bought paper flags for everyone, and a larger cloth flag for herself, which she loaned to Lale. Lale seemed very excited about the whole thing, and waved the flag enthusiastically. Flags were flying everywhere -- over the streets, from the windows and balconies of the buildings, etc. I was also particularly impressed by the way the Ataturk statue had been decorated -- there were round "shields" surrounding it that appeared to be from various political parties and other groups.

After we were done at the parade, we headed down to the harbor, where we got on our boat, the Kral S. We spent the next several hours sailing in the mediterranean, stopping twice for a swim (John and I only swam the first time). John particularly enjoyed diving off the boat into the water, while I settled for jumping off once to get in initally. Lunch was served on the boat, and since it was Phyllis' birthday, the rice and pasta had "Happy Birthday Phyllis" written on them in tomato sauce and mayonnaise.

We got off the boat around 2:45 in the afternoon and met the bus for the ride back to the pensione. John and I opted to get off the bus at the Antalya Museum, which contains a tremendous collection of roman artifacts found at Perge, along with smaller collections of items from other periods. There is even a section of Christian icons, and relics of St. Nicholas. The museum has motion detectors in front of many of the exhibits, and the lights don't turn on for that item until the motion detector senses that someone is present. In the roman section, there were a very large number of statues, including gods, emperors, and ordinary mortals. I thought it was quite interesting that all of statues of Emperor Hadrian depicted him with a lithe physique, while all of the statues of Emperor Trajan showed a more solid build. The coin exhibit was also very interesting, in that it traced the development of coinage over a long period of time.

We walked back from the museum, and then waited for Pete and Scott to get back from their haircut experience, and for Silje and Lisa to get back from having manicures and pedicures. Unfortunately, Pete had started to feel sick by this time, so the rest of us went to the Turkish bath without him. I don't know if I've ever felt as clean in my life as I felt after the Turkish bath. I got the extra added bonus of an attendant who sang the whole time, in the domed marble room. Even though it's definitely not something I would have done on my own, I'm glad the tour included this experience!"

Antalya

Antalya Archaeological Museum