Turkey 2026 - Day 13 Selçuk

Today, we have a free day. We discover that there is an Ephesus museum only a few blocks from our hotel and we decide to visit it. But before that, we go back to the art gallery. Like the gallery in Cappadocia, the Turkish government supports their business by paying for the shipping, tariffs and taxes on qualified purchases. We know that there is typically a minimum purchase that meets these requirements, but when I ask what the minimum is, the salesman does not understand what I am asking. When we go to pay for our purchase, there is some back-and-forth between the cashier and the salesman and then the salesman tells us that the purchase is too little money for the government to reimburse them for shipping. He says that it is usually items that are 34 cm or larger (our item is 30 cm). We ask whether they would be able to ship them if we bought two that were the same size. He says that this would be acceptable. That sets us off on a search through the gallery that we both like. It takes a while, but we find another mosaic that we like. For the final step of purchase, the salesman asks if he can take a picture of us with our purchases. He says that this is encouragement and motivation for the artists whose creations are sold here. How could we resist?

The Ephesus Archeological Museum is just down the hill from our hotel. This beautiful museum opened in 1964 and was built to house the most important discoveries uncovered during the excavations at Ephesus that had not already been "stolen" by European museums. Here is what I mean. From 1867 when large-scale excavations began at Ephesus until 1905, artifacts discovered were moved to the British Museum in London and from 1905-1923, all additional artifacts discovered were moved to the Ephesos Museum in Vienna. It was only in 1923 when the Turkish government said "no more" and prohibited additional artifacts from leaving the country. In 1929, Selçuk became a storage depot for the more recent artifacts discovered and eventually, the pile of stuff became so big that they needed a larger place to store and display them. Here are some of the more interesting pieces that I saw:

You might think that the statue on the right of the second row doesn't look very Roman. You might even think it looks kind of Egyptian - and you would be right. Part of Ephesus' heyday was during the time when Augustus Caesar was the Roman emperor and Cleopatra and general Marc Anthony were an item. As such, the Egyptians were held in high regard and to show their respect, a temple to the Egyptian gods was erected in Ephesus.

It is getting toward lunchtime and during our search for a place to eat, we come across this clever piece of art:

We finally find a place on the top of the hill above our hotel. This place is an old estate that is part restaurant/part gallery/part hotel. I am particularly struck by the old door mounted on one of the walls:

Our waiter is a Kurdish guy from eastern Türkiye who speaks excellent English. He tells us that the owner of the estate now lives in Los Angeles where their other gallery is located. Unlike most of this trip, there is a dog, instead of a cat, sleeping under our table. There is also a very nice view of the Isa Bey Mosque:

Since we have been overfed at every meal, we decide to only order mese, but when they bring six of them plus bread, it is still too much! After lunch, Chris and Mark want to visit their gallery. Beth joins them while I go back to the hotel to work on this blog. While there, Beth is able to take a video of the dramatic color change that happens with a silk rug when you turn it around:

Pretty cool, don't you think?! They clearly have to take this effect into account when coming up with the design.

Back at the hotel, we sit down in the patio with a nice bottle of wine. Then we decide to go back to the same restaurant for dinner. We confuse our waiter by ordering three dishes to share between four people, but this is just the right amount of food!

Tomorrow, we are off to Ephesus. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 12 Antalya to Selçuk

When we set up this trip, we discussed how to get from Antalya to Selçuk, which is the closest town to the ancient city of Ephesus on the Aegean coast of western Türkiye. We finally decided that it would take less overall time if we road in a van for 5 hours than to take the 30 min ride to the Antalya airport, check in and fly to Izmir, and then take another hour in a van to get to Selçuk. So, after a final breakfast in the garden, we say goodbye to the kittens, haul our bags back downstairs, and meet our driver from two days ago for the ride to Selçuk. With him is a young woman wearing a hijab, the head covering worn by practicing Muslims. She tells us that she is the daughter of the driver and she is along to keep him company (and awake) for the 5 hr drive back to Antalya after we are dropped off.

I don't have any pictures from the drive because it was, frankly, not very interesting. We retraced part of our path from two days ago and then turned northwestward up the one valley that goes in that direction through the Taurus mountains. The mountains are pretty enough, but when we go over the pass, we find ourselves on a high plateau with almost no trees. There must be plenty of wind because there are giant windmills along the ridgeline.

After a couple hours of this, we start gradually descending. The air is getting more humid and we start to see some trees. We stop at a rest area that is very similar to what you would see on an American interstate highway and resist the urge to buy one of the dozen or so choices of baklava that they have for sale.

Finally, we make it to our hotel which is on top of a hill up a dead-end street barely wide enough for our van to navigate. I'm really glad I'm not the one driving! Our hotel appears to be an old estate. There are two main buildings separated by a courtyard and a pool. There is an outdoor bar where you can get a bottle of wine or a diet coke whenever you want and all of the common areas are covered with Turkish rugs.

Since we have been sitting all day, we decide to go out for a walk. Just down the hill from our hotel are the ruins of the Isa Bey Hamam:

The bathhouse was likely constructed in the late 14th century CE at the same time as the Isa Bey Mosque just down the street. That makes it one of the newer ruins in this town! Across the street, we notice this:

This appears to be connected to the art gallery down the street. We stop in, are greeted by a salesman/geologist and are invited to view their art. We see vases similar to the one that we bought in Istanbul, other sorts of pots and lots of mosaics. This area has a long history of Roman rule so the mosaics are what we are most drawn to. Beth sees one with a tree-of-life motif in the earth tones that dominate our house. One of our defense mechanisms to spending money is to put off any purchase until the next day. We weren't able to do that in Istanbul (not that we regret that purchase), but we've got two more days here, so we tell the salesman that we will be back tomorrow. Before we go, the salesman presents a sack of ceramic evil eyes amulets in a wide variety of colors and asks us to pick 5 each as gifts. Known as naẓars, these amulets are supposed to protect the wearer from an evil eye - a sort of malevolent stare, usually inspired by envy. 

Across the street from the gallery is the Isa Bey Mosque, built in the late fourteenth century CE. The mosque is not very photogenic, but just up the hill from it we see this:

This is the western wall of the Basilica of Saint John the Theologian. We will be back here in two days, so I'll say more about it then, but it is reputed to be where the apostle John was originally buried.

On the other side of the hill close to the downtown area, we get a view of an old aqueduct built during the Byzantine period and the Ayasuluk Citadel behind it:

The citadel was built in the 7th and 8th century CE by the Byzantines to protect the area from Arab raids. It is mostly constructed of material scavenged from nearby Ephesus. It also appears (from the nests) that they have storks here, at least in the summertime!

All this walking up and down hills is making us hungry. We had passed a restaurant back near the mosque, so we reverse our path to get back to it. As usual, there is way too much food, but it is all delicious and we head back to the hotel happy.

Tomorrow, we have a free day before ending our vacation at Ephesus. Enjoy!

Turkey 2026 - Day 11 Antalya

We have a free day today, and as nice as it would be to just lounge in the garden soaking up sunshine, we decide to go visit the lower Duden waterfall where the Duden river flows into the Mediterranean.

After breakfast, we ask the hotel clerk to call us a taxi to avoid being scammed and in short order, a rather beaten-up yellow cab arrives for the 20 min ride to the waterfall. The driver doesn't speak much English but wants to know where we are from. When we tell him that we are from the US, he has only two things to say - he wants to know what we think of Trump, and he complains about the cost of fuel in Türkiye - a place that already has high inflation.

After a ride along the coast, he pulls over and points us in the general direction of the Mediterranean. Fortunately, we can hear the sound of rushing water and see a big sign that says Duden Park - we must be in the right place! As we walk closer to the water, we see this statue:

This is Plancia Magna of Perge, an ancient Roman city about 10 miles inland from Antalya. Magna's father was a Roman Senator and provincial governor in the early 2nd century CE. As an adult, Magna was a politician and religious leader. She was also a euergetes, which is a Greek title meaning philanthropist, and she financed many of the building projects in Perge with her own money. This portrait sculpture was found during excavations in Perge and is sitting in this spot as an example showing the level to which women could rise during the Roman Empire. Nice!

You can just see the waterfall in the background of the picture above, but here are a couple of better pictures including some crazies who really want to get up-close-and-personal with these very nice waterfalls:

We walk upstream a little way and find that in the summer; they also have zip lines and river rafting (which ends at a very serious metal fence to avoid anyone going over the falls). But now that it isn't tourist season, it is just a nice nature setting in a pretty urban place:

You can just see a blue walkway in the upper left of this picture. We go to check it out and find that the city has both a bike path and walkway along the coast back toward the old town. Even better, the walking surface is spongy, so it is less bad on our old joints! It is about a 6-mile walk back to the hotel. We decide that if we get tired, we can always stop and get a taxi back to the hotel, but I have a feeling that once we start, we will stubborn our way to the end.

I am right, but for much of the route, we are walking through various city parks. We stop once for a snack and a second time for gelato, so we aren't too worn out by the time we get back to an area that we recognize. It also puts us in the right place to try to get a good sunset picture. This time, we are rewarded:

We enjoyed the restaurant last night so much that we went back a second time. Almost all of the waiters are in their 50's or above and I have a feeling that these are the grandsons of the restaurant founder.

After dinner, there is one more place that I want to get some pictures of; Hadrian's Gate:

Constructed to commemorate Hadrian's visit to Antalya in 130 CE, it was later incorporated into the walls surrounding the city and its harbor. The bottom part of the tower that you can see to the right of the gate was built in Roman times, but the top part was rebuild in the thirteenth century CE while the Persians controlled the city. For many centuries, the gate was built into the city walls and not used. It was only rediscovered in the 1950's when the city wall collapsed and was restored in 1959.

Our trip is coming to an end. Tomorrow, we have a long van ride to the town of Selçuk, which is the closest town to the ancient city of Ephesus. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 10 Antalya

November 1 - I'm writing today with a heavy heart. It was announced on Friday that a pair of Turkish newlyweds and a French woman were killed in the collapse of one of the fairy chimneys at the Göreme Open‑Air Museum that we visited on Day 7. Five other people were injured. The authorities believe that the structure was weakened by recent heavy rains. While this is just part of the erosional processes that created the fairy chimneys in the first place, it is still a tragedy. I hope that this will encourage the authorities to inspect the fairy chimney sites that are open to visitors more often.

Today, we are going back into Lycian history. The Lycians were peoples that occupied the Leke peninsula directly to the west of Antalya. Beginning in the 14-15th century BCE, Lycian culture continued until they were conquered by the Persians in 546 BCE and later by the Roman Empire under Alexander the Great. Under the Romans, there was a sort of home-rule of Lycia by the Lycian League. This was an early attempt at establishing a federation under republican principles of government. These principles came to the attention of the framers of the US Constitution and particularly James Madison.

Our drive to the Leke peninsula begins with a ride alongside Güllük Mountain National Park and get a good view of the Taurus mountains which make up the interior of the peninsula:

Our first stop is the ancient city of Xanthos (near present-day Kınık). This is in a broad valley following the river Xanthos. It doesn't look much like a city; it is more like a collection of orange and olive groves with a lot of greenhouses:

where, our guide tells us rather tongue-in-cheekly, that they grow perfectly looking and completely tasteless tomatoes for export to Russia! Our first indication that this area used to be anything of importance is this Roman road:

It still looks pretty good after more than 2,000 years! Our guide tells us that the Xanthos river used to take up almost the entire width of the valley, so the Romans built an extraordinarily long bridge to span it. Here is one of the 40 arches that supported the bridge:

Across the street from the bridge are some of the many Lycian hillside tombs:

In the second picture, you can see in a language that looks a bit like Greek. This would have described the Lycian family and not the occupant because the Lycians reused their tombs. When the next generation passed away, they would remove the previous occupant of the tomb, cremate them, place their ashes in a funerary jar and install the next family member. You can see in both pictures the color that remains from these once brightly decorated tombs.

We stop at a small roadside restaurant for tea and then head on to what is the main archeological site of Xanthos. Here are a couple of pictures of the ruins:

Although a team from Austria has been working at this site for several decades, there are a lot of pieces just lying around. For a site that has been here through the Lycians, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Ottomans and the Byzantine Empire, a lot of the pieces were reused. Here is a wall from the Byzantine period that clearly used the bottoms of columns from the Roman period:

On the other side of this wall is the site of a church; you can see that the river now goes down the central street of the city from the Roman era:

There are a lot of people at the site today.  It turns out that it is a group of scientists training students on how to make water quality measurements. There is also a reconstruction of what archeologists think a Lycian house might have looked like based on the design of their tombs:

Of course, it uses only tongue-and-groove technology, and it remains reasonably cool in even the hottest weather.

Our next stop on our Lycian tour is the ancient city of Myra. The first thing that we see is this fantastic theatre:

It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but the whole theatre is perhaps 30 feet below ground level. Alluvial deposits from the river Myra piled up and, despite the best efforts of the populous, eventually buried the city which was then abandoned. This may explain why the theatre is in such good shape. It had an estimated capacity of about 4,000 people making the population of Myra during Roman times in the low 10,000's. The big arches on the left were the way out of the theatre on one side and there is another set of them just to the right of this picture. The wall in the center is the back wall of the stage, and the stands are divided into three sections. The lower half of the main stands were reserved for the most privileged men. The top half of the main section was for the lower-class men and the very top, set off from the main section by walls was for women and children.

Like Xanthos, there are a lot of pieces laying around, but many of them are quite interesting:

This would have been the lintel above the columns on entering the theatre and the faces would have had brightly colored stones or glass for eyes.

Behind the theatre is another Lycian necropolis:

The picture on the right was the tomb of a high-status person. Unlike the other Lycian tombs, he would not have been removed and cremated. His family would have been buried in neighboring tombs. That allowed the family to carve his life like image into the stone.

After a nice (and too large) lunch at an outdoor cafe, we walk across the city square to the Church of Saint Nicholas. Outside is a nice statue of Nicholas:

Nicholas was a Greek priest in the late 3rd-early 4th century CE and is supposedly the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe.

In fact, there is no historical mention of Nicholas until about 200 years after his death in 343. What is known is that he was born in Patara on the western coast of the Leke peninsula and at some point, became Bishop of Myra. This was a bad period for early Christians as the Roman Emperor Diocletian tried to wipe out Christianity from the Roman Empire. Nicholas was supposedly jailed and tortured by the Romans.

There is not enough room in this blog to talk about all of the things that Nicholas supposedly did or the complete lack of proof that he did any of them. But here is the story that connects Nicholas to Christmas. Nicholas was born into a wealthy family; his uncle was the Bishop of Myra and was responsible for Nicholas becoming a priest. Nicholas inherited his parents' money when they died in an epidemic and he quickly established a reputation for giving his money away. It is said that Nicholas heard of a man who had once been wealthy, but whose fortune had been stolen by "agents of Satan". The now destitute man had three daughters. Since he could not arrange proper dowries, his daughters would stay unmarried and were likely to be sold off into prostitution. Nicholas did not want to bring attention to himself, so he reportedly went to the man's house in the middle of the night and threw a purse of gold coins through an open window. The man immediately arranged for the marriage of his oldest daughter. After the wedding, Nicholas went back to the house at night and threw another purse of gold coins through the window. Again, the man arranged for the marriage of his second daughter. After that marriage, the man supposedly stayed awake for two nights straight and caught Nicholas in the act the third time. The father fell on his knees to thank him, and Nicholas made him promise not to tell anyone what he had done.

Two hundred years after his death, Roman Emperor Theodosius II ordered that a new church be constructed in Myra dedicated to Nicholas and built over the site of the church where Nicholas had served as bishop. Here are some of my pictures from the church:

Nicholas' tomb is in the back of the third picture, but there are no human remains there. Current archeological research indicates that Nicholas might have originally been buried on the Turkish island of Gemele, about 25 miles west of Myra and close to his birthplace. In the 7th century, the island was vulnerable to Arab raiders, so his remains were moved inland to Myra. Then in the 11th century, the Turks temporarily gained control of the Leke peninsula. Christians were worried that they would no longer have access to this holy site, so a group of Italian sailors went to Mura and in 1087 CE, took most of the larger bones to the newly constructed Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy.

Venice, who was then the major Italian power, took note of what Bari had done and decided that they would go back to Myra to get the remainder of Nicholas' skeleton. They first constructed the Basilica of San Nicolò al Lido on a small island next to Venice. In 1100 CE as part of the First Crusade, they stopped in Myra and removed the rest of the bones and later placed them in the Basilica.

Our final stop of the day is at the Simena Castle. Our guide describes this as a crusader castle but said that it was used to defend the Byzantine Empire from attacks from the crusaders. Online information indicates that it was likely constructed by the crusaders in the 14th century. In any case, the views are quite stunning:

This ride back is pretty long and we arrive after dark. We had been searching for a particular restaurant and this time we find it. It was established in 1954 and is now operated by the 3rd generation of the same family. The food and wine are excellent. We stop at the same sweets shop again and then head back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. Tomorrow, we have a free day and are thinking of visiting one of the local waterfalls. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 9 Cappadocia to Antalya

Today, we fly to Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of southern Türkiye. This time, we are flying out of Keyseri, about an hour east of Uçhisar, instead of the Nevşehir airport where we flew in. This means a 7:30 AM departure from our hotel in order to catch our 10:30 AM flight to Antalya. The good news is that means we are awake in time to see the balloon launches:

As you can see, ballooning is a big thing here. So big that they have two different departure times to accommodate all of the balloons: one just before dawn and a second about an hour later.

I saw one thing that some of the balloons do that freaked me out:

You can see that these balloons are descending into the canyons. It freaked me out because at the one other balloon ride I've taken, the pilot said that the tricky thing with flying balloons is that when you hit the burner to either hold altitude or rise, there is a several minute delay before anything happens. Flying this close to the ground and to other balloons really decreases the margin of error.

The ride to Keyseri is pretty dull - the same high planes as the area around Uçhisar, but without the fairy chimneys or other interesting rock formations. Fortunately, the hotel in Uçhisar kindly provided us with boxed breakfasts since we left before their restaurant was open.

Both Keyseri and the airport are much larger than anything in other parts of Cappadocia. Here, we notice that all passengers go through two security checkpoints: one that includes the baggage that you will check and a second after checking in to drop bags and get boarding passes. The whole rigmarole of taking out laptops, removing belts, etc. is really a pain and I find myself wishing that there was a worldwide trusted passenger list instead of separate ones in each country to make the whole process a little less invasive. But we still manage to get to our gate in plenty of time. Boarding is also a little different - they board from the back of the plane, so people sitting in the back half of the plane get on first. I'm not sure how they manage to keep the people in the back from scarfing all of the overhead bin space in the front of the plane, but we have plenty of space for our backpacks.

The flight takes a little over an hour during which we pass over some serious mountains. Once on the ground, we find a totally different world from Cappadocia. It is warmer and quite humid (at least compared to Cappadocia). We see palm trees in the distance as we get out of the plane. We also notice planes from a Russian airline. I guess that this is a safer beach location than Sochi because of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Outside, we find our driver for the ride to our hotel. The hotel is an older building that used to be the home of an artist. The best part is the garden which backs up to the old walls around the city, which were built during the period when the Roman Empire controlled this area in the first couple centuries AD. You can see part of the garden and wall in this picture:

This seems like a good time to talk about cats. When we arrived in Istanbul, we found that it was called the City of Cats. But honestly, we have seen cats everywhere we have gone. The Turkish people love cats. Even if they don't have cats, they leave food out for homeless cats. Even the feral cats seem to be in good condition. Consequently, there are a lot of cats. This hotel has at least four adult cats and four or five kittens. Even in Türkiye, the cats seem to gravitate to the only member of our group who is allergic to cats; me! 

We go out for a walk to check out the old part of town where we are staying. The area is quite beautiful:

but also quite touristy. Every shop and restaurant seems to have someone outside trying to attract business. We are accosted by the same hawker outside a restaurant three times in the first hour - at least he has a sense of humor - the last time, he says, "I'm still here."

We walk down to the water hoping for a good sunset picture before dinner. It doesn't quite materialize, but here are a couple of pictures:

If you look closely, you can see the writing on the archeological ruin is in Greek. This is from the period shortly after the Roman Empire broke up.

The hotel had recommended a restaurant, but we must have misheard the name because we couldn't find it. We ended up having Thai for dinner at a restaurant in the older part of town, stop by a place selling all sorts of sweets (we end up buying some Ottoman-style Turkish Delight) and then head back to the hotel.