Thank God we’d parked on the solid stuff at the entrance to the beach last night. It rained a bit more than we anticipated, but the local tractor drivers appeared in readiness to tow out anyone that got stuck. It’s probably a good little earner for them when there’s a downpour.
Got up before seven (killer 😉) so that we could get to the Ephesus Archaeological Site for when it opened at eight. There was one extortionate price for us and a much cheaper one for the Turks.
Guy was really excited to come here and see the spectacular amphitheatre with 25k seating capacity that he’d read about online. We think the photo must have been AI generated as the reality was definitely nothing like. The crane and reconstruction works didn’t help.
The rest of it was pretty good, especially the Celcus Library. The cruise ship coaches had arrived early though and it was a bit of a battle for the resident photographer to get through all the selfie sticks and model posing. Brilliant listening to the tour guides making up their own stories – one particularly disgruntled guide was telling her group off for turning her voice off in their earpieces…”I will turn you off when I am finished , not the other way round!” 😂
Back at the van for 11am -had to have early lunch/brunch – not much Greek food left either. Sooner or later we will have to brave a Turkish supermarket!
Drove a few miles up the road to the ancient hill village of Şirince. Built by the Greeks, it looks very different to the towns and villages around it.
Most of the cobbled streets have been taken over with a non stop bazaar aimed at all the tour buses that come up. Our only purchase was two bottles of local wine but miscalculated the Lire to Pound and think we’ve probably spent this week’s food money. 😬
The rest of the afternoon was spent travelling inland to the travertine pools at Pamukkale, where early tomorrow morning we’ll probably spend next week’s food money too!
Good motorways again but really miles of nothingness inland. The HGS tag in our windscreen, that we bought a couple of years ago still seems to miraculously open the barriers but we’ve no idea if there’s any money left on it …or how to check!
