Saturday 30 April 2011

Martin's Trip March 2010

In the middle of March before we left Alanya, Martin Nicolson came out to see us for 10 days and here is some of what we did, I'll not repeat the photos of the BBQ's, darts and other carry ons that went on before we left Alanya as i believe everyone has seen wnough of that!

Ali hired a car for the fist few days of Martin's trip which meant they could go and see all the bits of Alanya we had already seen like the castle and the old town etc.  One place we still hadn't been to was the Dim Caves just south of Alanya.  The Dim Cave is the second largest cave in turkey and is 400 metres long and sits at an altitude of 232 metres inside the slopes of the Cebel i reis mountain.  In other words a really cool place to go and see......





Sailing away. 
Well not really as we had very little wind the first day we set out from Alanya but Ali thought he had better try and sail so here is the result.  you can tell it's not rough as no one in their right mind would choose to sit up front to read a book in windy conditions. 


First dinghy run of the year, after a very uncomfortable night of swell at the anchorage at Side.
 Ali, Martin and the girls went ashore to see the temple and ampitheatre.  The pictures I have used here are from when we went there with my sister Jayne as Ali didn't take a second batch and all Martin's ones i copied got lost in a huge virus infection on my computer.

Side


The temple of Appolon stands on the seashore at Side, or whats left of it does, it is a lovely backdrop to the harbour, it is a shame it wasn't deep enough for us to go into. 


It was a highly decorated temple made with a lot of marble and it must have ben a very grand place.


The stone sculptures are simply fantastic!!

 A peerie picture of Jayne in Side as I didn't do a proper blog on her visit (most of the pictures are not for publication!)

 Behind the town you can walk through a great expanse of ruins of the old city of Side it was a major settlement in the area and large enough to have it's own army and fight with the neighbours.



 Fancy stone carvings and some mosaics which you can just wander across, it really is crazy.  the girls love these old ruins, not for the history but for the great rock climbing you can do.

An example of a mosaic floor- only over 2000 years old!!!!


 The amphitheatre at Side is the must see bit of the ruins.  It is pretty big and as with some of the other ampitheatres around here,they hold classical music concerts here in the fine weather.  We haven't been, but others who have says it really adds a new dimension to a concert when you are sitting in an ancient amphitheatre.


Antalya
After Side it was on to Antalya we did manage to sail an hour or two on the way there but it was a bit dreech and miserable really.  Not as bad for us as it was for Ali though as it was on this trip that we realised some of the debris from the mudslide had blocked the outlet for our holding tank (the tank which the toilet pumps into when we are in harbour) and he spent a lovely couple of hours fixing it!  Yuk! 
The Duden waterfalls a couple of miles south of Antalya old city. 

We managed to get a berth in Antalya old town harbour which would have been impossible any later in the season but there has to be some perks for setting off earlier than everyone else in the marina!  Unfortunately Turkey doesn't have a winter pricing policy though, and going in for a night in any harbour is not cheap no matter what time of year it is. 

Antalya old town harbour.  Islay Mist's mast is just visible above the white motor boat at the farside of the harbour.  It was a bit of a squeeze to get into the harbour and we had to be very careful no to snag our rigging on the bow sprits of the gulets as we weaved to our spot.

The boys were very interested in this wreck being salvaged just outside the harbour entrance.  The ship is caled the Seabright and she ran aground during the storm on 18th December 2010 ah yes I think we in Alanya may just remember that night too. 18 crew members were taken to hospital but thankfully no one died.  The sign painted on the fron of the bridge is a little unfortunate....

Surrounding the old harbour is Antalya old town, a lovely old ramble of alley ways, mosques tea houses and shops.  It sits snugly inside the urban sprawl of modern Antalya and you wouldn't know you were in a huge modern city when you are in the old lanes. 

Turkish tea house with water pipes.

Hadrians gate a triumphal arch built in the name of the Roman emporer Hadrian who visited Antalya in the year 130AD.  Legend also says that the Queen of Sheba passed through this gate on her way to visit King Solomon.

Antalya Museum

Antalya museum has a huge and very impressive collection of artefacts ranging from neolithic times to the great ancient cities of Perge and Aspendos.

Neolithic displays one showing the treating of hides and the other showing burial jars.

After the stone age bronze age rooms you go thhrough to the later decorated vases etc but many of these were actually complete unlike many other museums we had been in.
Most impressive were the statue rooms, all of these statues have been taken from the ancient cities of Perge and Aspendos and they give you an idea of the grandeur of the cities when they were in their heyday. You will see the actual ruins below.

Then there was the head room ......

and the bodies without heads room, why they couldn't just have glued them together I don't know!
There was a huge room with very ornamental sarcophagi (basically a stone coffin ) and very interesting were the stories printed in English on the sides of how many have been recovered after being 'stolen' by a museum in Boston!

Martin cooked us all a lovely meal of spaghetti bolognese one night, you now it's a good meal if the girls eat it and they ate every last little drop of this!

On Martin's last day with us we hired a car to go and see the huge archaeological sites of Perge and Aspendos which are both within 20km of the city. 

Perge

Perge is a huge site with ruins dating back to the bronze age.  Perge was supposed to be one of the richest and most beautiful cities of the ancient world and it was easy to see it had been a very grand place indeed.  Some pictures....

The Hellenistic Gate

Some of the columns have been restored but as you can see it is one hell of a jigsaw puzzle to work out!

This is the water canal which was constructed to take water through the town.

Alisha and Kaylee taking in all the history around them or would that be skipping through the daisies?!  They actually had their photos taken by lots of tourists as they sat there completely underwhelmed by the whole thing making daisy chains. 

Inside the hellenistic gate you can see the recesses where all the huge statues from the museum would have stood. 

The roman street.

 A view of the whole site with he roman street in the foreground.  It begins to give you the idea of the sheer size of the place when it was built....

Aspendos.

Inside the ampthitheatre. 


The stage building along the front of the amphitheatre with doors for the performers to enter and leave from the two small doors at the bottom lead to long corridors where they kept the wild animals. 
The accoustics are amazing in the theatre and it is still regularly used for concerts today.

 It's kinda high up at the top!
 Two little girls calling their mum a scaredy cat for telling them to stop running around at the top of the amphtitheatre......
The ampthitheatre is only one part of the site at Aspendos it was built next to the ancient city of the same name which sprawls out over the hill behind it. 
 A view of the acropolis.
The remains of the roman aqueduct which brought water to the city from the mountains to the north.



Farmland in the plains below the mountains surround the ruins.
 
This blog more or less concludes the historic sites which we have visited in Turkey.
It is difficult to convey in such a small collection of photographs the vast amount of ancient history which is available to the ordinary tourist to see. Considering that much of what we have seen is 2000+ years old.
It is more than amazing how much has survived, and the quality of the original building is almost beyond belief, and would be difficult to repeat even with the modern methods available today.
The next day it was time for Martin to fly home and for us to continue on our travels.  We really enjoyed having Martin with us though it was only briefly and he knows he is welcome back anytime.  The girl's cabin has never been as tidy this whole entire trip as it was for those ten days!