2010 - Turkey - Day 7 - Pamukkale

We left Kusadasi at 9:00 am. We drove for 1.5 hours before our first break and stopped for lunch around noon. We had to drive 150 miles today. The bus must drive pretty slowly; it took us about 4 hours driving time before we arrived in Pamukkale. As soon as we arrived it started to rain, but after we walked along the pathway into the site, it stopped and we had about 1 hour of somewhat nice but cool weather. There is not much left of this city, it was also a site of one of the seven churches and also the place of Philip’s martyrdom. He was crucified upside down and stoned. In the 4th century, a church was built in the city to honor him, but it only stood for 100 years before an earthquake mostly leveled it. The most impressive thing about his city on the hilltop was not the ruins, but the limestone terraces filled with hot mineral water. They call it the cotton castle. Tourists had to take their shoes off to walk through it, but it was mostly covered with water, so you’d want to anyway. It felt so good on my cold feet. I wore sandals today for this purpose. But the rest of the day, I had cold feet. I loved walking through the water and seeing this amazing site. It began raining again while I was out on the terraces, and I had my umbrella with me, but it was a cheap thing, and the wind was blowing, and it completely destroyed my umbrella that I threw it away. So I was wet and cold again for a good part of the day. We took a shuttle bus to the exit and our bus, although I backtracked a ways to take some pictures of the necropolis, “the city of the dead”. Our hotel is just 5 minutes away from the ruins, with nice hot spring pools. We had a buffet dinner at 7:30, and then I spent an hour with several others from our tour in the hot spring pools.