Aphrodisias

As I wrote before, we stopped at the ancient city of Aphrodisias on the way to Kusadasi. It was a tour we were planning since winter.


In Turkey, Ephesus is the most well known and most visited ancient city. However its rival Aphrodisias is a rather recent phenomena. As it is not easily reachable as Ephesus, its not on the list of many travellers.


Well, to tell you the difference between two cities, one of my guidebook gives a very nice example. 'Aphrodisias is like Florence where Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raffaello worked while Ephesus was like New York where Wall Street, Manhattan and World Bank located.'






So Aphrodisias is the city of artists, and you are realizing this when you enter the city and saw the beautiful theatre masks on the way. It's museum considered as one of the best statue museum from the Roman World.








Julius Caesar was a devotee of Venus and favored this city and known to be visited here, and the emperor Augustus granted it the high privileges of autonomy and tax-free status, declaring Aphrodisias "the one city from all of Asia that I have selected to be my own." So even at that time it was a pretty special city.
But for me the biggest surprise was its huge stadium made for 30.000 people. It's said to be the best preserved stadium of the Mediterranean region.









It was a very hot day and after a while I quit and sat on a stadium bench for a little time to meditate and enjoy the magnificent structure.. It was so quiet and very easy to imagine hearing the sounds of the races and games held here and the cheers of the thousands of people coming from thousands of years ago. It was a pretty special moment.

We are back!!!

We are finally back to Datca. We came back from Kusadasi last night after making 3 more ancient site tour on a very hot day. We were tired, exhausted but happy.

I couldnt make any more post from Kusadasi because our days were so full of visiting nearby places. Ephesus, Sirince, Miletos, Priene, Didyma...I will soon write about all of them but first I have to organize my photos. There are tons of it. But here are some random ones...

We swam on the bays of the Kusadasi Natural Park. Because of high population and heavy construction, beaches in Kusadasi are not quite nice to enjoy. So try the turquoise waters of the national park.

We watched the busy harbour from the beautiful terrace of the Kismet Hotel when the sun was setting.It was best time of the day to have our drinks..

When the sunsets were not enough there were always full moons and cosy dinners at the beach to celebrate the passing of the day. Lots of laugh, talk and good food were the integral parts..

And of course a BİG thank you to my dear friend Eser whose hospitality was beyond words..

Sunset at Kusadasi

Well, as planned we have reached Kusadasi, right before the sunset after a long and hot day at Aphrodisias. My dear friend Eser was waiting for us and our drinks were ready at the balcony. It was such a dreamy and peaceful moment. All my tiredness passes in a few minutes. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the passing of a wonderful day in my life..

Aphrodisias photos are coming soon.

On the road, again

Last summer,travel section of the one of the largest newspapers of the country made an interview with me about my travels and my summer months in Datca. After a nice chat with the journalist for about 2 hours, next week I appeared on a full page with the headline ' I wouldnt trade my summers in Datca for a free ticket around the world'

Well,the headline was true. I always make my trips to abroad in winter or spring times. But this doesnt stop us to make short trips to nearby places in summer. So here we are on the road again and I am writing to you from the mobile office. We are going to spend couple days in Kusadasi.

We left Datca early in the morning and just stopped at a lovely breakfast garden where they are serving big breakfast. It's big because you have to share some with the animals around.Now we are getting closer to Mugla, and before Kusadası first we will make a long tour in the ancient city of Aphrodisias. It is the city of the mystical lady on my profile picture. I saw her on an exhibition in İstanbul and now its time to visit her place. They say that,Aphrodisias is one of the best preserved ancient city in Turkey. Well, we will see and of course you will see:))

Then we are planning to reach Kusadasi before dinner, to have a drink at the beautiful house of my friend Eser and watch the sun set from her balcony. Here are couple photos from Kusadasi from my last trip.

Lemonade..

There is nothing better than a cold and well made lemonade on a hot summer day. On my last post I mentioned the not so secret ingredient of my lemonade. Green tangerines. I put some of their precious juice to my mix as well as decorate with them when serving. So how about you? Do you use some special ingredients on your lemonades??

Green Tangerines..

My most beloved possesion of every summer season are my green tangerines. They are actually unripe ones. I usually ask a friend every summer who collect some for me from her family's farm. I am really crazy about them.First of all I cant smell enough of it. I think the God's drink ambrosia was smelling something like that. It's just divine.. Then there is the precious little juice, that everyone of them gives. So where do I use them.

• not so secret ingredient of my lemonade
• couple slices for my water jug
• mainly for gin tonic and other drinks
• my favorite tomato salad with crushed garlic, olive oil, and just the juice of couple green tangerines.

So please tell me if you are using them on any other thing.. I would love to learn.

Dreaming Lapland

Tell me if I am being ungrateful??? During the cold winter months in İstanbul, I was constantly dreaming of Datca, sun, heat, sea and all the things related with that. And here I am and now complaing about the heat and dreaming about winter and snow.

Last winter we did not have snow in İstanbul, and the year before that while there was a snow storm in İstanbul for a full week, I was in Sri Lanka. Where?? On a beach again complaining about the heat.So I miss snow and the cozy days in the house, it brings along... And I also miss gluehwein (hot wine with spices), my tradition in the snow.

But my best snow memories are from Finnish Lapland which I have visited 7 years ago. And it was started with a funny story. The plan was to stay in Jyvaskyla at a friends house before flying to Lapland. As there was no direct flight, the route designed by my travel agency was İstanbul - Stockholm - Jyvaskyla. After using the Stockholm airport as a transit passenger for couple hours, I peacefully flew to Jyvaskyla. When I reached there it was around 10 pm and I was the only foreigner on the small plane. While all my fellow Finnish passengers quickly left the airport within couple minutes, I started to search for a single soul in the airport to show my passport and officially enter the country. But guess what ? There was absolutely nobody. No customs officer, no guard, no body. I felt like I was in a horror movie where everyone dissappeared suddenly. After waiting for 5-10 minutes for somebody to appear with passport in my hand, I finally decided to leave the empty airport.

And on the way back to İstanbul, I took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. No passport control there either. So I can clearly state that up to now no Finnish offical is aware that I was in their country.

So if we come back to the main subject of this post, Lapland and snow were just great. As I was a lousy skier, I opted for safaris. My first one was reindeer safari. I still remember the cuteness of my reindeer with no horns. Do I advise a reindeer safari? Well, not really. It is very slow and after a while you are starting to freeze.
But the real deal was husky safari. It was so great. Try to do it once in your life if you get a chance. First it was really scary to be in the wild, with 9 dogs alone, for more than 2 hours. But luckily they were very smart and tourist friendly animals and also a snowmobile from the farm was checking for me at certain points. And the huskies knew their way back home and they were extremly patient with a foreigner who was trying to give them orders in English or Turkish while they only understood Finnish. On a husky safari, all you have to learn was to stand on the sledge and use the breaks when necessary.

It was an extremly cold and snowy day where the batteries of my camera were frozen. Even the owners of the husky farm thought about cancelling the safari for a while. But for my luck, they have decided against it. Whole trip was such an adrenaline rush. And on my return, they welcomed me to a small cottage with a big fire and offered some hot wine and a big slice of bread with butter and blueberry jam on it. It was so delicious..