We flew from Sarajevo's tiny airport to Antalya via Istanbul (which we'll work back to). It's in the southwestern part of the country right on the Mediterranean. It has an old town that has touristy shops, hotels, and restaurants with old Roman ruins sprinkled throughout. It also has a sprawling modern city beyond the old town but those pictures aren't that intersting. Anyway, in old town (Kaleici) your souvenir shop is right next to say a gate from the 2nd century built in honor of Emperor Hadrian. You can see that gate below. It is unsurprisingly called Hadrian's Gate. We're staying just down the street from it.
Except for the pillars it is all white marble.
This the ruins of the Kesik (Broken) Minaret and Mosque. It was originally built as a Roman temple in the 2nd century, converted into a basilica and expanded, then eventually turned into a mosque once the Ottomans came.
This is the Fluted Minaret which is the biggest in the city and one of the more recognizable landmarks along with the gate above. Now that we are in a Muslim country, minarets abound.
Antalya has a pretty cool museum with a ton of marble statues from ruins around the area. One whole section is statues of Roman Gods with some of their myths printed next to them which I really enjoyed. Most of them are from a town called Perge (which we visited but that's another blog post). They are almost all 2nd century AD copies of 3rd to 4th Century BC originals. Either way they are really old and awesome to see. This one was Chrissy's favorite.
Antalya has a long pebbly beach a little bit of a walk from the center of town. You can see part of the town off in the distance. It's been around 60 degrees or so which is not bad compared to Boston at this time of year and the water felt warm enough to swim in, especially if you are used to New England beaches. Still, at that temperature you need a bright sunny day to consider going in and we have not had that. Behind us here would be a striking view of mountains if it weren't so cloudy and rainy.
We've been wandering around despite the rain (waterproof shoes and jackets are amazing). You can't control the weather. Unfortunately, this is the first place where the weather has really screwed up some of our plans. There was an epic thunderstorm on Monday night that dumped enough water to flood some portions of the area and loud enough to wake us up a few times. Our hotel briefly lost power twice. We had planned to go see the ruins at Olympos and see the Chimaera which is a park that has rocks with flames shooting up around them because of gas that is released from underground. It sounds crazy and awesome but the bridge you take to get there has been flooded and is currently impassable. Still, we've been lucky so far so we try not to get too disappointed and there is plenty else to see.
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