The first ones up in the morning were Leslie and Belinda who hiked up the hills of the local village amongst the olive groves at 6:30am. The rest of us got up for 7:30 breakfast but the hotel staff had not woken yet. Mehmet got them out of bed and within 30 minutes we were up and running with lattes, tea, juice, water and of course wonderful breakfast items.
We are going to be driving for about 7 hours today in our luxury Mercedes Benz tour bus with wifi and electric outlets. We look like a bunch of news correspondents in a bus with all our gear (iPads, iPhones, laptops, iPods).
Our first stop is the acropolis (means high city) Pergamum (now called Bergama) . one of the 7 Asian churches mentioned in the Book of Revelations (Ephasus, Smyrna, Sardis, Philadelphia, Thyatira, Laodicea) It was a large kingdom from the 3rd century BC.
The first web album was getting unwieldy, so I have added another (let me know if you have problems viewing in the comment section of the blog) https://picasaweb.google.com/106489226857978603917/TurkeyAlbum2?locked=true
Mehmet and Jayhoon
A lovely mid morning stop.
It was a steep climb.
The second largest library was in Pergamum (the first was Alexandria, the third was Ephesus). The egyptians stopped sending papyrus and so Pergamum invented parchment (made of goat skin).
This library was given as a gift to Antony and Cleopatra and taken to Alexandria. Sad to say, that library burned.
The size of the city was estimated to hold 100,000 people at the time of Alexander the Great, as evidenced by the size of the theater. Mehmet our trusted tour guide led us through the ancient site, explaining what we see seeing along the way. He seems to have an answer for any question our inquisitive group has. Thank you Carl for having found him through your previous travels.
The Temple of Trajan was quite impressive.
Lovely details and so majestic.
Here we are.
Mehmet know all the great spots for photos. These are the tops of columns to give you an idea of how massive the temple was.
The Theater accommodated a very large number of people. It was built into the a steep hillside. I took a walk down to the bottom and stood on what would have been the stage and tested it for sound effects. It seemed to work well according to the rest of the group.
4th century BC (greek style, as the Romans had stage buildings) and held 10,000 people. And there we are! Tom is singing to us from the stage.
This shot puts the hillside into perspective.
A close up of the weathering.
A long distance shot of the theatre. We were sitting in the shade in the picture above and Tom was at the bottom. Imagine running that every day.
We saw a Turkish school class from Izmir (Smyrna) taking a class photo in the theater. After the photo shoot, a classmate got up and began leading the others in song:
The last structure that we saw was the Altar of Zeus.
The longest aqueduct in ancient time was located in Begamum.
Then it was off to a small local restaurant for lentil soup, flat bread and special lamb meatballs. It was nice to sit out in the shade on the sidewalk.
The best lentil soup of the trip. We also visited a Halva shop, lots to choose from. Margaret bought plain with pistachios and Belinda bought chocolate and vanilla (of course). Halva is a sesame paste dessert. Leslie added the treats to her ever present "snack bag". Great idea.
After lunch we stopped at an ATM and then passed through Izmir (3rd largest city in Turkey) on our way to Kusadasi. We are staying at The Grand Onder Otel which overlooks the Aegean Sea. www.onderotel.com.
We took a swim in the outdoor swimming pool before having buffet dinner at 8pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment