Oct 2nd, 2008

This was one of the better hotels we had stayed in so far, and very hospitable. By morning, all the staff knew about us (and foosh story), and was throwing hellos. We checked out of the hotel and headed for Travertines.

Travertines are warm water springs with high calcium content. As the water flows down the hillside, calcium gets deposited, so the entire hillside is white. They have also made artificial water holding pools to assist in calcium sedimentation, thereby getting relatively cleaner water at the base. Walking through the calcium floor was interesting. A lot of people had come there as they would to a beach, and were bathing in the spring water, which is also supposed to have medicinal properties.

At the top of the hills, there are ruins of the ancient city (3 AD) of hieropolis. These seemed to be on similar scale as Ephesus, though the number of buildings was lesser. The amphitheater was huge and in good restored condition. We took a bunch of pics, including some where A claimed I had suddenly moved outside the frame at the last moment!

We came down by around 1pm and started off back for Turkey. Its a 650km run to Istanbul, and we wanted to get there by night, perhaps get to a belly dance and some nightlife in Taksim area. Started finding a restaurant after a couple of hours and there was nothing for miles. We decided to halt at a bus station, and no one seemed to have veg food. Finally, located a real small place which had some veg food - had to be the cheapest we were going to have on this trip.

The drive was long and on the way, we thought of booking a hotel - nothing seemed to be available for a reasonable price - looked like the whole town was going to be packed for festivities of Ramadan. We figured land up there and find something. As soon as we hit the last stretch on E80 motorway, a big traffic jam struck us - this was going to be one long ride. Some patient and some not-so-patient hours later, we finally reached Taksim at 11:30 - over 10 hours of drive what should have been 8. We randomly parked on a street and saw a hotel nearby. Given this was a busy day, the chances were slim - A went in, inquired, and bargained to get a decent price.We checked in and soon hit the main street.

The hotel owner told us all belly dance would be finished by now, but he could arrange for a "russian dance" - hmm, what's a russian dance? "good dance, and drink". This sounded fishy - we were not in a mood to go to a strip bar. After some digging, the guy came up "they dance and then sometime they remove bit of cloth" - that was that. It was a lively night even at 1 - we went into a couple of bars with live music and mostly local people. The music was great and people were singing along and dancing. Lovely atmosphere. Came back at 4 and went through a round of cards before hitting the bed, with three alarms waiting to get us up at 8 to make our flight to Munich tomorrow.