MonkeyBrains
08-18-2006, 05:21 AM
Hey,
Well it's been a long time since I last did one of these & we've done a whole bunch of stuff since then.. So either settle in or come back & read this when you've got time as it's turning into a long one..
Last you heard from us we were In <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Turkey</st1:place></st1:country-region> (with a funny keybaord!!), heading for Ephusis & the Fethiye for the boat cruise.. Ephusis was very old & ruined & extremley hot.. Loads of tourists, which made it easy to listen in on the guides & work out what we were looking at..
Next day we headed off with Geoff, an American guy who was also staying at the Hostel & was heading in the same direction as us.. Caught a bus to Pamukkule which has some pretty amazing landscape.. "The action of various mineral springs which contain calcium oxides has left concretions on the travertine structures. The resulting effect is spectacular: these mineral-rich waters have dripped down over a series of terraced levels designing bizarre solidified white cascades, dazzling in their radiance and changing their color according to how the sunlight strikes them".. That actually makes it sound a fair bit more spectaular than it really is, over the years the streams have started to dry up & theres rumors that the whiteness of the hill is now due to paint..
Next up was a night in Fethiye before boarding our Gulet.. The boat was pretty cosy to say the least, 14 of us & 3 crew members didn't leave much room.. Had a cool group of people on baord though which was excellent, although the family with a 5yr old son who got palmed off to everyone else put a bit of a dampner on things.. Had a crazy crew, the capitain sounded more Australian than Turkish The cabins below deck were rather small, hot & had a very unpleseant smell about them, so unless you were drunk (like we were the first night) sleeping below deck wasn't really an option.. Not that sleeping on deck under the stars was that terrible (could've done without the mozzies though)!!
The cruise was 4 days, 3 nights along the coast from Fethiye to Olympos taking in the Blue Lagoon, Butterfly Valley (We saw 2 butterflies & hiked 2kms to waterfall that was very dissapointing), we overnighted in Kas & had a huge night out the Queen Bar (don't think the poor locals quite knew what to make of us all).. The next day with a terrible hangover (dam cheap double vodkas!!) was the Sunken City of Kekova, Simena, a traditional Turkish fishing village with no car access & then the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Pirates</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Cave</st1:placetype></st1:place>.. Day three was a pretty quiet one as we had a swap of half the passengers, so we spent most of the day sitting in a harbour.. As it was our last night we thought we should celebrate & went to the Smugglers Inn, not much more than a hut in the middle of no where with expensive drinks & thumping music (most of it quite bad).. Not as bigger night as the first one, which we were pretty happy about when we saw the very twisting, winding road that would take us to our next stop, Olympos..
Olympos is a backpacker haven, with a bunch of hostels all offering tree houses to stay in.. This all sounded pretty exciting, until you get there & realise that the tree houses aren't quite what you expected.. Many of them aren't even in a tree!! So we opted out of the tree house & took a cabin with a SHOWER & AIR-CON.. BLISS!! There's a whole lot of nothing to be done here & as we'd been doing a lot of that on the cruise we only stayed a night & prepared ourselves for an overnight bus ride to Cappidocia..
Had a few hours in Antalya to break up the trip a bit, picked up some snacks & supplies & then settled in for what might have been our worst long haul bus trip ever.. The bus was not very comfortable, the air con seemed to be jacked up as far as it would go, there was a family in front of us with a tribe of very loud children, the girl next to us threw up on her seat & floor twice & we managed to get sprayed with it, it also took about 30 mins for the first lot to get cleaned up, the trip took a few hours more than was expected, it was awful.. Needless to say we were pretty happy to finally get to our destination..
Cappidocia is a very unique place, 'moonscape' and 'fairy chimneys' (they looked like big doodles) make it look like you’re on another planet.. We stayed in a cave room here, most of the area is Volcanic rock, very soft & they’ve just caved houses out of it.. Matt had the full Turkish Shave experience here, hot towel, double shave, after shave, moisturiser, more aftershave, getting the hair on your ears burnt off & then a 10 min head & back massage, all for about Aus $7.. All I got was a cup of tea!! Jealous, indeed!! We did have a Turkish Bath that night which kind of made up for it..<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p>
We also did a day tour around the area going to an Underground City built hundreds of years ago & goes 60m below ground (not somewhere I’d like to live), a walk through a Gorge with loads of little churches in it, a Monastery carved out of the volcanic rock, a stop along the Silk Route, more fairy chimneys & the obligatory stop at a pottery factory..
Another overnight bus was next this time to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city>, nothing like the last one.. Had 3 days of doing not a lot, we wandered around & looked at a few things, looking back we really didn’t do a lot.. We did see DJ Tiesto play, which was pretty cool, it was in a big old castle / fort (link if anyone wants to see the setting http://www.istanbul7towers.com/fotogaleri/Mekan/mekan1%20(11).JPG) (http://www.istanbul7towers.com/fotogaleri/Mekan/mekan1%20%2811%29.JPG%29).. After bumping into some nice Turkish people who gave us their passes to the front area of the gig we thought we’d get a drink, 1 beer & 1 vodka which came to 28 Lira or Aus$25, which makes it the most expensive drink I’ve ever had.. And when we were leaving the cab drivers wanted to charge us Aus$55 for a 20min cab ride!! Crazy stuff, so we ended up walking a bit & finally got one for $10 which was much better..
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>From <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city> we did a tour of Gallipoli which was well worth it.. We had a great guide & went to all the major sights.. Anzac Cove & the beach that the landing was meant to be made on, the cemeteries, trench areas (some are on 5 – 8 meters apart) etc, etc.. When you’re actually there & see how small the area is, the tiny area where a lot of the fighting took place, what they were fighting for & how many lives were lost for nothing it all seemed pretty pointless..
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>It was then back to Istanbul for another 3 days where we finally got enthused & did some real sight seeing, took in the Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia, Grand Bazzar & did a whole bunch of walking around..
<o:p></o:p>
On our last night in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city> we were also lucky enough to catch a Guns N Roses gig, a life long dream of mine.. If you have no interest in a brief review skip this paragraph.. They played for about 2hrs, although a bit of that was taken up by 5 solos (4 Guitar and 1 piano) all of about 4 - 5 mins long, one which turned into Chrstina Agularia's Beautiful, very odd and the other was piano Don't Cry, which we thought wasn’t the best choice of song to solo.. Played heaps of Appetite stuff, a couple of Lies and Illusion and 3 new jobs which didn't sound too bad.. The new / impostor Slash is poo he just doesn't quite have it and wore knee high red suede boots.. Dizzy's still in the band on keyboards / piano and Izzy even came out and played three songs with them and 1 encore, a bit of a turn of events we thought, Axl's ego must be shrinking.. Axl had 5 outfit changes through out the night and kept running off to the side of the stage but he still does all the old moves which was sweet..
Well it's been a long time since I last did one of these & we've done a whole bunch of stuff since then.. So either settle in or come back & read this when you've got time as it's turning into a long one..
Last you heard from us we were In <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Turkey</st1:place></st1:country-region> (with a funny keybaord!!), heading for Ephusis & the Fethiye for the boat cruise.. Ephusis was very old & ruined & extremley hot.. Loads of tourists, which made it easy to listen in on the guides & work out what we were looking at..
Next day we headed off with Geoff, an American guy who was also staying at the Hostel & was heading in the same direction as us.. Caught a bus to Pamukkule which has some pretty amazing landscape.. "The action of various mineral springs which contain calcium oxides has left concretions on the travertine structures. The resulting effect is spectacular: these mineral-rich waters have dripped down over a series of terraced levels designing bizarre solidified white cascades, dazzling in their radiance and changing their color according to how the sunlight strikes them".. That actually makes it sound a fair bit more spectaular than it really is, over the years the streams have started to dry up & theres rumors that the whiteness of the hill is now due to paint..
Next up was a night in Fethiye before boarding our Gulet.. The boat was pretty cosy to say the least, 14 of us & 3 crew members didn't leave much room.. Had a cool group of people on baord though which was excellent, although the family with a 5yr old son who got palmed off to everyone else put a bit of a dampner on things.. Had a crazy crew, the capitain sounded more Australian than Turkish The cabins below deck were rather small, hot & had a very unpleseant smell about them, so unless you were drunk (like we were the first night) sleeping below deck wasn't really an option.. Not that sleeping on deck under the stars was that terrible (could've done without the mozzies though)!!
The cruise was 4 days, 3 nights along the coast from Fethiye to Olympos taking in the Blue Lagoon, Butterfly Valley (We saw 2 butterflies & hiked 2kms to waterfall that was very dissapointing), we overnighted in Kas & had a huge night out the Queen Bar (don't think the poor locals quite knew what to make of us all).. The next day with a terrible hangover (dam cheap double vodkas!!) was the Sunken City of Kekova, Simena, a traditional Turkish fishing village with no car access & then the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Pirates</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Cave</st1:placetype></st1:place>.. Day three was a pretty quiet one as we had a swap of half the passengers, so we spent most of the day sitting in a harbour.. As it was our last night we thought we should celebrate & went to the Smugglers Inn, not much more than a hut in the middle of no where with expensive drinks & thumping music (most of it quite bad).. Not as bigger night as the first one, which we were pretty happy about when we saw the very twisting, winding road that would take us to our next stop, Olympos..
Olympos is a backpacker haven, with a bunch of hostels all offering tree houses to stay in.. This all sounded pretty exciting, until you get there & realise that the tree houses aren't quite what you expected.. Many of them aren't even in a tree!! So we opted out of the tree house & took a cabin with a SHOWER & AIR-CON.. BLISS!! There's a whole lot of nothing to be done here & as we'd been doing a lot of that on the cruise we only stayed a night & prepared ourselves for an overnight bus ride to Cappidocia..
Had a few hours in Antalya to break up the trip a bit, picked up some snacks & supplies & then settled in for what might have been our worst long haul bus trip ever.. The bus was not very comfortable, the air con seemed to be jacked up as far as it would go, there was a family in front of us with a tribe of very loud children, the girl next to us threw up on her seat & floor twice & we managed to get sprayed with it, it also took about 30 mins for the first lot to get cleaned up, the trip took a few hours more than was expected, it was awful.. Needless to say we were pretty happy to finally get to our destination..
Cappidocia is a very unique place, 'moonscape' and 'fairy chimneys' (they looked like big doodles) make it look like you’re on another planet.. We stayed in a cave room here, most of the area is Volcanic rock, very soft & they’ve just caved houses out of it.. Matt had the full Turkish Shave experience here, hot towel, double shave, after shave, moisturiser, more aftershave, getting the hair on your ears burnt off & then a 10 min head & back massage, all for about Aus $7.. All I got was a cup of tea!! Jealous, indeed!! We did have a Turkish Bath that night which kind of made up for it..<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p>
We also did a day tour around the area going to an Underground City built hundreds of years ago & goes 60m below ground (not somewhere I’d like to live), a walk through a Gorge with loads of little churches in it, a Monastery carved out of the volcanic rock, a stop along the Silk Route, more fairy chimneys & the obligatory stop at a pottery factory..
Another overnight bus was next this time to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city>, nothing like the last one.. Had 3 days of doing not a lot, we wandered around & looked at a few things, looking back we really didn’t do a lot.. We did see DJ Tiesto play, which was pretty cool, it was in a big old castle / fort (link if anyone wants to see the setting http://www.istanbul7towers.com/fotogaleri/Mekan/mekan1%20(11).JPG) (http://www.istanbul7towers.com/fotogaleri/Mekan/mekan1%20%2811%29.JPG%29).. After bumping into some nice Turkish people who gave us their passes to the front area of the gig we thought we’d get a drink, 1 beer & 1 vodka which came to 28 Lira or Aus$25, which makes it the most expensive drink I’ve ever had.. And when we were leaving the cab drivers wanted to charge us Aus$55 for a 20min cab ride!! Crazy stuff, so we ended up walking a bit & finally got one for $10 which was much better..
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>From <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city> we did a tour of Gallipoli which was well worth it.. We had a great guide & went to all the major sights.. Anzac Cove & the beach that the landing was meant to be made on, the cemeteries, trench areas (some are on 5 – 8 meters apart) etc, etc.. When you’re actually there & see how small the area is, the tiny area where a lot of the fighting took place, what they were fighting for & how many lives were lost for nothing it all seemed pretty pointless..
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>It was then back to Istanbul for another 3 days where we finally got enthused & did some real sight seeing, took in the Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia, Grand Bazzar & did a whole bunch of walking around..
<o:p></o:p>
On our last night in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Istanbul</st1:place></st1:city> we were also lucky enough to catch a Guns N Roses gig, a life long dream of mine.. If you have no interest in a brief review skip this paragraph.. They played for about 2hrs, although a bit of that was taken up by 5 solos (4 Guitar and 1 piano) all of about 4 - 5 mins long, one which turned into Chrstina Agularia's Beautiful, very odd and the other was piano Don't Cry, which we thought wasn’t the best choice of song to solo.. Played heaps of Appetite stuff, a couple of Lies and Illusion and 3 new jobs which didn't sound too bad.. The new / impostor Slash is poo he just doesn't quite have it and wore knee high red suede boots.. Dizzy's still in the band on keyboards / piano and Izzy even came out and played three songs with them and 1 encore, a bit of a turn of events we thought, Axl's ego must be shrinking.. Axl had 5 outfit changes through out the night and kept running off to the side of the stage but he still does all the old moves which was sweet..