Fulbright May Meeting

To celebrate/culminate/debrief after a year in Turkey, the Turkish Fulbright Commission had all the teachers, students and professor grantees to Antalya to a resort for a weekend. We enjoyed 2 full days at the Pirates Beach Club in Tekirova, much like a cruise ship on land. The weekend was full of relaxing and sharing. I was so relaxed I forgot to take pictures of the sharing part (meetings)! We ate, drank, sat on the beach, swam in the Mediterranean, took a day boat cruiseto Olympos, and talked about our experiences in Turkey. Everything was perfect except that Evie wasn't there! Evie was taking the cats home and attending a close friend's wedding.

Olympos

The Antalya meeting coincided with a 4-day weekend for Children's Day, and so Diane, Brendan, Tracey and Jesse explored the ruins near Antalya. From the Pirates Beach Resort we saw the ruins at Phaselis nearby, and then stayed in Olympos at the famous tree houses, cheap wooden lodging for backpackers from around the world. It was fun. We even got to see the, the Chimaera amazing natural fires which come out of a hillside, at night. There were proabably a hundred people enjoying the natural strangeness and warmth of the fires.

My treehouse room, the House of the Rising Sun.

We saw the Chimaera by day in February, and by night in May. They really are dramatic and strange!

Termessos

When we visited Antalya in February, we never made it to Termessos, and this ruined ancient city was high on our list. We have seen some amazing sets of ruins, but none is built in such a breathtaking setting. The Termessions built their fortress-city high up in a dramatic nook in the mountains above Antalya. They fought off Alexander the Great and the Romans to keep independent.

The setting of Termessos is a breathtaking valley perch. The huge walls complete the impregnable defense.

Tracey thinks the the theatre's view is quite something!

Tombs carved in the mountainside.

Perge

On our last day, before our afternoon flight, we visited one more ancient city, Perge, east of Antalya near the airport. While the setting was a flat boring (and hot!) plain, the ruins were probably the most impressive besides Ephesus. There was a HUGE bath complex where you could still see each pool, marble tiling, mosaic floors, and huge barrel-vaulted ceilings. You could almost imagine bathing in Roman style. Also impressive was the large stadium for chariot racing, and the long colonnaded main street, complete with a canal down the middle, shops on either side, and a huge fountain fed by a natural spring at the end. We were really impressed with the Romans' appreciation and love of public, civic spaces. This city would have been so grand!

The long stadium, held up by 70 angled arches, something we havent seen in many of the Roman cities we've visited. To the left, columns line the agora (marketplace). Below, the impressive colonnaded main street, paved in huge blocks of stone with visible wagon ruts!