Antalya

Day 12 Archaeological Museum

Today is our first day at Antalya after a gruelling ride of 8 hours. My knee caps hurt! I think that it has to do with the chairs of the Suha/Sufu/Sofa Bus! The chairs do not fit nicely according to the human body. Try to avoid this bus company when you are in Turkey! This is my first time feeling so bad after a ride! Luckily for us, Hallis made some arrangements for us so we had a pick up from Kaleici Pansiyon! This guy according to vivien has a "you-can-count-on-me-look". haha. I thought that this sounds v amusing!:) We sat in his MPV/Van (I dunno how to classify this vehicle) to the old town where our pension resides! He was quite kind as he offered us breakfast FOC for us! We had some simit for breakfast too. Anyway I was quite amused by his staff. I called them the gu-s.

We went to the archaeological museum today via the tram which comes every 30 mins. This tram is quite different from the one in Istanbul, there is no gantry at all! We pay directly to the ticket collector upon boarding! We got off at Muze and caught a glimpse of the Antalya Beach! How Beautiful!! And off we went into the museum, apparently one of the 36 must see things when you are in Turkey. Fatigue got to me and I simply could not digest all the sea of words next to the exhibits. I think fatigue ate up my brain. I think the others suffered the same syndrome and soon...we decided to do crappy things in the museum, with quite blatant disrespect. muahaha. We decided to do stupid poses with the roman statues.. view the photos! To be fair, I think the museum indeed has a wonderful collection of artifacts and exhibits so excuse me for my lack of appreciation!

After which we went for lunch at a nearby cafe. I forgot the name but this cafe has the same business idea as Singapore Settler's cafe. I thought the food at Settler's is bad. The one we had was terrible! The spagetti bolognese was vastly different from our expectations! The beef was kebab meat and somehow there seemed to be a lot of chili oil.. :( And the spagetti looked really bloated. Officially the worst meal in Turkey. We questioned if the people in Antalya love to eat dog food, with a very small sample size of 1 and hence very high sampling risk. We love applying our theories.

Afterwhich we walked around Antalya! The streets were decorated with many Turkey Flags and at this particular square, we see a statue of Ataturk on a horse. SK told me that different positions of a horse represents different things but I forgot about it at this moment! Shall ask him again. Ataturk means "Father of all Turks" and this man that is so revered in Turkey is Mr. Mustafa Kemal. From a soldier, he founded the Republic of Turkey and there are many statues of him in Turkey. Also, his face is printed on the new turkish lira notes!

Anyway on the 19th of May, we were lucky to witness this (taken from Wikipedia, read on if you are interested):

Youth and Sports Day (Gençlik ve Spor Bayramı) on May 19 in Turkey is dedicated to the youth. This day is also Atatürk Day (Atatürk'ü Anma), a day of commemoration of Kemal Atatürk, the "Father of Turkey", and the commemoration of the beginning of national liberation movement initiated by Atatürk in 1919

The day is celebrated in honor of the arrival of Kemal Atatürk to Samsun on May 19, 1919; when the Turkish War of Independence was started.

Yes! While having our dinner at Burger King, we saw trucks ornated with flowers and people standing on them cheering on, with music. It was a grand celebration! Initially, we thought that they were cheering on due to some soccer game but we later realised that it's Ataturk day from our Antalya Tour Guide! Wow! We were really lucky to be there to witness this!

Day 13 - Perge, Aspendos, Side

Our 2nd guided tour in Turkey! First stop, we went to Perge which is not very well preserved but our guide Ibrahim told us many stories. Some of the stories are in fact greek mythology which surprises me quite a fair bit. I think I was a bit desensitized by ruins at some pt during the trip! Oh and there are vipers in Perge, so be very careful when you walk around there! Vivi saw a viper!!

Next we went to a waterfall! We thought that we might see a fall of 3 storeys high at least but it turned out to be shorter than our man made one at Jurong Bird Park. Bah! So we left really quickly. But what was more interesting at the falls was this particular tour group! They all looked as though they went for "plastic surgery gone bad". Seriously! I am not exaggerating! Vivi and I saw this lady with super fake boobs. It was quite a laugh anyway! And their behaviour was quite AT! bah! And we chatted with this other couple on the same tour! The guy is an american soldier and the lady is an iraqi woman (from Baghdad in fact!). WOW! The type of sensantional news that I would expect to read in some tabloid papers! And I overheard them joking to Ibrahim that.. "If someone dies of a natural death in Iraq, it's certainly not possible and people should investigate it." haha! Fancy making a joke out of a life-and-death issue!

We had lunch at some secluded place which offered us trout. Cool! Many Mezes (appetizers) as well which I don't really fancy till now! Like carrot mash, yogurt mash or some sort.. There were many bugs there as well. eek. So we retreated to a safe haven after having our lunch!

Moved on to Aspendos! A place to visit when you are in Antalya! Heard from Ibrahim that Aspendos used to house 20,000 people. But today, it only houses 5000 people! He explained that people in the past were leaner and lighter and hence the theatre was able to take in a larger capacity! So we are officially the fat people of the 21st Century! We found out that a ticket for an upcoming concert at Aspendos costs 50 lira (60 SGD) and we would love to go! Sadly, the dates did not agree with us and we had to move on to the next town! I really love Aspendos. Not an extremely majestic theatre but big enough to wow me! Look at the pics and you would agree with me!

Side was our last stop! Till now I do not really understand what's the big hoo-haa about this place! I think there is really nothing there! Well, the one thing I caught there was a bithalon! And some of the participants are really young! So we became lazy and decided to have orange juice while playing bridge as we finally bought a pack of cards!! Yipee! We were searching quite frantically just the evening before btw!

Afterthis, Ibrahim brought as to this place where he had a surprise for us. Anyway the surprise turned out to be no surprise at all. duhs. But I appreciate his efforts! He brought us to another waterfall which was really spectacular! I learnt in geography that all rivers eventually flow to the sea and this waterfall proves this point! Really tiring day and we pampered ourselves with dinner is familiar to us - Pizza!!

Day 14- Antalya Beach & the Mediterranean Sea!

The one thing that struck me about this beach is that, in place of sand, it has pebbles!! It's a pebbles beach! And this is fantastic as after a dip in the sea, unlike sand, pebbles do not stick to our skins! A call for celebration! So we brought our humble towels, courtesy of Kaleici Pansiyon (without their knowledge actually). So we sat on the towels comfortably to play some games of bridge. The ladies next to us were really nice as they offered us figs! Anyway I heard this one thing about fig. Do not eat too many of them without removing the skin, this fruit has a laxative effect upon overconsumption with the skin on! SK and Twm went a dip. After some egging on, Vivien and I went in too! So anyway I was holding on the Vivien's hand while walking into the sea.. but when the waves came, it was so strong that it swept it off my feet and I felt that I did a fancy 360 degrees turn before hitting heads-on onto the pebbles shore. I plucked myself up just to be hit by another wave and hence landing on pebbles once again! Luckily I saw Twm n he dragged me up the shore! It was truly an adventure. But one that I would not like to try again. After this small scene, I stayed steer from the sea!

Anyway SK & Twm became quite high after 2 dips and they went in many more times to play with the crashing waves! It was the best day in Antalya and we had loads of fun! Vivien brought her polaroid too where she made a very amusing remark "I am going to take polaroids though I know no one is very interested"! haha. :) So we had quite a photo whoring session!! heh! Oh we were so near the beach club that we could hear music too.. we felt like rich kids on the beach as always portrayed in soap operas like OC! And we had quite a good time having small snacks at very affordable prices at the beach club! yeah!! We were all quite burnt too with the exception of Twm, this is unfair as he applied the least amount of sunblock!!

Day 15 Morning at 6 am

This is one entry worth noting as we prepared our own breakfast this morning!! We awoke to see the gu-s sleeping on the couches. We couldn't bear to wake them up so we decided to make our own "MENEMEN" which SK had been craving for ever since the one at Hallis'! But we could not light up the stove!! So i went to the hall n tap one of them (named Osman who reminds me of Zhan Jing as he looks quite cool with spiky hair and low waist jeans, but a bit blur and the our conversation revolves around hot water as I took hot water from him every night to make honey water! And he never fail to give me an amused look when I asked for hot water). So I tapped him quite a few times but he continued to sleep! Oh mans. I started tapping him harder and more violently while calling out his name! Heh. I think I scared the daylights out of him! So after this..we had our menemen (egg & tomatoes) cooked by Vivien n Twm! yay!!! And departed to Pammukale!