Pros and cons of travelling off season

Guess I should write one of these before I have even more to write about. I have done a bit since I last wrote. Other than the one photo I don't think I've written anything since before I got to Crete. And I'm not even in Crete anymore. Actually quite far from Crete. I've done a lot of travelling in the last few days.
But that's getting ahead and if I do that then I might never go back and since I don't seem to really be writing my journal anymore this is sort of the only record of my trip so I should probably at least make mention the earlier parts.
I arrived in Heraklion at about 6.30 am after not the best overnight ferry (on the boats that do that route the cheap seats are really not designed for sleeping) and the youth hostel didn't open until 8 so i found a bench and ate some breakfast and watched the sun rise. Or at least I watched the sky go from dark to light. The sun wasn't really visible. Then I dumped my stuff and decided to head over to Knossos. Some of you may have noticed that I tend to visit a lot of old stuff. I don't think anyone can be that surprised. I do have a degree in classics. But after a while some of the old stuff does start to look kind of the same. Knossos is not one of those. There isn't really any other site in the world quite like Knossos. For those of you who didn't major in classics Knossos was the main palace in the Minoan civilisation. And the Minoans were a big deal up until about the 14th century BC when they went down pretty fast. So Knossos is REALLY old stuff. Except for the parts that are really quite new. See Knossos was excavated back before archaeology was really a thing. Before there were rules and systems for how to do things. The guy who did the excavations (hence forth he shall be referred to as Evans) did some things that are a little controversial today. He reconstructed parts of the palace the way he thought it would have looked. The trouble being that there wasn't always enough evidence to support his theories. So he jumped to a few conclusions which he left permanently on the site in concrete. There are debates about whether his reconstructions were good or bad. Point is: these days no archaeological site would ever be treated that way which makes Knossos unique. Because Evans' reconstructions may not be entirely accurate but they tell a good story. They may not show what the palace was like but they show what it could have been like.  There are whole rooms that he put back together and repainted. When you are standing in those rooms it doesn't matter if it's not right, you get a sense of context that you can't get from the accurate reconstructions of other ruins. Knossos is full of imagination.
I spent the afternoon just wandering the city. It's a nice city. The next day I caught a bus to Chania. Which is also sometimes spelt Hania. If it was up to me I'd probably choose to spell it Khania but it's not. Probably they get more english speakers closer to the correct pronunciation with Hania. But phonetics aside, Chania was very pretty. It's got a venetian harbour and lots of beach and twisty streets in the centre of town. I specifically went to Chania because there are some really good day trips from there. But as it turns out at the end of October they stop almost all of the buses so there was only one bus to each place each day. The latest one left at 6.45 am. I didn't end up doing any day trips. But I was paying €12 a night for a room that in summer would cost €65 so Greece in winter has it's bonuses.
Instead of thrilling day trips I slept in and had a bit of a lazy day. Which I liked but doesn't make for much of a blog post. And the next day I started my way to the next place on my list. Delphi. Which required a bus to Heraklion, a ferry to Piraeus, metro and then bus to the Athens bus station (did they purposefully make it as hard as possible to get out of Athens?), and then the bus to Delphi. I'd thought I might be able to do Delphi in the afternoon and head straight on to Meteora but turns out there was only one bus a day and it left at 10 am. So I had to stay the night. Which turned out to be quite nice. It felt good to get out of the cities and apparently I'm a fan of mountains. Who knew? I headed over to the archaeological site but didn't realise it would close at 3pm. I probably should have been prepared for that because a few other things here close that early at this time of year but I didn't think to check so I showed up at 2.15 and had to convince them to let me in even though I wouldn't have time to see the whole thing. But I saw most of it and took a moment to ask Apollo where he thought I should go next. I guess I don't have what it takes to be an oracle (or hadn't inhaled enough noxious gases) because I got nothing. So today I went with my original plan and headed for Meteora. Which actually means heading to Kalambaka. Turns out it's a good thing I couldn't start the trip yesterday afternoon. It sounded so easy but ended up taking 4 buses and about 7 hours. It wasn't bad though. Saw a lot of little mountain towns (and got that harbour union song severely stuck in my head. I only know the one line) and dramatic vistas. Also saw a lot of the inside of bus stations. But I got here in the end and it seems nice enough. Tomorrow I will check out the monasteries and maybe find out what the deal is for climbing stuff. Just for a change of pace.

Sicily and the Peloponnese

The extra bit at the bottom of each country. That's what I've been doing this week. Sicily was lovely. Warm but rainy which I mostly didn't mind. I stayed in Catania for the most part. I get why it doesn't get it's own listing in the lonely planet, there is not a whole lot there for tourists, but I quite liked the chance to be in a place where people actually live. I spent some time wandering the markets and such. But the reason I chose Catania was because it's fairly central and easy to do day trips to Syracuse and Taormina.
Syracuse was really lovely. I wandered the old town of Ortygia with it's windy alleys and ocean views. Visited their archaeological park with the greek theatre where Aeschylus premiered a bunch of his plays and a man made cavern thing that some tyrant built to have perfect acoustics so he could eavesdrop on the prisoners he put inside. I also found what I think was the tomb of Archimedes. It's the only thing in the area of the map that the tomb of archimedes was marked on but you'd think something like that would have a sign. It's Archimedes. He was a genius and you learn about him and his bath in primary school. Surely that would be worth a sign or 2. So maybe it wasn't really the tomb of Archimedes but I'm going to claim that it was until someone proves me wrong. I also paid a visit to the local archaeological museum which was a pretty decent one. So that was my day in Syracuse. And it wasn't even raining so it was perfect.
My last full day in Sicily I intended to go to Taormina (a pretty hilltop town) but it was completely pouring down that day and I wasn't feeling a hundred percent. Not a lot less than a hundred percent, just enough to make the idea of traipsing through the pouring rain really unpleasant. So I didn't. I stayed in and read all day. Only went out in the evening to get some food supplies. Which failed because it turned out it was Sunday and the grocery store was closed. But I found a bakery so I didn't starve.
The next day I began the trip to Greece. I may have mentioned the difficulty of getting from Sicily to Greece. It was somewhat complicated. I ended up spending 4 hours on one train the first day to get to some nowhere place called Lamezia Terme and then 8 hours on 3 trains the next day to get to Bari where I got on a ferry for a 16 hour trip to Patras. After which I was somewhat exhausted but just kept going and took 2 buses from there to get to Olympia.
I booked 2 nights in Olympia even though the only thing there is the historical site because I knew I might not get there until somewhat late and that after the trip from Italy it would be nice to have a day without any public transport. But there is a whole lot of nothing in Olympia. Especially at this time of year. Many of the shops close at random times just because there aren't enough people to bother staying open for. I got there in the evening and after a bit of a look round the town I settled in. Despite the fact that Greece is an hour ahead so I should be staying up later and sleeping in longer after the travelling and the not great night's sleep on the ferry it felt like bed time at about 7pm.
The next morning I got up fairly early to get to the archaeological site just after it opened and beat the tour groups. It was really good. I was almost completely alone for half of it and only a few small groups for most of it. About an hour after I got there all the big tour groups showed up. I spent about half the day at the ruins and the museum which left me half a day of wandering around a town that could be completely encircled on foot in under 20 minutes. So not a lot to report about that afternoon. I found a proper supermarket which was good because the place I'd been directed to the night before had a fruit and vege section consisting of lemons, cabbage and 3 kinds of onion. Not the most inspiring selection when you don't have a kitchen.
I also took the time to ask at the tourist office about the easiest way to get to Nafplio since there's nothing direct and I'd found conflicting things online. They told me to wait at that bus stop for the bus to Tripoli and showed me the list of times. On their list there was nothing between 7.35 and 11.10 but the timetable on the internet had said the first bus was 8.30. And that the last bus from tripoli to Nafplio was at 2 so I really had to take the earliest bus. So I got up and headed to the bus stop early enough for the 7.35 but prepared to wait for the 8.30. But neither ever came. So eventually I got on a bus to Pyrgos where there is an actual bus station with people to ask if something goes wrong. Then I got the bus to Corinth and from there to Nafplio. I still don't know where the Tripoli bus ended up. But I got to Nafplio early enough to have plenty of time to get lost on the way to the hotel. Got a nice tour of the town in my attempts to find a place to sleep.
The next day I headed out to Mycenae. Had a few more problems with the greek bus system and ended up walking the last 4 km to the site but it was a nice day for a walk and it cleared the frustration from the bus. Mycenae was pretty impressive. I've seen a lot of old stuff during this trip but I won't be forgetting Mycenae any time soon.
Then another bus (no dramas this time) back to Nafplio, a bit of window shopping because everything was closed and back to the hotel. The place is run by a lovely old couple who keep offering me tea when I get back but I'm not really a tea person and I'm starting to feel rude turning them down.
And that brings us all the way up to yesterday! That's practically caught up.
Yesterday was for Nafplio itself. I wandered the old town, climbed the way too many steps to the fortress, walked around the little peninsula thing, sat by the water, picked a restaurant in the main square and had ice cream and looked through some of the little shops. Nice and simple.
Today I headed out to Epidavros. Big theatre and the ruins of the sanctuary of Asklepios (greek god of healing). But the bus back only left at 1 pm or 4 pm so I had to either do it all in 2 hours or stick around for 5. So I skimmed through parts of it because there is nothing else out there. And now I'm on the bus back and have no plans for this afternoon beyond lunch. But if I pick a place with wifi you might even get to read this a whole day before I promised.
Is that enough of an update for you?

Where's the other one?

I was half way through a blog and it had disappeared from my phone. Last time this happened it reappeared after I had rewritten the whole thing. So now I will try to remember where I left off and hope I can paste them together later.
So the old one did reappear but I can't be bothered cutting and pasting so I am just posting them separately. So if you are reading this one first you might want to find the other one.

I have just gotten on the train to Naples and the person who sat down next to me reeks of cigarettes. So even though it's pretty warm I have gotten out my scarf and wrapped it around my face. My asthma has not been so impressed with europe.
But I'm getting ahead of the story. I think I left you at the vatican. There is so much there. Too much to tell. So here were MY highlights. The Laocoon: it really is pretty amazing. A vase by Exekias that shows Ajax and Achilles playing dice which I studied at uni but photographs just don't do it justice, there is so much detail. One particular picture on the roof of one of the rafael rooms which had a picture of a statute of jesus on the cross up on a pedestal with a statue of Hermes shattered on the ground in front of it, which really sums up the early christian treatment of other religions. Now the vatican collects and protects ancient art of any kind but in Rome the only way old buildings and monuments survived was if they were turned into christian monuments. I suppose after the way they had to hide for the first few hundred years they probably resented other religions quite a bit by the time they were in power but why is religious tolerance such a hard idea to grasp? There were a hundred other amazing things as well of course. The sistine chapel was pretty impressive. I had expected it to be less than it's made out to be but it was rather good.
By the end of all of that my feet were more than a little tired so I took the metro back to my hostel. Found a grocery store to get some supplies and then gave my legs the rest of the night off.
The next day I again started fairly early because everyone else in my room started even earlier. I packed some lunch food and headed out to Tivoli for the day. Except I didn't technically get all the way to Tivoli. I got off the bus at Hadrian's Villa and after 4 hours wandering around there I decided I didn't need to go the rest of the way to Tivoli and just headed back to Rome. Hadrian's Villa was big. I remember learning about parts of it at high school but I'm sure they never conveyed to me the scale of the place. It just keeps going. I didn't see all of it. But I had a lovely day walking around out there. It was nice to get away from the crowds for a bit. That's probably why Hadrian built it in the first place.
I'd had a few pretty epic days by then and decided I would take that evening and the next morning off from being a tourist. Of course I didn't get back to the hostel until after 5 so I'd still had a bit of a day.
Yesterday I didn't head out until about noon. I headed to the ara pacis augustae. Which is in pretty good condition. They were doing another special exhibition in the basement which meant I had to pay an extra €3.50 even though I didn't really care about it. It was all about Audrey Hepburn in Rome which could have been vaguely interesting if it had been about her as a person or something but it was just her as a fashion icon. An entire exhibit on the clothes she wore. I got pretty bored by the time they got half way through the 60s.
I had planned to have another tourist day with a list of the things I hadn't seen yet but I decided that instead I felt like wandering aimlessly and seeing what I found. I found the synagogue and the portico of octavia which I really liked. It was another archaeological site but it was right in a neighbourhood. It literally went houses, shops, restaurants, ancient site, shops, houses, more ancient site. The old and the new together is great to see. People have been living and working and growing in that place for millenia. If you believe the stories the city has been constantly inhabited for 2764 years. And you can see it when you look at the portico of octavia.
So that was my day. I meandered for quite a while. Got gelato, tried to shop for shoes, tried to help other tourists who asked me for directions and just generally enjoyed being in Rome.
And this morning I got on a train to Naples where I am now writing this to you. And now I'm hungry so I'm going to eat some food.
So I made it to sorrento but not without difficulty. Tired now because of said difficulty so I will tell you about it next time.

Rain on the Pont du Gard

Aqueducts never fail to amaze me. It's such a feat of engineering. Not so much the arches and such, the romans did a lot of arches and obviously had to know how to build bridges. No, I'm amazed by the parts you don't see. The Pont du Gard is a massive aqueduct spanning a valley with a river in the bottom. Except it's actually just a tiny part of the aqueduct. The Pont du Gard is about 130m long. The Nimes aqueduct was about 50km long. And the whole way it has an average gradient of 25 cm per kilometre. Because if the slope is much more than that the water moves too quickly and will spill over but much less and it won't  move fast enough. So the big bridge part is impressive because that's what they needed to build to keep it going at the right angle, but they kept the angle right the whole way, and the land wasn't always leaning in the right direction. All to get water to Nimes. So that's your lesson in classical engineering for the day. And next time you see pictures of those towering arches of aqueducts remember that that is just the visible part.
Sorry about the mini lecture, I just find it really interesting and had to share. Now that Catie is gone I don't have anyone to vent my amazement on.
As you may have guessed I visited the Pont du Gard aqueduct yesterday. It's about a half an hour away from the city of Nîmes which has a bunch of other really well preserved examples of Roman architecture including the Maison Caree (a temple from Augustus' time) and an amphitheatre from the 2nd century AD which is in such good condition that it has been fitted out with lights and benches so that it can still be used.
So I wandered around Nîmes in the morning and saw the main sights in the city as well as the museum of archaeology and natural history (it was free) which had no signs in English and a lot of not very good taxidermy. I mean a lot (and am also now thinking about an alot of taxidermy and it is scary).
In the afternoon I grabbed a bus to the Pont du Gard. It was pretty awesome. Then as I was heading back from the actual bridge toward the entrance (it's a bit of a walk) it started pouring down. I had been warned that it might rain so I was wearing my jacket but I got pretty drenched anyway. It was wet and cold and lovely. I have missed the rain.
Caught the bus back to Nimes (with a pause in the middle to watch some large vehicle ballet when a truck in front of us failed to get around a tight corner on a skinny village road and then our bus had to get around it on the road which would hardly fit 2 normal cars let alone a truck and a bus). By the time I got back I was mostly dry so I decided to keep going and went to find the gardens of the fountain and climb the hill to the tour magne.
So I had a pretty full day but managed to see pretty much everything there is to see in Nimes. Then this morning I caught a train to Marseille.
So far Marseille is lovely but very windy. I climbed up to the basilica at the top of the hill this afternoon and practically felt like I was going to be blown off the hill it was so windy. Mostly I just wandered the city around the vieux port. Looked for cheap sunglasses because mine did a very impressive vanishing act at the Pont du Gard (I know where I had them and I know where I didn't have them and I only went one place in between but they weren't there). Met a random french guy who thought I was lost but then we had a whole conversation about how France is going to lose on Sunday. Now I think it's time to eat.
Talk to you again soon.

So far behind

I am falling further and further behind in these things. And we had a pretty epic couple of days. So I guess I'd better get this started. Apparently I haven't updated since we arrived in Seville. Seville was really lovely. We wandered around the streets all day. We saw the cathedral and the alcazar and the fancy big plaza. We stumbled across more than one little market and a festival of nations where there was an australian stand selling kangaroo burgers. We didn't try them but were tempted. Odd to have to go all the way to Spain to get the chance when we are usually much closer to the source. Took a break in the afternoon when everything was closed anyway but in the evening Catie managed to drag me along on some shopping (we didn't end up buying anything). In the evening we got some mojitos and sat up on the roof for a while. But we'd had a pretty full day so we crashed fairly early. The next day we had grand plans to go to Granada and see the amazing Alhambra. Didn't work out.  It's a giant palace. We've been to a few now. Never have I heard of such a place having a limited number of tickets each day. They were sold out before we got there. So we wandered the town for a bit instead before catching our train to Madrid. We got there late and lost the hostel (spent about an hour walking 3 different wrong ways before giving up and getting a cab. We were really close too, just could not find the right street. And the people we asked for directions either had never heard of it or were completely useless. But we got there in the end.
The next day we headed for the palace because it is free on Wednesdays but we got there an hour before the changing of the guard so it wasn't open at all. We went away thinking we would come back in the afternoon. We walked around the city for a bit. Saw some sub par gardens, a whole row of statues of people we'd never heard of, the outside of a cathedral we weren't willing to pay to see the inside of, the outside of a convent we also wouldn't pay for. Generally had a see the city without any pressure to see specific parts in a particular order. In the afternoon we headed back to the palace to find lines practically round the block (there wasn't really a block for it to go around but it zigzagged across a square a long way). We couldn't be bothered waiting. And the sight of the number of people who jump at the chance to go when things are free made us reassess our plan to go to the Prado museum in the last 2 hours when it was free. So we hopped on the metro to that part of the city and went to check out the botanical gardens (we walked around them...literally, who charges for gardens? They didn't look that much better than the Christchurch ones from the entrance and there was a free park really close by so we didn't choose to enter)  and the Prado. Which it turns out students get into for free all the time anyway. I love my ISIC card. It cost Catie €10. But she got more out of it anyway. I can only enjoy art to a certain point. Then my brain becomes saturated and everything I look at just washes over me without leaving an impression. Catie apparently has an infinite capacity for art though. After the Prado we got ice cream and sat in the free park before heading back to the hostel to make some food. Mmmmm... grilled cheese sandwiches. They were pretty epic sandwiches. Salami and olives and emmental cheese on good brown bread (we get free breakfast at most of the places we stay but it is always heavy on the white bread and we miss good bread). And a side of salad because we are good healthy people. So tasty. Anyway, moving on from the subject of food.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We'd heard great things about it and it lived up to expectations. It had a free museum with a bunch of artworks and one small display case of neolithic objects. It had a massive cathedral that just kept going. And marzipan everywhere. We didn't actually eat any because we aren't really marzipan people but we took a picture of a church made out of marzipan. We also got a little lost (in a good way). Then back to Madrid for some free (but not very good) sangria.
The next day I had claimed for a free day. Do anything or nothing. I did a bit of nothing then a bit of anything then a bit of nothing again. Catie went shopping and did buy things this time and I bought a skirt that is completely impractical for traveling in. We went on a dessert hunt that night which proved harder than expected. I guess in Spain they start dinner so late that they don't bother with dessert.
And the next day was the first of two very full days. And I've been writing this for a while so I will abandon you for a bit and come back to that later.
Right, so where was I?
Yesterday. So close to caught up. Except those 2 days were rather busy. Started early yesterday (after a pathetic sleep. Here's a hint if people are sleeping you don't hold a loud conversation about it being 3 am right next to their bed) to get to the train to Segovia. The trains often sell out quite early but for some unknown reason we can't book ahead online because our cards are from overseas banks (after having trouble with the ticket machine I was told that they don't accept foreign cards because if it is lost then anyone can use it but I don't see how that is any different to local credit cards). So we had to go super early. Segovia was lovely. Very different from other things we've seen so far. They have a giant roman aqueduct and a palace that the lonely planet describes as 'fairytale'. It was more or less what you would imagine if you heard fairytale palace. More recent than most of the palaces we'd visited so far. We paid the extra €2 to climb the tower. Just a few steps. Somewhere around 150. But the view was pretty amazing.
We wandered the town without a goal for a bit too. They have a huge number of churches for a town that size. And also a large number of tourists. But we got away from the majority of them (the tourists not the churches) in our wanders.
Then it was back on the train to head back to Madrid. The other art museum, the Reina Sophia, is free on Saturday afternoons so we headed there. It's more modern art. Where the Prado had a lot of Goya and El Greco the Reina Sophia had Picasso and Dali. But mostly Picasso. The guernica has an entire room to itself but there are so many people crowded round it that you still can't see it all that well.
There were a few interesting things and a few not so interesting things. That's just how it goes with modern art I guess. In some ways I preferred the uncertainty of it to the all very comparable works in the Prado. Which might make me uncultured but oh well.
After we finished with the museum we walked around the streets looking for a decent but not too pricey place for dinner. We'd thought paella but it was a bit more expensive in that area than where we had seen earlier and we couldn't agree on one flavour to share so instead we went for the very spanish lasagne. Finally we made our way back to the train station one more time to catch a night train to Lisbon. Which is where we are now.
The night train was better than all of the night buses in Turkey but it doesn't make for the best night sleep and since it was the second night of not enough sleep we were rather weary by the time we got here. But we pushed our exhaustion aside (though not without some complaining) and after dumping luggage at our hostel jumped on yet another train to Sintra. Not a long trip but I almost fell asleep anyway. We applied caffeine before making our way slowly up the very steep town to the castle at the top. There were a lot of hills and stairs in the last 2 days. I have calf muscles. I can feel them. They were never really necessary in Christchurch.
We accidentally took the long way down, grabbed some lunch, checked out some of the cork stuff they had and headed back to Lisbon. Then we took a break and I started this epic account. Then I stopped this epic account and we went for a walk.  Oddly there wasn't a whole lot open at 8pm on a Sunday but we had a decent look around anyway. We'll see how different it is in the morning.
And now you know everything. To a very limited definition of everything anyway.

Churches, fairies and brownies, oh my!

Hello again! I am writing this on the bus to Ankara so I don't know when I will be able to actually post it. The hostel we have booked for tonight didn't say that it had internet so I might have to wait until we get back to Istanbul. But probably we will hunt something up in Safranbolu if we have to. So last time I left you with the preview of a grand tour of Cappadocia to come. Well it was pretty awesome. It started at 9.30 and we didn't get back until after 6pm. And it was no where near enough time. The first stop was the Goreme panorama where you can see the entire valley. I think any grand vistas I see in the future will be ruined now. I will look at massive mountain ranges and just shrug and say "but it's not Cappadocia".
I won't even bother trying to describe it. I wouldn't know where to start.
After that we headed to Derinkuyu which is one of several underground cities in the area. Derinkuyu is the most touristy one so it is well lit. Some of them aren't lit at all and it would be pretty awesome to go to one of those but we just didn't have the time. We've been doing a bit of "when we're rich" planning in Goreme. I think we could probably spend a whole 2 weeks just in Cappadocia.
The underground city was pretty impressive. It was started in the 7th century BC by the Phrygians but was added to for a long time. The early christians used it as a hideout around the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It goes down about 85 metres. Some of the tunnels are so short that it might be easier to crawl. My backpack was often scraping on the ceiling, if I hadn't been wearing one I probably would have hit my head a lot more.
It was really good to have a tour guide there because there wasn't a lot of signage but we could have spent much more time there. We didn't get to see everything because we didn't have enough time.
The same was true of the next stop, Ilhara Valley. It's this smallish valley cut into a fairly flat landscape so it isn't all that visible from far away. Which would be why the early christians thought it would be an awesome place to hide from those pesky Romans. There are dozens of old churches cut into the valley walls. We only looked at 2 of them. And we had to stay on one side of the river. If you were doing it without the tour group you could easily spend all day there but it would be a bit of a mission getting there and back. As it was we got really irritated at this supremely slow couple. We walked 3.5 km through the valley (which was nice, green and shady unlike most of the area) at quite a slow pace but those people somehow managed to fall about 10 minutes behind everyone else. And since the restaurant for lunch was at the end of the walk we were pretty hungry and pretty impatient by then.
Lunch was decent, and reviving after quite a stair filled morning. Then we headed to the Selime Monastery. I don't remember any of the details about when it was from but it is basically a giant church complex inside of a hill. There's a chapel part and a school part and a kitchen and lots of great views. You have to be somewhat intrepid to get to parts but it is totally worth it. We went pretty much everywhere. Including the part with almost no light coming in. We were told we only had 10 minutes to explore on our own but after waiting so long for the slow people at other places (they also managed to get lost after coming out of Derinkuyu) and our general experience of turkish time (they tend to say a certain amount and it end up a fair bit more) we decided to take our time. When the guide told us to gather we looked at one more thing and on the way down we detoured to a different part, secure in the knowledge that the slow people would take that much longer coming down.
We were all a little tired by that point after crawling through tunnels (which included a lot of stairs) then marching through a valley (which included a fair number of stairs) and clambering over a monastery (which had some stairs and more footholds that may or may not count as stairs and a few slopes that could have used more stairs). So many of the people slept on the next leg of the drive. But they all woke up for pigeon valley. Which (oddly, considering the name) has a whole lot of pigeon houses where they used to keep pigeons back in the day when they were useful for communication and painting.
But that was just a short stop before heading to the final part of the tour. The part where they try to sell you stuff by taking you to an onyx factory. But (thanks to those incredibly slow people) we were given the choice of heading to the factory or just heading home. We were unanimous and headed back to Goreme.
We were fairly exhausted by then so after a stop for water (and cherry chocolate brownies) we settled in for a quiet evening.
The next day we had a plan. Which failed pretty much straight away. We intended to get up early (set an alarm and everything) and get to the Goreme open air museum by about 8.30. So at about 10 we actually got up meaning that we got to the museum at the same time as a few dozen tour groups. At one point we were found ourselves stuck in a small courtyard with at least 50 people (no I'm not exaggerating) with a small tunnel in and a small tunnel out (both completely blocked by people). But we did see some cool things. Again, lots of old churches cut into the cliffs and fairy chimneys. There were some that had quite detailed frescoes with recognizable bible scenes and others that were just decorated with geometric patterns in red ochre. Outside of the museum is a massive one with amazing frescoes but where they have chipped off you can see ochre patterns underneath. Which makes me wonder how they decide which date to put on the signs. They said 11th century on that one but is that when it started or when it finished?
That afternoon we just wandered around Goreme looking at shops and watching the antics of a possibly mentally challenged cat. We had planned to go on a horse trek but it was threatening to rain and the idea of horse riding in the rain was not appealing to us.
And that was our last day in Cappadocia. The next morning we got up at 6 am to watch the balloons (dawn hot air balloon rides is a thing, an expensive thing) and catch a 7am bus to Ankara. Where I started writing this. But didn't finish writing it. It has taken me about 2 days to write this whole thing which means there's now 2 more days to write about. But you can wait a while longer for that. I'll give you a sneak peak. It involves more cats, more brownies and a whole lot of lokum.

Ancient history and modern history

So first off I have changed the settings and you should be able to comment now without having to sign up for anything.
Today we are in Selçuk, having a relaxed day off after much running around for the last week. It's beautiful here. A little too hot for me at times but we are making good use of the swimming pool.
I believe when I left you last we were planning on heading to Troy and Gallipoli. We did manage to fit both into one day but not without some stress and effort. We knew that it was really difficult to do Gallipoli on your own so we had booked a tour which started at 12.30 which meant we had to be on the 12.00 ferry back from Çanakkale so we started early thinking if we took the 8 am ferry in the morning we could get to Troy by 9 or 9.30 and have a couple of hours to explore before heading back to town. But it turns out the first bus didn't leave until 9.30 and stops a few times along the way so we didn't get there until 10.15 and since the buses leave on the hour that gave us only 45 minutes to see the whole thing. So we powered through the site taking as many pictures as we could so we would be able to linger over them later. It was pretty amazing being there. There is so much history to the place. Not just how long it was inhabited for and how much happened there but also the story of Schliemann and how he found it. It's one of the first archaeological sites ever excavated.
But we couldn't linger. We went out to find the bus but it wasn't there. It was running quite late. So we accosted some people in the car park until we found someone heading back to Canakkale and asked for a lift. They didn't speak a word of English so it made for an interesting trip but we made it onto the 12 o'clock ferry. Which didn't leave until quarter past so we were still late but luckily things tend to leave late here so it was fine.
The Gallipoli tour was really good. The guide had a lot of knowledge (and liked to talk a lot) and some of the places were very moving. I had difficulty fitting together the knowledge that so many terrible things happened there and that so many people died where I was standing with the amazingly beautiful landscape. It really looks like paradise, but for nine months it was completely horrifying.
The tour took us to each of the landing sites and then up the hill to the main memorials. The last one at Chanuk bair was interesting after all of these somber graveyards. It's the main New Zealand memorial but to the Turks it's the place where Ataturk defeated the invading forces and nearly died but his pocket watch saved his life. So there is a big memorial to the kiwis right next to a giant statue of Ataturk.
After getting back from the tour we waited around for a few hours and then caught a night bus to Selcuk. It got in at about 7am and luckily the hostel let us check in straight away and gave us breakfast. Then we headed up the hill to Ephesus.
Ephesus is pretty amazing. It just goes on forever. I think we could have spent all day there if I hadn't been melting. It was very hot and there isn't a lot of shade. Any time we did find shade I had to sit for 10 minutes to cool down slightly but even in the shade it was still too hot for me. Which was a pity because there is so much to see there. As it was I managed to make it through about 3 hours before I had to admit defeat and head to the exit.
Since then we have been doing a whole lot of nothing. Swimming, sitting in the sun (or in my case the shade) and generally relaxing. This afternoon at some point we will check out the temple of Artemis but that probably won't take very long since a large portion of it is at the British museum. Tomorrow we head to Pamukkale and then on to Cappadocia.