Things to add to your to do list

I feel like I just wrote a massive post but I know that with the full day we have planned tomorrow I will not want to write about all of it at once. So you get another update already.
Yesterday we headed to Pamukkale. It's about a 3 hour bus ride from Selcuk and it left at 9.30. We had heard that it was really cool and to take togs along because there were pools to swim in but we were not prepared for what it actually is. Mostly we were far too over prepared. We took water and snacks and a changed of clothes for when we got wet and walking shoes because it looked like a bit of a walk and jandals because it's a wet place. When you go (which you should because it's amazing) take as little as possible. Togs and light weight clothes over top that you don't mind getting damp and money to get in. And of course sun block. But that's all you need. Everything else just gets in the way.
Pamukkale is a slope with a hot spring at the top which deposits calcite down a big slope. At the top are the ruins of the Roman city of Heiropolis including the bath which you can pay extra to swim in. To get there on foot from the town you walk up the hill, take off your shoes and walk up the slope that the water is pouring down. There are pools along the way which get warmer (and more crowded) the higher you get. Words and pictures don't really do it justice so you should just come see it for yourself.
Turns out I was getting a cold at the time so by the time we climbed to the top in the hottest part of the day I was exhausted and had to sit in the shade for half an hour while Catie looked around the ruins. I did a bit of exploring later but mostly had to jump between bits of shade. We didn't end up going into the antique bath because we were there at the busiest time and it would have been too crowded to be worth paying for.
After we had our fill of the ruins we meandered back down the watery hill to the town. We caught a shuttle to the nearby city of Denizli (where our night bus to Goreme was leaving from) with plans to use the extra time to stock up on groceries. We had been told there was a supermarket in the otogar but it turns out it had been closed for probably months.
So we waited and then got on a bus and came to this magical land of Cappadocia. Goreme is the town we are staying in within the region. Most of the hostels have cave rooms available but we (by which I mean I) left it too late to get the cave room. But it's lovely anyway. The town is built around (and in) these rock formations that they call fairy chimneys. We transferred all of or photos to Catie's laptop this evening so keep an eye out on her facebook page or blog for the images. They're kind of hard to describe but once you see pictures you will understand why they call them fairy chimneys. Also why there are phallic jokes about them. If you can't wait or don't have access to Catie's stuff then just google Cappadocia fairy chimneys and I'm sure you'll see what I mean. Goreme is a lovely little town and it's fairly central to most of the sights in Cappadocia. This afternoon we walked for almost 4 hours walking to a tiny place called Çavusin which has two old churches built into the rocks as well as a bunch of old dwellings. We only went to one of the churches (despite the size of the town we still managed to get lost and by the time we found the first church we were ready to head back) but we chose the better preserved one which you have to pay for. Might be the best 8 lira I've spent so far. The church itself is really amazing with very detailed frescoes on the walls. We thought we should have been able to recognize more of them but I guess we fail at biblical imagery. We just stared at the ceiling and walls for I don't even know how long. The guard sneakily looked around and let us take a photo each even though it's not allowed so you might get to see them eventually. We also climbed up into a tunnelly bit where we got some good views of the area and spotted some fairy chimneys behind the church that we could walk to. So we did. All in all it was a pretty fantastic afternoon and I think Cappadocia is probably my favourite part of Turkey so far. And we've hardly seen any of it so far. Tomorrow we do an epic tour of all the things that are too far away to do on our own including the underground city and the valley where there are lots of monasteries from when the early christians needed somewhere to hide.
Now don't you want to come see it for yourself?

Lunch time in Goreme

This is what I'm looking at right now while I sit in the shade and munch a fresh crisp apple.

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.

In which the internet lies.

So where did I leave you? After our sightseeing Wednesday morning but before our shopping afternoon? I suppose I could check and find out. Or just risk repeating myself. I choose the latter because today I am feeling lazy (which we all know is so uncommon for me).
So that afternoon we hit the grand bazaar. I don't think there are words to describe the experience but if there were they would have to be written in capitals and without spaces in between. Catie and I spent a while meandering looking but ignoring all of the shouts and attempts to sell us things. But we did eventually brave the insistent sales people to buy some scarves. We had been forewarned that they try to seriously rip people off and that it can be tricky if you don't know what things are worth but we got it down to a quarter of their original price and considerably less than we could get anything similar in nz so I'm calling it a win.
Then we headed to the spice market for a quick walk through, the dried avocado seemed particularly odd to us, before heading back to the hostel. We cooked ourselves some dinner and then didn't really do much of anything. We were still a bit jet lagged and after our long day we didn't feel up to much.
Yesterday we headed across to the Asian part of the city but only walked along the waterfront before getting the ferry back because we didn't feel like doing huge amounts of walking. So we spontaneously decided to jump on a boat doing a 2 hour cruise down the Bosphorus. It was a great way to see more of the city and we got to just sit back and relax.
After the cruise we decided to head back to the hostel for a spot of lunch and a chance for me to sort out some real world stuff (funny how it doesn't just disappear even though I ran away). But before we did we decided that we would for the rest of our lives regret it if we didn't go back to the spice market and try some of that dried avocado. It's avocado, which on principle is quite liquid for a solid, but it's been dried. How could we pass that up? Well if you find yourself in a similar situation I can tell you that it is an experience worth having, but not so much a good one. The first taste is fine but the after taste is horrible and doesn't go away. Some free samples of turkish delight helped briefly but it just came back.
I feel like this post is becoming fairly epic but I haven't even gotten to the part in the title yet. I guess I'll just plow ahead and assume no one will be paying attention when I stop making sense.
So in the afternoon we headed over to topkapi palace because we'd been told it was worth doing. It is pretty amazing. It just kept going. You could spend hours there. We saw people who looked like they had come for the day with picnic supplies. We also paid to see the harem which is very beautiful but the beauty of the place can't make you forget the people who lived there and how many of them were prisoners. Not just the concubines and wives but also the eunuchs and the sultans relatives. There was a whole area for the brothers and other close male relatives of the sultan so that they wouldn't have any contact with the outside world and wouldn't be a threat. It was meant to be an improvement on the time when they just killed them all.
I could go on about topkapi for ages but I won't. We spent hours there and still didn't see it all.
That evening we ordered in some traditional food and ate up on the roof. Then we went for tea at a little place up on at terrace with a view over the bosphorus. It was a lovely place that even gave me a shawl to wear because the wind is slightly cooler that high up. Still pretty warm though.
This morning we had a grand plan to leave Istanbul and head to Canakkale. We had looked things up the day before and knew that it was a 6 hour bus ride but that you could take a ferry to Bandirma and then a bus to Canakkale which would only take about 3 1/2 hours. So we checked what times the ferry left and decided the 11.00 one would get us here with lots of time to see Troy this afternoon. But (as has been hinted at) things did not go according to plan because apparently in Turkey you can't trust even the official websites. There was no 11.00 ferry. Only a 2 pm one. And we didn't want to wait 3 hours. So we had a bit of an adventure making our way to the bus station (it involved a few encounters with the language barrier and two men wanting to make money off of our confusion). But we got there before noon and found out the next train to Eceabat was at 12.30. So we spent all day on a bus and didn't get here in time to do Troy today. But the buses here are really good. They give you food and drinks and have little screens for you to watch movies that have been dubbed in turkish. And we will have time to do both Troy and Gallipoli tomorrow so it all works out fine. Plus, we found haribo. And haribo macht kinder froh und erwachsene ebenso.

Istanbul and a disclaimer

Piece of advice if you're ever traveling all the way from New Zealand to Europe: take a couple of days in Singapore. Or Dubai if that's the way you're going. Either way, take it from me, 41 hours in airplanes and airports is just too much. But we got here safe and sound. Istanbul is beautiful. This morning we did all the big things in this area: hagia sophia, blue mosque, hippodrome, basilica cistern, and we looked at the outside of the archaeology museum and topkapi palace but decided we didn't feel like doing them now.
When we got in yesterday we dumped our stuff and went for a walk around our area. They sell barbecued corn from street corners. And they smoke too much. Sigh. I guess I will have to get used to that part because most if Europe smokes more than I am used to.
So that's about all we've been up to so far. Haven't been here 24 hours yet so that's not so surprising. Might have more to tell you in a few days.
But before I go I will give a disclaimer about spelling issues. I am writing these on my smart phone which is quite smart most of the time but sometimes is very not smart. It has a swype keyboard which means I can just draw a line between the letters I want and it can guess the word but when it guesses wrong it can be spectacularly wrong. I usually spot them (for instance in the last sentence wrong came up wing) but sometimes I miss something so if you see some sentences that just don't make sense just point them out to me so I can fix them.

Preparation and a vague itinerary

Hello! I see you have found your way to my brand new blog. A place where all of my adventures will be recorded... or at least the ones I can be bothered writing about. The theory is that this way I will only have to tell the stories once and so am more likely to communicate reasonably frequently. Also, if I relied on mass emails I would probably forget someone who cared and include someone who didn't. This way you can check as often as you want without being pestered by me when you have more interesting things on your mind.
In case anyone hasn't already heard, the reason this mass communication device is required is because in 5 days I am going to Europe. It's a little hard to believe that it is finally time to go. I have been planning this for so long that I sort of felt like it was only ever going to be a plan and not an actual event. But now that I have started crossing things off of my many lists of things to do before I go it is beginning to feel real.
As for my plans, they are not so plan-like. Mostly just deadlines to be certain places but all the in between stuff I will just make up as I go. Catie will be joining me for the first part and she is much more of a planner than I am so there are some detailed plans right up until the day she leaves and then there's almost no planning at all. So if you want to know what my itinerary is looking like read on, but keep in mind that it is VERY flexible. If you don't care where I'm going to be then what are you doing reading this anyway?
12 Sept 2011: Fly from Christchurch to Singapore to Frankfurt to Istanbul. Arriving Tuesday the 13th.
12 - 27 Sept 2011: travel around Turkey
27 sept 2011: Fly from Istanbul to Casablanca
27 Sept - 1 Oct: Morocco
1 Oct: Ferry from Tangier to Spain
1 - 17 Oct: Spain and Portugal
17 Oct: Catie flies away to London, Reykjavik and Toronto, I move on to Southern France.
17 Oct - Christmas: South France, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic
Christmas in Prague
After Christmas - 22 Feb 2012: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxenbourg, France, Britain and Ireland
22 Feb 2012: Fly from London to Toronto (I arrive at 4.30 in the afternoon if anyone wants to put that afternoon aside to pick me up)
22 Feb - 10 April: Canada and USA
10 April: Fly from San Francisco to New Zealand.
Home on the 12th of April 2012.
So there you go. Now you have all of the information in a place you can't lose it.
And that should suffice for now. I don't really have any adventures to tell you about yet. Unless you care about the difficulties of buying togs and sun hats in winter or how to decide how many pairs of shoes are necessary, which you probably don't. And even if you do, I don't care enough to take the time to tell you about it. So instead I will not waste any more time that I should use for packing. Next time you hear from me I will be somewhere far more exciting than my own kitchen.

NB: If you were wondering about the title I will give you a clue: The Iliad is the story of Ilium and the Aeneid is the story of Aeneas. Though, that might not be so much a clue as the entire answer.