We had a pretty chill day today. Cirali, at least at this time of year, is sleeeeeepy - and that's just fine with us. Beth and I are on the same page - when it comes to beach areas, we're not in to crowds. Cities? Yes, pack the streets full of people and we'll feed off their energy, but leave the beach resort towns with plenty of elbow room please.
Ahmed, the German guy who has been our host at the Canada Hotel, has really been weather-mongering since last night. Like many older people with too much time on their hands (apologies to anyone who is coincidentally self identifying) he seems obsessed with the weather. He has been telling us how awful the weather will be in the area, starting today.... Well, we'll see about that.
Our first destination of the day was a ten minute walk along the "beach" (sorry, with the high rock to sand content, I can't write "beach" without double quotes....) to the ancient ruined city of Olympos.
Near the entrance, there was this really cool duck with more feathers and colours going on than a cabaret... I will have to google that one somehow.... Ok, done. There are 313 species of birds in Antalya... That's as much research as I'm doing, but it did look cool.
Olympos is an ancient Lycian city, so it has some features that are different than Byzantine/Roman or Greek cities. The whole city is on both sides of a small river that drips lazily into the Mediterranean. It was a nice place to walk and explore on our own.
The Lycians typically buried important people in sarcophagi above ground, which you don't see elsewhere.
While many ancient sites in Turkey have been restored and cleaned up, Olympos reminded me more of some of the lesser known ruins of Angkor: there were rocks and ruins scattered all over the the place and it was fun picking our way through them.
There were still large sections of walls standing - this one from what was thought to be a monastery.
After about an hour or so, we made our way back down the "beach". It was time to cross "swim in the Mediterranean" off Abby's bucket list (which i think she just added last night).
We stopped in the little town on the way to pick up some ingredients for a picnic lunch. Soon, we were all limping down the rocky "beach" and slipping into the the calm, warm waters of the sea. The water is absolutely beautiful here - so clear and the colour is stunning.
The girls got lost in their little world while they picked through rocks looking for a nice varied collection. Uh oh Gram, sounds like another shipment!
Boo!
Beth has inherited many great traits from her mother, one of which is a pair of very large thumbs....
We spent most of the day by the sea. In the late afternoon we headed back to relax (the "beach" was too stressful) on the porch of our bungalow. We've been doing some detailed planning for the "tri-city final attack plan" (Ok, we're still looking for a better slogan for the end of our trip), however I did notice Beth scratching her leg, then doing a Google search that didn't seem to relate to this planning. Sure enough I caught her looking at a Dengue fever outbreak map! I will remind her to check that site each time she gets a bite camping at Sandbanks or in Muskoka next summer....
However.... She was looking very relaxed! As was Abby, with her newfound friend Ginger who ended up sleeping on her until well after dark. Just stay away from Robin, Ginger, she's allergic and we have basketball soon!
At dinner, Ahmed waited until we discovered the bay leaf and garlic inside our grilled sea bass before he told us the legend of Apollo that involves the nearby city of Olympos. Apparently, Apollo came down and discovered Daphne, the beautiful daughter of the God of Rivers that lived there. When Apollo asked the father if he could marry Daphne, he was told that the God of Earth was already betrothed to her. When Apollo later came back and took hold of Daphne with the intentions of taking her away, the God of Earth saved her by turning her into a bay leaf tree. Apollo looked at what he was holding in surprise, and left. Ever since then, the whole area smells great because of the proliferation of Daphne, or "bay leaf" trees.
He then told us this cool story of Belleropheron that's too long to summarize. Suffice to say, the dude jumped off Pegasus and killed the Chimera (a fire breathing creature with the head of a lion, body of a goat and the tail of a snake), and the gods banished the Chimera far below the ground, yet its fire still comes out of the ground as a reminder. This story was in Homer's Iliad well over two thousand years ago, which is a really cool link to the fact that the Yanartas (meaning flaming stone) has been observed and active for quite some time.
We had to see it for ourselves, so we drove over to the bottom of the nearby mountain, got our entry tickets and hiked up the one kilometer trail of steps, slopes and boulders. When we got to the top, we saw the cool fires spouting out all over the place, with people sitting and watching at various points way up the open slope we were on.
When I thought about the amount of time that has passed since the Chimera was written about in the Iliad, I was in awe. It seems only natural that there is a story from the Greek legends that can explain phenomena like these. It reminded me of Ali describing how Constantine gathered all of the clerics that had many different stories and iterations about a guy called Jesus who had died three hundred years before, and he put them in a room and basically produced a boiled down version into the Bible - all to help with the political situation and to manage the people more easily in the vast Roman/Byzantine empire.
And look what Homer did? We've now had almost thirty seasons of the Simpsons, so good work sir!
No comments:
Post a Comment