Day 166: Roadtripping to Pamukkale

With a whopping three and a half hours of driving today, we set off from Fethiye in the late morning. I thought that booking a five person, five suitcase car would be enough (knowing Euro standards on everything from clothes and food to cars skews smaller) but I wasn't factoring in copious, voluminous shopping. As you can see, we are quickly reaching capacity. Next time, I will book a five person, five suitcase, 75 scarf car....

We decided to do a picnic lunch on the way somewhere, so we drove along the coast to the nearby town of Gocek for some fresh scenery and grocery shopping for lunch. Success! We got enough to go around for 10 Europeans in the cute little town, and we were back on the D400.

Pretty soon, we caught our last glimpse of the Mediterranean as we turned to the North. After another half hour, we left that highway for a half hour of twisting, turning and climbing on a narrow two lane road that seemed to pass gazillions of bees nests. So that's where all the honey comes from! All over Turkey you see honey, sold with part of the honeycomb as proof of freshness I guess. Well, that road was definitely a part of the big honey industry.

After a while, we were back on a big, new feeling highway heading for Denizli, which is pretty much on the same latitude as Goreme in Cappadochia.

We had the tunes going, and Robin was working on the Mercy lyrics from the last Muse album - it was our hope that she would give us a repeat performance of the Mercy dance solo that she displayed on the houseboat in Kochi.

Lunch was in the town of Kale. We found a little enclosed park bench where we had our picnic. There was a wedding going on across the street which played non stop droning music that reminded me of the "concert" in Jaisalmer that played into the wee hours of the morning.... Not good.

We pressed on, soon arriving in Denizli, a town of half a million people. It was our first sight of traffic since Istanbul, as we were on the main highway that acts as a main road whenever it goes through a town or city, and this was a pretty big city. However, our final destination was Pamukkale, another half hour up the road.

Pamukkale is a tiny little tourist town. When we were just outside, we could see the massive, snow white rock formations that made this place into one of the oldest tourist sites in the world - it was a spa destination for Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, and it has never stopped being an attraction.

The kids caught up with friends, and Beth talked to Nana for a while. It was a slacker afternoon followed by an equally relaxed evening. We have the day tomorrow to explore the waters of Pamukkale and the Hieropolis ruins above.