Travel Report from Antalya - Turkey (13 October 2003)

Dear everyone!

We are now in Antalya, having travelled to Turkey via Switzerland and Italy.

Setting off from Stuttgart, and after an overnight stop in Zurich with Carsten and Licia - many thanks again you two! we pressed on to Italy and had our first sundowners on the shores of the Mediterranean at Santa Margharita, where we also enjoyed the fresh seafood, many bottles of Italian wine and the warmer weather!

From Santa Margharita we headed for Rome stopping at Pisa enroute and overnighting in Florence, with sweeping views of a Cianti Wine Estate and olive groves.

In Rome we saw a shop called Computer Assistance and thought of you Honey Pie - have you got your laptop to work yet? We especially liked the Spanish Stairs and the Vittorianeum as well as the Tavallo Caldas where we always stopped for lunch whilst exploring the city. Dinners were always a welcome and lavish treat of any of Ornellas delicious pastas - thank you again so much Ornella and Claudio for having us to stay!

From Rome we headed to Ancona for our ferry. (Was Enormous!) We spent the 3 days it took to cross reading on deck and we visited the Captain who showed us his bridge with pride.

Upon docking in Çesme, we gave two fellow travellers a lift to Izmir before driving to Pamuçak - a tiny little place where we stayed in our truck on the beach and had a great meal of trout and salad from the little restuarant next to us. Enroute from Pamucak to Antalya we have visited the ruins of Ephesus and Prienne, stayed in the little riverside village of Dalyan overlooking the massive Lycian tombs carved into the rockface above the river and explored the ghost town of Karakoy where we stayed the night. The owner of a restuarant opposite the ghost town offered us to stay in his garden. We ate with him in his restuarant, watched the junior game of soccer between England and Italy and chatted about Iraq, Bin Laden, Bush and the like late into the night.

From there we went to Saklikent Gorge where the cliffs on either side are so high that the sun never gets to the water so the water is ice cold! Holding on to each other so as not to be washed away we waded waist deep into the freezing water and walked upstream for roughly 4km, climbing over rocks to get further on where necessary. After this we lunched in a treehouse and set off for Olympus.

No sooner had we parked our truck in Olympus we were called inside by a restuarant owner to watch the soccer again - the match proper between Turkey and England. We were the only European couple watching amogst the locals. They asked if we were English, and Christian told them that for this occasion, we both came from Istanbul.

We spent yesterday lazing on the beach - very hot here during the day and it was a moment of great joy for me to be able to dust of my bikini and donn it again. Christian survives the warm weather with his new hairdo - Achim shaved his head when we left Germany and Christian has kept it that way. In the afternoon we explored the ruins of the city of Olympos before setting off on the 7 km walk along the beach and into the mountains to see Chimaera at sunset. Chimaera is where the flame comes out of the rocks - the basis of many legends and myths. We got to the flames at sunset, enjoyed the view of the sunset over the ocean, and then walked the 7km back amongst little villages full of the fragrance of fig, pommegranade, lemon, orange and cypress trees, to the beach where we saw a perfect full orange moon rise.

Today we have driven directly to Antalya, stopping only to pick up a turkish hitchhiker, who kept us entertained by playing his self made pan pipes or singing Turkish songs to us for the duration of the trip.

As our digital camera deleted all the pictures we have been taking since Italy roughly 1 hour before we wanted to send this mail we are only attaching the pics we have taken in Antalya - me in the mosque, and Christian in front of the harbour!

Thanks to Sandra we have our own website : http://www.crossingafrica.de/

Until soon and lots of love to all of you,

Julianne and Christian.