Saturday, June 12, 2010

Olympus i love you

we spent our last few hours in Goreme (Cappadocia) having dinner with two people from our hostel, Chris & Will. we went to a restaurant/cafe that Chris had been to before and she said it had the best Gozleme in Turkey so we thought we better try it out! Chris is from Canada and Will from America. we had three different types of Gozleme to share, a mixed one, a spinach one and a cheese one. all were really good! Gozleme is what Turkish people call pancakes. its kind of like a savoury crepe though, with the stuff cooked in the middle. they cook it over these dome shaped hot plates i suppose... although i think its a fire under the hotplate. Chris taught us how to play backgammon and after i lost terribly to her Ewen & Will played and Ewen proceeded to loose terribly as well. After that me and Ewen played against each other and i won yay! after that i liked the game a whole lot more! at about 10pm Chris got her bus to Olympus and me, Ewen and Will went to get some snacks then at 10.30pm me and Ewen got our bus to Olympus. I slept again for most of the trip but didn't feel like i had slept at all, i wake up so uncomfortable with my whole body aching, i freaking hate these over night buses and we possibly still have two more to take!!!
we finally arrived in Olympus at about 11.30am the following morning.
we were shown to our room and told that breakfast and dinner are included in the price so bonus! the last couple of days we have eaten big brekkies and dinners so we haven't had to pay for any meals! (in other words we have skipped lunch)
we spent the first day resting, exploring the hostel and talking to other travelers. we met a couple of fellow Aussies, one is heading to Sweden to do a student exchange and the other is doing busabout as well. but at a slightly different time to us, still we might cross paths again at some point.
we had a quiet night watching a movie.. well Ewen watched a movie i watched about 15 minutes of it before falling asleep.
the next morning we spent a few hours hours exploring the ruins around Olympus. No one is sure exactly when Olympus was civilised but they think it was around 167B.C so a very very long time ago. the ruins included a church, some tombs, some houses with mosaics, the temple to Zeus and the Acropolis (well i saw this from a distance).
the ruins are spread out either side of a river, which our first day of sightseeing was just kind of trickling along, not very full at all, you could have easily walked along the river bed without getting wet except in a few small spots where the water happened to spread across the whole river bed.
some ruins and the river bed
what is left of a bridge in the river and you can just see the ocean in the distance
Me & Ewen near one of the ruins, i think on the other side of this wall was
one of the mosaic houses
i can't remember which ruin this was but it looks pretty dam cool with the tree growing out of the door, it was the remaining wall to some king of building.
Me half way up to the Acropolis, I wore thongs and the walk up was very steep with lots of loose rocks so i waited here while Ewen climbed to the top to take some photos
A photo Ewen took from the top.

we spent about two hours scrambling over rocks and tree branches exploring the ruins and taking photos before heading back to the hostel to get changed and hit the beach!
we were surprised to find that the beach had no sand, just lots and lots of rocks. it was very difficult to walk on but surprisingly comfortable to lie on, not that different to sand really. we discovered that it was easier to wear our thongs right up until we were getting in the water and then leave them on the waters edge, the water here is so clear! only thing is that every now and then you can see oily patches on the surface, we figure this comes from the boats that dock in the water not too far from where people swim.

we spent about 3 hours swimming, sun-baking and reading, it was so nice and relaxing!
we had dinner at the hostel and talked to a few people we had met the previous day. me and Ewen played each other in two games of backgammon, this time Ewen beat me, both times! he was pretty happy about this.

1 comment:

Mumbo said...

Beach looks stunning, beautiful coastline. Incredible looking at all those ruins gradually being swallowed by the trees etc. Sailing trip best way to check out the beauty of the place as most visitors/invaders came by sea. Enjoy