Pamukkale

Warning - these pics are going to be sickeningly pretty. It was one of those picture postcard days. No re-touching!

Ephesus

Finally getting round to putting some more vacation pics.  Only 4 months late - that's not terrible, right?!

Anyway, here are some from the ancient city of Ephesus.  First leg, travelling to the House of the Virgin Mary. The air was very cool and refreshing up there, but there were crowds milling around constantly. There was a service going on beside the house when we were there. I thought again, as I often have, about how nice it would be if I had that kind of faith. Too many doubts in my basket.

Then onwards to walk through some ruins. I did love strolling though the little street areas, pretending I was living in olden times. And once again, there were cats everywhere. How do they up there?!

Old-time public loos! Note the lack of partitions so that you can have a nice little (or long) chat with your neighbour while, um, answering nature's call. I guess this is the low-tech version of texting while in the loo.

Apparently, this is a type of advertising from those days, with the carving of the foot pointing towards the local brothel. PR through the ages!

The Library of Celsus - my kind of place!

More from Capadoccia...

Verrrrry old dwellings and places of worship. Gives you a pang when you think of how much care was taken to build them and how they've lasted all these years..

Last night in Capadoccia. Checking out the crowd checking out the football game...

Cappadocia

Our next stop after Istanbul was Cappadocia. One theory about the name is that it comes from the Old Persian for Land of the Beautiful Horses. The region is composed of very striking landscapes and is noted for its fairy chimneys. We stayed in Goreme in a lovely cave hotel. They weren't full up when we were there, so I got a large double room all to myself.

Cave dwellings....

Interesting rock formations...

Landscape with hikers....

On one of our mornings, we got up at dawn and rattled off into the open spaces to take a balloon ride. My first ever and it was gorgeous! Its remarkable how still it is up there.

Walking through different towns

I came back from a little trip to Istanbul and Holland in May, so I should have put up some pics ages ago. However, I was procrastinating as usual (no judgements, people!), but in  my defence I had about 800 pics to get through!  I'm probably going to break them up into segments.

We stayed in the Sultanhamet District when we were in Istanbul, so we were really close to the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace. It's always incredible seeing something iconic for this first time, a bit unreal. Something that you've seen in magazines, films or read about in books. I felt that way the first time I saw St. Basil's in Moscow.  And of course I got that feeling again a bunch of times on this trip.  Here are some photos of the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Mosque) and surrounding area. 

Random photos

Just playing around with the camera again.