A Great Theatre and a Fabulous Dinner!

Awoke to a really lovely morning, although a brief rain shower did pass quickly through.  The sun on the mountaintops in the distance was brilliant, and made for a wonderful sunrise!  Everything, with the exception of the blue jeans that I had washed yesterday afternoon and evening, was dry and ready to go back into our suitcases, and I figured that a few more hours would suffice for the jeans.  As it turns out, it was so lovely and warm later in the morning, that I put the jeans out on our balcony, and they dried completely and are now ready for wearing!  

 

Views from our apartment!

We went down around 8 to pick up our chits for breakfast, as the Casamax doesn’t have its own restaurant.  We have two choices – one is a bakery which does a basic Turkish plate, and the other does borek, which is a kind of pastry.  The gal at the desk recommended the borek, so that’s where we went; it was only a short walk down the street.  

 

The borek is a kind of phyllo dough pastry, with many flaky layers, and contains either cheese (peynir) or meat – or, you can get a plate “mixed” which contains both.  We opted for the “mixed” and it was great!  We had the borek with a plate of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and olives, served with what they called “limonada” but which tasted like a combination of orange and lemon juices; quite good!  And R had his first Turkish coffee – daring man that he is - black!  As he commented afterwards, one could only drink about 2/3rds of the cup, as the remaining 1/3^rd was basically sludge … UGH!

 

R and his Turkish coffee!

Back at the flat after that, we decided to head out about an hour’s drive to Aspendos, the site of a Greco-Roman city.  

 

The theatre there is said to be the best preserved from the Roman Empire, and we were also able to see some of the remains of their aqueduct. The theatre, built during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (160-180 AD), could seat 8,500 people, and is still in use today for operas and ballet performances every summer.  (We read that the difference between an amphitheater and a theatre is that an amphitheater is circular or oval, like the Coliseum in Rome, while the theatre has a flat stage side.) 

 

Detail over the stage

One of the exit tunnels

The aqueduct brought water to the city from the mountains 15 km to the north.  It is believed that the aqueduct was built by Tiberius Claudius Italicus in the 2^nd C. AD.  What we thought was unusual was that it had a bend in it, which is very “un-Roman-like” in our experience!

 

Pillars from the aquaduct as it came from the mountains

Back to Antalya and the flat after that for a bit of a rest.  It truly was a glorious afternoon!  About 2:30 pm we decided to take a taxi to the Antalya Archaeological Museum.  Have to say, that I know it has been a while since we’ve been to Antalya – not sure how long, but it is rather difficult getting back into the “Roman” swing of things … really glad that we did the “really old stuff” first, as for us, that’s the most interesting these days.  And now, seeing all the Roman and Greek sculpture in the museums – well, honestly – just not that interesting to us anymore!  I remember some years ago, thinking that maybe it would be fun to try and “bag” all of the Roman amphitheaters ever built – but then I remembered that would include Romania, Bulgaria and North Africa – and decided it was more than I wanted to tackle … well, glad I didn’t, as there was a lot of sculpture to look at in that museum today, for sure!

Chalcolithic mother goddess figurine

Chalcolithic bowl

Loved the bull carving!

 

And then there was marble...

And sarcophagi

But a fabulous Heracles

From the museum, we caught another taxi which took us right into downtown Antalya and let us off at Hadrian’s Gate.  Yes, indeed, that was one Emperor who really got around!  Walked through the Gate and found ourselves in “Old Town” Antalya – quite a tangle of streets and alleys, where we’ve stayed twice before. In fact, the entire reason we were there was to return to Vanilla, a lovely restaurant I remember from our past trips!

 

Hadrian's Gate

We had to walk about 10 minutes to get there, but it was certainly worth it!  Robert had a fabulous tenderloin of beef with vegetables, that was perfectly cooked, and I had their short ribs of beef with carrots on a bed or pureed potatoes – incredible!  Washed down by glasses of Smyrna merlot from Izmir!  Really a very memorable dinner!!!

R's beef tenderloin!

My short ribs!

Back through Hadrian’s Gate to find another cab to get us back to Casamax … although this time, we were now in rush hour traffic – and the normally 30 minute drive took something like over an hour!  However, our driver, David, was a retired police officer who was not only an excellent driver, but very, very verbal, and, thanks to his cell phone’s translation program, we carried on a hilarious conversation just about all the way back!  Whew!  Not easy to do when the phone has to stop to translate every minute or so, but we managed very well, and emerged best friends from the experience!!

 

Now, again, I just want to get posted and to bed …  tomorrow will be a long drive – 5 hours, between Antalya and Selcuk, where one of the Seven Wonders of the World – Ephesus - is located!

 

Lots of love,

m

xxx