For a while, the hot trend in Hong Kong Restaurants was “Two Contrasting Soups”. This Spring, we did Two Contrasting Countries. At Chinese New Year we took Air Mabuhay to Clarke in the Philippines. It’s a budget airline full of Maids on their way home for a spot of R&R. The giggling noise levels are off the Charts, there’s no food, no drink and the only entertainment is when the Cabin Crew announce a competition. 3 volunteers are invited to the front to serenade the rest of us, whether we want to be serenaded or not, by singing famous love songs over the tannoy system. What do you get when you take the ‘T’ out of tannoy? 3 high pitched crooners who can’t hit the note even if the sound system wasn’t already fully of whiney static. The rest of the holiday was pretty much like that, apart from the Golf Course, where apart from the crooning caddies, we were surrounded by Dayglo Tartan clad Koreans, carefully embalmed to ensure that no part of their anatomy is exposed to the sun which, oddly enough, tends to appear pretty frequently in the Tropics.

By contrast, Air Turkey was the height of efficiency, good food, great entertainment system but, unfortunately, stewardesses who had all overplayed their auditions for the Wicked Witch of the West. You could have cut cake with the average nose here and they had an annoying habit of butting in at the crucial part of every film to tell you to buckle up in English, then in Turkish and then in a bark roughly suggesting something in Chinese.

Anyway, we arrived in Istanbul airport, actually about 5 miles away from the actual terminal, and they bussed us through the outlying barbed wire fortifications under a leaden sky, cold drizzle running down the windows. Welcome to Turkey. We breakfasted on our first Spinach and Cheese pastries with Turkish coffee, but the girls caved in and went to Starbucks. Took a short hop flight to Cappadocia and stepped out into fresh air and sunshine, wonderful.

The friendly airport staff celebrated our arrival by taking a hammer to Dori’s suitcase and watched with glee as I emptied the remains of a good bottle of Sauvignon Blanc into a waste bin, delicately removing a gazillion shards of glass from her underwear. Fortunate that she wasn’t wearing them at the time. But, it was only a minor setback as we were to find that the Hotel had a same day laundry service and that Cappadocia has some pretty fine wines. We were introduced to our Driver, just call me ‘Uncle’, and our van which, although designed for 14 people was entirely filled with Foxall hand luggage from Day 1.

We drove into Goreme to our Hotel, the Kelebek, which was fabulous. Goreme town is located in one of the weirdest landscapes in the World. Centuries of erosion working on various layers of hard and soft volcanic rock have left pinnacles of stone everywhere. They look like a forest of Smurf hats. Then people have dug into the Smurf hats to make houses and churches and barns and Pigeon homes. Strangely beautiful, like something out of Star Wars or a Monty Python movie. Our Hotel room was a cave at 2 different levels and was beautifully furnished. The Bar, Restaurant, Terrace had views over the town and the surreal landscape. The food, wine and beer were great. All the ingredients necessary.

The cameras were out and we were getting excited about the Balloon flight we had booked for the following day, when suddenly I realised that my camera wasn’t storing anything. Looked inside, no memory stick. My assistant at work had taken it out to download some pictures and forgot to put it back. We are in one of the most photogenic places on Earth and there is no photo shop. My world was crumbling quicker than a Smurf hat. We walked into the town. Carpets, Kebabs and Fridge Magnets, but nobody selling things even vaguely fridge like, electrical, let alone camera orientated. In desperation, I fell into the only hardware store in town, Shovels, ploughs, hammers and there, nailed to the back wall in a blanket of dust, the only memory stick within 200 miles. Praise be to Allah!

We walked around the town with me happily clicking everything in sight and climbed up to Sunset Ridge. Everywhere the Apricot and Almond trees were in blossom, the sky was an impossible blue and the multi-coloured rock formations defied belief. Although sunny, the air was crisp and fresh and in the evening we sat around a wood fire, drinking good wine, great beer and eating the first of oh-so-many kebabs. The town lit up like a Christmas tree and all was well, although we kept getting dire warnings that the weather could change in a moment and there was every possibility that our Balloon flight would have to cancelled.

Day 2. We awoke at 4.30 in the morning and staggered around in the BatCave looking for the way out. We were greeted with dire warnings. Don’t get your hopes up. The prognosis is not good. The weather is imperfect. We drove down to Balloon Central to be greeted with dire warnings and an enormous breakfast of cheese pastries. There were crowds of people and at departure time the Boss of Butterfly Balloons came out and said sorry, but it looked like a no go. The Observatory were pessimistic. If we wanted to wait another hour, they were happy to keep feeding us cheese pastries. Dire warnings. The little lad on the next table was whimpering that he’d been waiting 3 days in a row and that he was leaving that night, a stone heavier than when he arrived. We waited. And waited.

Suddenly a LandRover pulled past with an enormous whicker basket on a trailer. Load ’em up! Yahoo-Yipeekaiyeah! Evidently the Pilots were thinking that with no flights for the last 3 days, they had a potential riot on their hands and had persuaded the Observatory to give in on a margin call. Vans and LandRovers were careening over the Landscape like the Great American Land Rush. Out amongst the Smurf hats, balloons were sprouting up like enormous multi-coloured mushrooms. We managed to find ours and Captain Fahti (Pronounced Farter which, for a hot air balloon, seemed mighty appropriate). The crew had the burner fired up and this enormous fungi began to fill our field of vision. The noise of the burner was like a dragons roar. We bundled into the basket and were taught the ‘Brace Brace’ position. Somebody let go of a rope and gently we rose into the sun filled sky, surrounded by other big daft balls of hot air. Joyous! No fear. We were all grinning like loons.

The beauty of the landscape in the early light with these wonderful balls of colour, rising and falling with the dragons breath of burners. There were 120 balloons that day, one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. The air was crystal and we could see for miles. Mountains and Valleys in every shade of stone that a stone can be. We drifted over the town and almost knocked on peoples windows, then climbed high to look over it all. Fahti got us into a thermal that drifted us back over the wilderness and farmland.

We dropped and cruised into a valley, we had already been up for an hour and some of the balloons were already landing. Instead, we cruised up the valley at a height of about 3 metres. At the top end he guided us over a series of pinnacles called the Fairy Chimneys which were stunning, like giant coconut mushrooms. We drifted up the mountainside until, at the top, a thermal coming over carried us back down the same valley. At the far end we dropped and started travelling back up again, only this time we landed. The crew were waiting and he dropped us right on the trailer. Clever Farter. We all stumbled out of the basket and helped get the balloon packed up, by which time somebody had set up a table and we ate strawberries and cake and drank champagne. Fabulous! Definitely one of the most enjoyable things we have ever done.

Back at our hotel we met up with Uncle and our guide for the next 2 weeks, Ali. A smiley young man who, whenever he got nervous, which was often, because he didn’t always know what he was talking about, would gesticulate and grin in place of speaking actual words of information. This could be annoying, but we had our guide books and he was a really nice guy. They took us to Kaymakli underground city. An anthill for people and as many of their cows and sheep as they could hide from the Romans. It was a warren of tunnels, rooms an air-shafts with copious wine storage tanks. Okay, so there are 30,000 of you down there for weeks at a time, you might need an occasional imbibe, but this much seemed dangerously close to party proportions. Christian raves, where the Romans couldn’t get at them and would eventually get bored and go chuck someone else to the lions.

Nearby is Uchisar, which was basically an entire castle inside the biggest Smurf hat in the region and which you can see for miles. There isn’t much to see inside, but from the outside you can really imagine them filming the Life of Brian.

Back to Goreme open air museum, which is some of the best preserved of the hundreds of Churches and Monasteries that early Christians carved into the pinnacles and cliffs. Unfortunately, several centuries of goat herders have, slept, cooked and abluted inside them and so the frescoes are all blacked over, what images you can see are defaced (literally) and everywhere graffiti has been carved, “Abdul doesn’t shag sheep. Perv!”. “Flossie my heart skips a beat, when you bleat!” That sort of thing. Even so, it’s very beautiful at the same time as being very weird. 

We stop at the Fairy Chimneys and get to see them from ground level this time and they are just as awesome. By now the weather is turning really cold and we are running around to keep warm. I climb up a steep slope into a cave and the rock underfoot drums as if it is hollow. The surfaces are like gritty talcum powder. I should have known better than to do this, getting up was a doddle, but coming down even more so. One step, two steps, no steps. My boots skidded off the talc and I sledged down using my bum and hands as brakes for the next 30 metres. I almost died. Jonathon almost died laughing. Boy did that ever get the circulation into my hands.

On day 3 we started at Mustafapasha, which is famous for its beautiful Architecture. This was a Greek town until Greece and Turkey really fell out in 1924 and they sent all the Greeks back. Since then, the Turks have only known one Architectural style, known as “Hideous” and so, even though Mustafapasha is pretty ordinary to the cosmopolitan eye, the fact that the Greeks might paint a door blue is, evidently, a pretty big deal. And the Greeks got kicked out due to offense against a National lack of taste.

We drove into the country and along the winding Soganli Valley, it seems that the Turks are better at nature than they are at Architecture. We walked along valley sides dotted with caves and tiny Smurf churches that had been decorated inside and out. There must have been thousands of Christians back in the day who had nothing better to do than build religious monuments.

Lunch at a local restaurant included a spicy soup with fresh lemon squeezed in, hot homemade bread, local veg & yoghurt and tiny lamb kebabs that looked like sheep dags but which were much better tasting. There was also a whole sizzling hotplate of chopped chicken chunks. Now, in China, such a dish would consist of 80% skin and bone, with the blood still oozing out of the joints, the head would be presented and the feet removed and served as a starter. But, in Turkey, it’s all meat. Guess who gets my vote to join the Common Market.

As we are finishing lunch a cacophony of cars comes down the valley, a wedding party. We follow them until they jam the road and all traffic stops. Everybody is drinking Raki and Vodka and dancing in the road and we had to lock Liz inside the Van. Then shots rang out and she lost the desire to go bopping. Half way up the mountainside, somebody has placed a white tile and most of the guys are blazing away with a variety of weaponry until the tile explodes and everybody congratulates the Groom on being such a good shot. Because if he missed, the wedding would have been called off.

On to Keslik Monastery. We are getting the impression that in earlier times, everybody was a monk. It’s a pretty site with interesting paintings, but mainly smoke blackened and vandalised, although some really rich and spooky images still peer through.

By the time we get back to the Kelebek, the temperature has dropped drastically as we snuggled down in our cave deep in the rock. 

Day 4. Deep down in our lovely cave, the first rays of dawn fumble their way round the ill-fitting curtain, wobble across the lounge, tumble down the stairs and burn a hole in my bleary retina. But the World is at peace, almost too quiet, muffled maybe? We stagger from our burrow,  through the door and into a World of white. 3″ of snow blankets everything except the Smurf hats, which are just too steep for it to gain purchase. It’s eery and beautiful. We have a big breakfast by a roaring fire while contemplating the day’s journey. Dori doesn’t contemplate for long. “I’m not shifting in this”, she says and moves closer to the fire. 

So the three of us set off to Hattusha (Bless you). It’s a long drive of almost 4 hours, but as soon as we leave Cappadocia the snow stops, unfortunately so does the landscape. It is flat, boring and bitterly cold, brass monkeys would not venture forth. It’s dull and we sleep, but eventually the flatness gives way to hills and valleys and Hittites. Their enormous city of Hattusha (Bless you), is spread across an entire mountainside. There really is not much left, but just enough to spark your imagination. A massive stone wall runs for miles, surrounding hundreds of huge stone foundations. The Hittites were big on foundations, but they made their walls of mud brick and it rains in this part of the World. So, once the Hittites hit out, everything dissolved except; the foundations, about a million huge fired clay pots; and a gazzilion fired clay tablets that they used for writing on, detailing everything from grain output to Peace treaties. What is puzzling is that with all this time-resisting pottery, how come they never thought about making fired clay bricks?

Anyway to help fill in the gaps, the Turks have built a Museum on site which is meant to represent what the wall would actually have looked like. To say that this looks “Cheesy” would be doing it a huge undeserved favour and bless ’em they painted it to look like mud which, evidently, in the days of the Hittites, was a sort of puke green. But get away from that and the scale and setting is majestic. There are some excellent sections of the original fortifications which are huge and, for 2000BC, must have been pretty impressive to the local mammoth herders.

These guys though, were famous for their smiting. They had a big army and loads of chariots and seem to have spent a lot of time going off to smite their neighbours. One Queen of Egypt lost her hubby and wrote to the Hittite King suggesting he send his only son to visit her. Not on your life Missus, was the gist of his reply, I send him down there and you’ll kill him. No, she says, I’ll marry him and together we will rule the biggest empire the world has ever seen. OK girl, you’re on! Unfortunately her in-laws weren’t too keen on the new arrangement and they murdered the lad as soon as he arrived. So Chupilanuma II, girded his loins, went down with some of his homies and gave them a serious smiting. He smote thousands and those who didn’t get smoted were taken back to Hattusha (Bless you) as slaves, which was a big mistake as the only good Egyptian is a smitten one and they promptly gave the Hittites the Plague and they disappeared from the face of the earth (Hattusha, Hattusha, we all fall down).

Which is a shame because, apart from all the smiting, these guys were big into alcohol. They believed that excessive indulgence in beer and wine, allowed a body to commune with the Gods. This is something that I believe in to this day. Give me a Church that actually encourages you to get hammered and I would be getting seriously holy on a daily basis. As we staggered around the ruins in sub-zero temperatures, with the occasional blast of sleet, a holy-hot-toddy would have been very welcome.

An old local sidled up to us, the only tourists in this huge landscape and I made a sympathy buy of a lovely little carved stone bull designed for offering wine to the Gods by pouring it inside him and then spilling it out of his nose. This sometimes happens to me when I drink and laugh at the same time.

Nearby the capital is the great rupestral (Look it up) sanctuary of Yazilikaya. They worshipped the God of Storms and the Goddess of the Sun and to be closer to them, they put no roof on the temple, which meant they never needed a Roof Repair fund jumble sale and, after a hard day getting holied, they weren’t tempted to try and sleep it off in the vestry, but headed home instead. There are really cool rock carvings here, beautifully done to say they are 4,000 years old, but the Gods all wore Smurf hats which kind of digs into their credibility ratings.

Another superb lunch with sheep dag kebabs and spicy cheese and spinach falafel thingies, brilliant. We dropped into the local museum which put a different spin on things and, after all the big, bad ruins, you get to see some really beautiful stuff. These guys were not just smiters, they had real taste. There is a massive bull headed amphora that is stunning and made my little purchase look a bit humble.

We climbed in to the van and Uncle must have found wings somewhere, because we flew back to Cappadocia, which still had a healthy dusting of snow, looking grey but very pretty.

Day 5. We said goodbye to our little cave and the superb staff at the Kelebek Hotel and hammered off to Konya. Flat steppe landscape with the World’s ugliest buildings make this a very long and boring road. It may be part of the Silk Road, but it would have had to be silk lined to make it worthwhile doing it with a train of camels.

We stop for a break at Sultan Hani, the biggest and best preserved caravanserai in the region. It’s a huge stone shed for sleeping safely. In terms of Engineering, it’s clumsy, in terms of Architecture, graceless, in terms of Art, barren. Much like a biblical Holiday Inn I suppose. Then, on to Konya, home of the Whirling Dervishes. Konya sits on the edge of this featureless, unlovely plain, perfect for fundamentalists. Konya is okay. It’s not particularly pretty. There is a public park carpeted with thousands of Hyacinths, Tulips and Daffs, but you don’t see many people smiling. You can’t get a drink anywhere in town and maybe that’s why.

We go to the Mevlana Museum which is all about the Celaddin Rumi, who later became Mevlana and his Son Veled and how they became the focus of a sect who trance dance in circles, one hand pointing to the sky and one to the ground and upon their head a big hat that represents their tombstone. Not exactly the happiest of chaps.

But for some reason they don’t dance here, except once a year, but you can see them in tourist cabarets in Goreme and Istanbul. Nobody in Konya dances, as that would be tantamount to fun and fun is heresy. Nice hotel though. The Hich is the hotel in Turkey that tries hardest to be cool and sometimes succeeds. If they had a bar they would succeed much more.

Day 6. A hard days’ drive to Antalya, but almost the moment you leave Konya the Landscape brightens. Snow capped mountains and forest carpeted valleys. Rich alpine farmland in the bottoms and the road verges carpeted with crocus and cowslips. Very pretty.

We stop at Beysehir to see the mosque. The outside is the same as everywhere else, not exactly enthralling, but the inside is columned and roofed in Oak and Walnut, which brings it to life and warmth and makes for a very beautiful space.

Eventually, we drop from the mountains to the plains along the coast and come to Side, our first Greco-Roman town. Side is to Archaeology, what Blackpool is to Culture. There is a temple, but it’s down a street thronged with cellulite legs getting quick-crisped and it sits between the Harley Davidson Bar and Mustapha’s Disco and Ice cream Parlour. I’m sorry, call me a snob, but I was all for getting back in the van and driving back to Konya. I couldn’t wait to get out.

We did the final 30K to Antalya, which was due to open an Expo in 27 days, but had a road and railway to complete (6months maybe. Trust me I’m in construction) That last 30K took us as long as the previous 300.

Our hotel, the Minyon, was deep inside the old town, and I was disappointed that it wasn’t staffed by little yellow guys in blue overalls. It has a beautiful entrance and garden, but the upstairs rooms are Olde Town size and a bit lacking in style. Never mind, the Castle bar had wonderful views over the harbour and distant mountains and returning to the Minyon we were welcomed by cold wine and a hot log fire before bedtime.

Day 7. To Perge and our first Stadium. It seems the Greco-Romans were fond of running in the nuddy. I don’t quite get this. To me, there is only one sport that should be undertaken without your undercrackers and that sport, in itself, is fraught with the potential for bodily damage. But the thought of running the hundred metres with my old boy thrashing about like an Asp with its tail caught in the door and my clockweights swinging like Quasimodo’s bells, does not lead me to believe that I would be able to produce my personal best. Perhaps they ran it like the egg and spoon. (2 eggs, 1 spoon).

Perge is pretty big and located as high up the river as the boats could get. It has a very long main street with a serious kink in it that belies the belief that the Romans built everything straight. Nice though.

After another enormous lunch we go to Aspendos which has an absolutely fabulous Theatre from before the times of Carnage, blood and guts, when they actually had plays, about diddling your Mum and poking your eyes out.

Day 8. Down the coast to Phaeselis, a beautiful site for a City with 3 harbours. It’s the first time that we’ve been in amongst proper trees and it is very peaceful and idyllic until the first of 15 “Pirate” cruises come around the headland and serenade us with BungaBunga music blasting out from their Ford Cortina sound systems.

The Phaeselians were reknowned for being the tightest wallets in the Ancient World. Jonathon felt right at home, but even he couldn’t have bought the land for an entire city from a local shepherd for a basket of dried fish. They had a Hadrian’s Gate. Ade seems to have got to pretty much everywhere in the Empire and had a bit of a thing about walls and gates evidently. But it all fell apart when they got invaded by wasps. Maybe the Phaeselians invented Fanta and never made the connection.

We dropped into a local restaurant for lunch, settled by the river with water so crystal clear that the ducks seemed to be suspended in space. They brought us breads like over inflated rugby balls and fresh, Moby Dick sized Sea Bass on iron skillets, salads and olives and lemons and yoghurt. Good wines and great beer, sitting under a tree watching a duck trying to eat a tomato. Aaaah Holidays!

We snoozed back into town but stopped at the local Museum. They have hundreds of statues. It seems that without the joys of TV, the ancients had shed loads of statues instead. They didn’t move around so much, except in earthquakes, when you could get just as much action in 5 minutes as 5 years of “Corrie”. But with so many of the things, you do wonder why they couldn’t leave a few in-situ, just to help give the sites a bit more atmosphere. Mind you, it has to be admitted that over the years, the Brits, Krauts, Frogs and Yanks have been a bit light fingered and anything that wasn’t nailed down has been spirited away to Museums around the World. In our defense, there is hardly a statue in Turkey that hasn’t had its nose broken off and rude bits mutilated by Mullahs or Monks.

For dinner that night we ate at a local “Family” restaurant. Loads of beans and spinach. Local families are major methane producers.

Day9. This was a quiet day, a rest day for Uncle and Ali, our Guide. Uncle we had got a handle on almost immediately. A typically deadpan, ex-truck driver, ” Bin there, crashed that”. Guide would be a very kind word for Ali, a likeable chap, an energetic graduate from Travel University who had more hand movements than actual words. Sometimes you felt like he was talking in semaphore and when he got nervous, because he didn’t know the answer or he didn’t know how to answer something correctly, his arms would start windmilling like a sign language instructor with Tourette Syndrome. This guy had eight different kinds of shrug. There were times when a straight-jacket would have come in handy. But, as I say, a nice guy. He had told us of his girlfriend, an airline stewardess who he would one day marry, but it came as no surprise when we bumped into him, on several occasions, with a “Cousin”. Even in the smallest village, overnight stop. I think his uncles need to have a gene scan, because they seem only capable of producing attractive 20-something year old girls and, in a Muslim country, boys is what you want. So, Day 9 was as much a rest for us as it was for them and I guess Ali managed to rustle up and Auntie to keep Uncle happy.

As usual, our day started with breakfast which, in Turkey consists of 8 different types of cheese, with olives, salad, eggs, cheese pastries, bread, 4 kinds of runny jam and a bit more cheese, just in case you really like cheese. You then stagger round with a cheese overhang until lunchtime, when you are ready for your next fix.

So, we staggered round the old town, which is not really that old. After you enter through Hadrian’s Gate, been there, built a gate, Turkey style conservation takes hold. Mosque – OK, can’t touch that. Everything else – Knock it down and build a replica in breeze block and fibreboard, but don’t lose the antique brass doorknocker, we might need that. The street layout stays the same, because every square inch is worth a tourist Dollar, so you wander around the maze, looking for a way out and trying not to look a carpet seller in the eye.

Whatever you do, do NOT look a carpet seller in the eye. Everybody in Turkey tells you how bad the economy is. The Hotels and Restaurants are half empty and there is a million tonnes of tat that nobody is buying, but the carpet sellers seem to be blissfully unaware. We confidently expected to be able to pick up a new runner for the back hallway at a bargain price, but Turkey’s carpet sellers have not been told about the state of the economy, or choose not to listen, but boy can they give you the hard sell. On several occasions, Dori had to fake a heart attack in the street in order to get me out of their clutches. Even then, the response from the carpet seller was usually, “Aaah my friend, let her go…. Handsome man like you can always get a new wife…. But you’ll never find another carpet like this!” I settled for a pair of fake HugoBass jeans and we snuck back to hotel and barricaded the door.

Day 10. We drive to Pamukkale and check into the Melrose House Hotel which boasts the giggliest Landlord in Turkey and his giggle is infectious. You will be sitting, quietly downing an excellent bottle of wine and find yourself smiling for no reason whatsoever, until you realise that somewhere, in a distant part of the hotel, he is giggling and the chair you are sitting on reverberates with his giggle.

We head up to Hieropolis, which was the Roman’s precursor to Bath and Cheltenham. It’s a vast expanse of grass with sporadic ruins sprinkled around the place. One of which, St. Philips’ Martyrium, is really beautiful and very peaceful, despite the fact that the ticket booth was mobbed. The reason for this being that everybody comes to swim in the pool that Cleopatra used and nobody can be arsed to climb up to the Martyrium, which is a sort of ancient YMCA. The pool is fed from a warm calcite spring and is reputed to be healing, but any pool that looks like Butlins and is full of sick people, is not a place I choose to dip.

So we headed to the calcite, travertine terraces. These are a huge series of crystalline ponds and cliffs. At one end, a series of pools are kept active for the punters, by channeling the warm spring water. You can smell the bi-carb. At first, it’s pretty crowded and broken up underfoot, but then the crowds thin out as you venture down and the surface becomes beautifully smooth, but not slippy. The water is warm and the light blinding, reflecting off the snow-white surfaces. The pools are shallow and seem to be full of talcum powder, but it’s crystalised bicarbonate of soda. It’s just too inviting and it seemed that I was the only person who just had to get in. But everywhere is running water and there is no shelter and my swimmies are in my rucksack so, I just have to load everything onto Dori, while she holds a towel round me while I change. Of course, at the critical moment, I get a cramp in my foot and start to dance. The Landlord’s giggle infection finally gets the better of Dori and she doubles up, but with my towel in her hands and I’m left dancing around with my tackle in my hands, while a bunch of girls in headscarves get a view of something that Allah never told them about. Fortunately, there were no Shariah Police about and I was able to regain my swimmers and my composure, if not my dignity.

Jonathon, of course, ever willing to help out a pal, got most of it on camera and I am now a minor internet star. After my little dance of pain/shame, I was able to traverse the travertines with gay abandon, lying in the trenches that fed the various pools and being pummeled by warm bi-carb. The sun shone, the water was turqoise, the light of the travertine was incredible and everybody looked at me like a loony, but nobody said that I shouldn’t, so I did and it was fab.

Day 11. Sun’s up and we drive to Aphrodisias, which wasn’t on our original Itinerary, but which Jon insisted upon and we were glad he did. You park away from the ruins and then a tractor driven by Mustapha Schumacker towing a greenhouse with seats in it careens you into the site. Must be some sort of job creation scheme for local farmers with Formula 1 pretentions. But Aphrodisias at this time of year is well worth it. The Poplar trees are in new leaf, the ground is a carpet of yellow Mustard sprinkled with Poppies and Daisies, the sky is sooooo blue it looks like it’s been painted and the ruins rise majestic. This really is the most beautiful site we saw, maybe it was the flowers but, the poetry of the place is pretty amazing and it was surprisingly quiet as we wandered for ages, through the carpet of colours and the constant hum of a billion bees.

On the way back to Pamukkale we stopped at Laodicea which is very impressive in its grandeur, but a bit sterile after Aphrodisias. I guess we were spoiled and afterwards, everything else was just a comparison.

Day 12. We drive to Selcuk. The “c” has a squiggly tail underneath that makes it sound like “j”, but my computer doesn’t have one of those, (Or, more likely, I don’t know how to find it). Now who makes this stuff up? Why not just use “j”? Or should we cust use “c”?. Anyway, it’s a nije little town, a bit older than most, with a jastle (enough) the Basilica of St. John and the best chocolate raisins in Turkey if not the World. The problem being, that we didn’t discover this fact until we ate a box of them after leaving town. Holiday purchases can be very frustrating like that. Seljuk (fuckit) is also the closest place to Ephesus, which is billed as the primo Greco-Roman City of the World. It’s good, it’s big, it’s got a spectacular Library, but it’s not Aphrodisias. Maybe because it’s bigger, busier and harder (In terms of atmosphere), but it is accessible and we had to elbow our way through crowds of loud Chinese and hoardes of Viking tourers in stretch pants and floral prints. “Hey Abe! Lookit de Librarary!” – ” ‘Ow you know it’s a Librarary? Dey ain’t no books!”

What’s left of the Librarary is, in fact, very beautiful but, in Dori’s eyes, not as beautiful as the cats that are scattered all over the place. Sunny nook?= Cat. Shady nook? = Cat. Relatively flat, not too damp or scruffy stone, nice for lying across with your legs dangling? = Cat. But they are everywhere in Turkey. Nobody seems to own them, but everybody feeds them. As you walk the streets, there are piles of cat food at random locations. In Antalya, there is a huge Cat Hotel in one of the parks, No room charges! You would not want to be a mouse in this country.

Ephesus also has an on-going archaeological excavation inside a truly massive shed, which covers a series of houses which appear to prove that Ephesians actually came from Hong Kong. That is on the assumption that a desire to live on top of one another and cover the walls in marble proves the point. A bunch of people were renovating what appear to be mosaic floors and I hesitated to tell them that they were probably Majong tiles.

It was at this point that the camera memory stick I had unearthed in Goreme, now became full and I failed to read the signs. I happily kept snapping away, oblivious to the fact until we got back to Hong Kong. Honestly though, by this stage we had seen the best and, although there were still some stunning sights to see, Aphrodisius had already won the bestest ruins competition.

Nearby Ephesus, you can also visit the house of the Virgin Mary, which is up a mountain and was basically a shed, until some German Nun had a dream, in Germany, probably after a serious session at the Oktoberfest, in which she saw a shed, near Ephesus where Mary had lived after escaping from Palestine. As with all things Catholic, a bunch of monks (Not the Nun herself) were sent to verify the vision which “Lo!” Became a piece of Holy real estate and, after being blessed by various Popes, now turns a healthy pilgrimage profit. “Kaching!!!”

Day 14. We drove on, stopping at Pergamum, which was built on top of a hill. Thankfully, they have installed a cable car. It’s nice. There is a lovely bit of temple and a theatre built on the side of the mountain which is totally vertigo inducing, but the best thing about it is the Altar of Zeus…. Evidently. We don’t know for sure, because some Germans, on an Archaeological dig, stole it and it is now in the Berlin Museum.

We drove on to Canakkale, a lively little town in the Dardanelles with the best Calimari of the whole trip. Every day has its highlights.

Day 15. We visit Troy, which is nice, but there’s not much of it and what there is seems to be disappearing again under a blanket of weeds. One of Turkey’s embarrassments, is that they have too many archaeological sites to keep discovering, let alone maintain and, they have a Muslim population that doesn’t give a stuff about them, except of course unless they can personally make a dollar out of them. Naturally, somebody has built a Trojan Horse, but they have put windows in it. Somehow I doubt that the original would have had these or they might have given the game away as a bunch of heavily armed Myceneans waved past the curtains to the joyous Trojan citizens pulling them into town for a night of slaughter. Back in Canakkale, they have a much better horse, made by Hollywood, for a film about Brad Pitt in shorts, made in Malta.

Day 16. Gallipoli. I have to admit that I had no real compunction to do this one, apart from the fact that everybody does. War at such a close proximity is depressing. We take the ferry across the Dardanelles. Gerry and the Pacemakers would have had a hard time getting a hit with that. The sky is grey and foreboding, but the Gallipoli peninsular is surprisingly pretty, almost an English rural countryside. It’s difficult to imagine so much suffering in that.

The Anzac cemeteries do nothing for me, sorry but they seem curiously sterile. The Turkish cemeteries more so and there is a sense of hubris. Did you know that more French died here than Aussies? But we see no French cemeteries. There is a Museum ‘Experience’ which seems quite well done at first, until the subtlety of the propaganda fades away and it becomes painfully obvious that this is a glorification of all things Islam and all things Erdogan/Turkish.

It takes a quiet spot on the Southern tip of the peninsular, called ‘V’ beach, to bring home the enormity of what happened here. There is a small British cemetery, immaculately maintained, better than most memorials in the U.K., I would venture. There is a plaque on the wall that describes how the troops arrived in a converted collier ship that was driven onto the rocks about 100 metres offshore. Lighters were employed to ferry the troops ashore, but 27 Turks with 2 machine gun emplacements decimated them. There are black and white photos of young men and boys happily posing and fooling about as the ship crosses the Med. There is another, taken from the bridge of the ship. It shows scores of men flat on the deck of the lighter, dead or sheltering, you can’t tell and, on the distant beach, 2 small clusters of men who made it ashore. They form distinct crescents against the white sand. If you move from either crescent, you are dead. As you lift your eyes from the photo to the landscape beyond the cemetery you see the slight, metre high ridge behind which they sought to save themselves. The ages on the grave stones average 19 to 26. You can’t help but cry for them.

Very subdued, we drive on. It’s said that, “All roads lead to Rome”, but in Turkey all roads lead to Istanbul. They have to. It’s the only way out. It’s a long drive and, as usual, when all roads lead, that means traffic jams when you get there.

Our hotel is called the Ada. What a stuffy old fashioned name and, guess what? The owner greets us, he looks like Lurch’s Grandad. The lobby is crammed with overstuffed furniture smothered in antimacassars. There are so many that it is actually quite difficult to find anywhere to sit. The rooms are big, gloomy and similarly furnished, except for the bed, which is covered by a neon Hawaiian Tropical bedspread and contrasting dayglo geometric sheets. And, best of all, lurking in the corner under the window, gleaming brilliantly, like an escape pod from the Starship Enterprise, a huge bath. The room has a perfectly good en-suite with a shower. “Why is there a bath in the bedroom?”, I ask mine host. “It’s not a bath, it’s a jacuzzi”, came his sombre reply. And that was all the explanation I got.

Day 17. Despite our arrival misgivings, the Ada was a gem. Spotlessly clean, great breakfasts, convenient for Bars, Restaurants, Shops, Trams and the Blue Mosque and our host was a very dignified and reserved Gentleman. Notwithstanding the Jacuzzi. Istanbul is a fabulous and beautiful City. We have been before, so didn’t bother with all the Museums and Mosques and just spent 2 days wandering around, eating, drinking, shopping, sightseeing and enjoying ourselves. A great way to chill before a 2.00am flight back to Hong Kong.

Thanks to Jodie and everybody at Heritage Travel for a great trip.

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