April 1st: Aezani, Blaunum and Güney: Vistas, breezes, and Romans

It’s hard to rank days into favourites because they are all so different, but today would really be a contender.  We indulged ourselves this morning, after getting our laundry all done last night, by sleeping until we woke up, no alarms allowed.  After a mighty breakfast, we set off for the small town of Aezani, where a Roman town with a very complete temple of Zeus may be found.  We walked around the village and the ruins – intermingled – and nearly brought home a lovely puppy that followed us. We drove through amazing countryside, going from cold and snow and beige fields to warmth and green and olive trees.  We stopped in the old Roman city of Blaunum, near Güney, which is an unexcavated sight high on a hill top.  We took back roads, some unexpectedly tiny, and Ian’s amazing driving took us through tiny cliff side villages, through traffic jams of sheep and goats, and down dirt roads – that may actually have been dikes.  We’ve arrived in Pamukkale , tired but very happy.  In fact, Ian is never more happy than when staring at ruins.

It was a treat to stay at the Hilton Garden in Kütahya, and for breakfast I had the best omelette of all time.  I told them to put in everything, as my Turkish food vocabulary is a bit lacking, and they certainly did. 

We drove off to the little farming village of Aezani, near Cavdarhisar, which was transformed from a minor Phrygian village into a fairly major Roman town in the third century.  In order to see the various Roman excavations, you need to walk the tiny streets of the village, which is full of ruins of its own.  We had the sites outside of town largely to ourselves, but really enjoyed the people from the town we met.  They were all very friendly and helpful, showing us the sites.  The wind was fierce and very cold, although we did see a couple of lizards making their first explorations of the season.  Three hours and ten kilometres of walking later, we were back at the car.

This is the Temple of Zeus.  The statue in the front is of Cybele, and there is a vault below the temple dedicated to her.  You can actually go right up the temple and even go inside.

It's amazing to look at these ruins, some modern, some ancient, and take one item -- a carved frieze that is now in the rock wall of a farmer's field, for instance -- and realize that some person with belliefs and values and aspirations created it.  The person is long forgotten, and the artifact lives on in a random and disconnected way. Often, we don't even understand what the object is.  How ephemeral life is!

I told Ian not to jump for joy on the ruins. . .

. . . but would he listen?  (April fool!)

At the theatre.  The stage was under about six feet of water and had collapsed, but otherwise the show was pretty good.

A side street on the way to the theatre.  These would have been small shops.

If you look trhough the doorway, you can see a broken beam in this derelict house.  Many of the houses have been abandoned as people move from farms into the cities.  Also notice that some of the rocks used to build this house (which would have been stuccoed) are actually pieces of Roman decorative stone from a much older dwelling.

   We drove from winter in the mountains to spring.  We had an argument with the Gimli, which wanted us to take a major highway to Denizli – it couldn’t find Pamukkale.  Ian had already planned our route, so we cheated and entered in a town along the highway.  The Gimli sent us through the streets of Usak, and we weren’t sure we were on the right track, so we asked it to send us to Guney – and that’s when it quit!  Right in the middle of the city, it would only get to “Calculating - 99%”.  We were very relieved when it started working again, and sent us on our way.  For the next hour and a half, we would climb to the top of a hill, then suddenly see an amazing vista before us of grasslands with the odd tree here and there like punctuation marks.  Ian thought it looked the way he imagined the grasslands of Africa must look.  (Sorry, Sen and Lisa, but we've never actually been there!)

We decided to stop at Blaudum, an ancient Roman city that has not yet been fully excavated.  It sits on a hilltop, and once again it was very windy, but the hillsides were green and the wind was much warmer.  We met two young men who were clearing brush from the larger ruins, and who showed us where to park.  Since they are miles from anywhere, they had constructed a very neat little tent and covered the roof with some of the brush they had cut.  They spoke no English, but after we explored the site, they invited us for tea.  We had to regretfully decline. as we had both a couple of hours of travel and a couple of hours of daylight left.

Bloundas

New Friends

 The drive into Pamukkale was both terrifying and beautiful.  We came to a town perched on a hillside and looking like it belonged in Switzerland.  The Gimli (Garmin GPS) ordered us to go down a hill, but there was a car coming up – and room for only one!  We went down the main street of this town, but had to disobey Gimli again when there was a street market on the street it preferred.  While I admired the stalls of fish and fresh vegetables, Ian went down streets literally 11” wider than the car, and so steep you couldn’t see anything but the hood of the car in places.  We made it through and suddenly there were olive trees.  We were stopped several times to let sheep and/or goats go by.  We finally ended up driving on the top of a dike beside an irrigation culvert for about 15 clicks.  Most of the way we drove down narrow dirt roads, then suddenly there was pavement and Pamukkale.

A typical, albeit rather random, idea of the roads we drove down from Usak onwards.  Actually, this section is pretty good!

This courteous shepherd moved both sheep and the odd goat aside so we could pass.  Or at least his dog did!

Our hotel is very nice.  We indulged in a phone call home to James, had a delicious dinner of lentil soup and vegetables, and so to bed!