Pamukkale

Which means cotton castle in English is a rather small town doable by feet.

It's just a short drive from Karahayit, a place famous with the cotton textile, although I didn't see any sign of it when I was there.

Anyway, we arrived at about half past eight in the morning at Hotel Pamukkale.

The downside about overnight bus ride is that you usually arrived tired and all, so we spent a good time basking in the air conditioned room before we comb the small town.

Hotel Pamukkale and we got lucky too, with the room, which is directly in front of the pool.

We opted for tour, which really, is unnecessary.

The travertines and Roman ruins only require dollops of sunblock, your background reading of the place and almos a day.

But we got lucky with our fellow travellers that were in the tour.

Since others were still not ready, we went to the red spring with an American family, which turned out injected the gregarious air the whole length of the tour.

Red springs is just so-so.

People goes there to dip in the mineral rich water, slather their body with the mud or just for plain sightseeing.

It's a small place with small springs so I was being pessimistic.

From my scan of the water, there seemed to be countless tiny nematode like thingy in the water.

It can be plain flora, but it can also be fauna.

Susan said maybe it's a good idea to stay out of it, and took out her feet from the water.hehehee.

Now that all were ready, we found ourselves at the entrance to Hierapolis, the ruins of the Roman city.

Now let me brief you about we.

Emre is our tour guide.

Susan, an ex bilogy teacher

Susan's mommy, which I think is in her 70's

Susan's husband, who's suffering from early phase of Parkinson's.

Then a couple from Denizli who has never been to Pamukkale before!

A couple from Denmark, the husband is a journalist.

Toddler Leyla, her mom and her grandma, Turkish in origin but are staying in OZ.

Leyla didn't cry even a bit and everybody was impressed that she can stay, crankyless in her stroller under the real scorching sun.

Note, if you are visiting Hierapolis and the travertines in summer, you better pack your sunblock and bottles of water.

Hierapolis was so beautiful and I think it's good that we went with the tour since we hav no interest to do some background reading.

Susan, who has been to Ephesus before coming to Pamukkale did the most of the questioning. And I'm going to say it again, that we were really lucky to be in this tour.

Susan's mom had a completely different view ~ "She (Susan) will never stop talking"

And since Hierapolis is rather big, and the pace is quite slow, she filled me in with the story of her family and her wrinkle free years.

It's rather good to know about others adventure and view of the world. By others, I mean, people whom you meet on the road, which you stumble across them only once.

S0 let's see what we have in Hierapolis

Emre and the drawing+map depicting Hierapolis in its prime

Necropolis ~ city of the dead. In front of the tomb made or upper rank family

Tomb for gladiators. The vase is like a medal, given to the winner, which is used to store olive oil, which was a prized commodity in their time. The gladiator's trident. and their shield embossed with flower.

- to be continued-