The ancient city of Aphrodisias... best ruins site yet!

There's no easy way to get from Denizli to the Aphrodisias ruins. You can either take the longer but faster route on the main highway around the mountains (which is what almost anybody would do), or you can drive the slower but shorter narrow curvy roads through the mountains.

But you know us fairly well by now. We are not "almost anybody", so you should be able to guess which route we chose!

As the crow flies, it's only 32 kms (20 miles) away but if you take the main highway it's 81 kms (51 miles) and if you take the mountain route it's 64 kms (40 miles).

Yes, we took the mountain route. We left at 9:30am, and arrived at the ruins site at 11:30am. Yes, it was slow going, but beautiful scenery and no other traffic. And, we stopped a couple of times to take photos. We totally enjoyed the drive, except for one tight section through a mountain village! Actually, that was kind of fun too. Glad we weren't in a motorhome!

Looking back at the city as we started to gain some altitude.

Scenery along the way.

Sheep and goats.

The town of Mollaahmetler.

We get to the next town of Babadag, and it's built onto a hillside. Normally, and always if we're in the motorhome, I plan our route without letting the GPS (or google maps, in this case) select it for me. However this time because we were in a car, I was simply following the turns as they were called out to me. Much less risk of running into problems when you're driving a car.

We made a left turn that I'm sure was just google making a shortcut decision for us. And so I followed it blindly up a steep narrow paved path with hairpin turns. There would not have been room to pass a car going the opposite direction.

Ruth eventually videoed the whole thing. I didn't realize she had it on, so you can listen to my candid comments.  Turn up your volume...

She actually didn't catch the worst of it that was seconds before she started filming. Had we been in a vehicle any larger than our car, we would not have made it and would have had to back down the entire way. I don't ever want to put myself in that situation, which is why when we're in a motorhome I do so much advance planning. And it's also why we want the smallest motorhome possible that suits our needs!

More scenery.

The buildings on the right are a bunch of new apartments.

Odd that they are built in the middle of nowhere.

Enjoying the views.

Some old ruins.

View of another mountain village.

This reservoir is almost dry.

Good thing for them that the rainy season is coming.

We arrived at the entrance to Aphrodisias at 11:30am. There were signs directing us to the parking area, but the guy at the entrance said we could park closer to the ruins. There was a 10 lira ($1.50 CAD, $1.20 USD) parking fee that we paid, and carried on to the ruins site where we parked and then paid the 30 lira ($4.60 CAD, $3.50 USD) entrance fee.

Passing through the gates, we saw the road lined with sarcophagi... ancient stone coffins...

They date from the 2nd to 3rd centuries.

The detailed inscriptions on them describe who commissioned and owned it, and who had the right to be laid to rest in it.

The ruins at Ephesus get most of the attention when it comes to tourists visiting Turkey. However I had read that Aphrodisias ruins are actually far superior, and in a more natural state of (dis?)repair. We haven't been to Ephesus yet, but we are going... so it will be interesting to compare the two when we visit Ephesus next week.

One of the things we really enjoyed yesterday is that we were pretty much the only ones there! Totally amazing to be in a setting like this and to be virtually alone there. Amazing!

Aphrodisias was a prosperous city, famous in Roman times for its sanctuary of the god of love, Aphrodite. It was occupied from the 100 BC until 700 AD when a severe earthquake destroyed the city. It was then abandoned. So it was occupied for over 800 years. That is hard for us to get a grasp of since most of our cities in Canada and the U.S. are less than 200 years old. We wonder what people 2,000 years from now will think of what our culture was like at the time.

They say its monuments are unusually well preserved, and it hosts the location of the largest and best preserved stadium of all the ancient sites. It was also the location of a sculpture school, which is why there were so many marble statues located here.

A gladiator fighting some kind of animal.

Mom, with one of her pups.

Two more pups!

Display of friezes. 

These were originally excavated in 1937 and had been on display in the city of Izmir until they were returned here in 2009.

Reminds me of the Statue of Liberty.

Sculptors were commissioned to do many "portraits".

We made our way to the impressive Tetrapylon... the monumental gateway to the Temple of Aphrodite. Yes, there are some things that have been restored as best as possible. You would be correct in thinking that this didn't survive the earthquake that destroyed the city in the 7th century.

But, it's still impressive!

Surprisingly though, some of it was still standing.

This is what it looked like prior to its reconstruction in 1991.

As I said earlier, Aphrodisias is the location of the best preserved ancient stadium. This example seated 30,000 people, which means people must have traveled long distances to attend events, because the population of the city itself was maximum 15,000 at any given time.

Can you see Ruth in the middle? 

Remember, you can click on any photo to make it full screen.

Click on it again to zoom in further.

This end of the stadium had some excavation work ongoing.

The stadium was built in the 1st century to showcase traditional Greek athletic contests such as foot races, long jumping, wrestling, discus, and javelin throwing. The stadium was also used for gladiator contests and "wild beast fights" as the information sign explained.

Okay, we're ready for the show to begin!

What remains of the temple.

This statue is well preserved!

I think they should move it into the museum here.

Rubble.

What amazes us about some of these ruins sites is how much is left to be discovered. There have been several excavations take place over the years... in the 1840's, between 1905-1906, in the middle 1930's, and ongoing from about 1961. And yet so much is still buried.

The walls around the sculpture school.

The council hall.

The sculpture school.

These podiums would have had sculptures on them, but most are now in museums around the world, including many in the on site museum.

They built floors to last back then!

Pillars that would have surrounded the Agora Pool.

The Agora Pool was a park like public square. the pool itself is an amazing 170 meters long, and had a pressurized water system to feed its fountains. How did they do this 2,000 years ago?

The pool was only excavated between 2012 and 2017.

Next stop was the 7,000 seat theater...

This seat has a cup holder!

Me, on the stage.

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen... lend me your ears..."

What happens to your floor over time if you don't keep it clean!

Interesting building structure.

In its natural state.

A computer generator photo of what this would have looked like back in the day.

We then went into the onsite museum where they have on display may of the artifacts that have been recovered here...

The statues are amazing.

Now this is art!

Gold coins from 2,000 years ago.

They didn't need to do an autopsy to figure out how this guy died!

Copper artist impressions from the first British archeological visit in 1840.

What a fantastic visit. We saw one other couple wandering around when we first arrived, and then not a single other person as we wandered the site for three hours! Amazing! As we exited, we saw two or three other couples coming in. Glad we beat the rush!

We sat in the car and had a late lunch. As we were eating, I had my door wide open and a cat wanted to come in and share our food. I closed the door, and he hopped up on the car!

Funny cat.

We drove back to the city taking part of the same mountain route, and then a section of highway just for a change of pace.

Watch out for the goats!

There's a curvy road!

Our road ahead!

Another great day in Turkey. 

We've been to lots of Mayan and Aztec ruins sites in Mexico. So it's interesting comparing cultures from ancient times who didn't even know each other existed. And we have sometimes seen too many ruins sites in Mexico... you tend to get "ruined out". Something like visiting too many museums. You can only look at so many pieces of broken pottery. But so far... we've not had enough of this old Greek and Roman history. Looking forward to seeing more sites.

We relaxed at the apartment for a bit, and then went for a walk to get something for dinner. We had seen some chicken rotisserie places, so we figured we would pickup a whole roast chicken for dinner.

We found a small deli type of shop that had three whole ones on the spit. They looked ready to go, so we went and spoke to the friendly women behind the counter. Her English was only slightly better than our Turkish but we managed to communicate that we wanted the whole chicken. She took one out, cut it up for us, packaged it to go, and told us the bill was 20 lira ($3.10 CAD, $2.35 USD)! 

Wow. Cheapest roast chicken ever.

For that price, we could afford an expensive 42 lira ($6.50 CAD, $5.00 USD) bottle of wine to go with it!

Today, we are going to walk another part of the city.

Check out the listings for today's new deals at www.campingandrvgeardeals.com

We only walked 2.5 kms (1.5 miles) yesterday. We are going to have to make up for that today!

Total distance walked in Turkey 168.3 kms (104.3 miles).