Everything in ruins, in a good way! The waterfall and Side

(me at the temple of Apollo)

     A few weekends ago Ebru and I ventured off to the south of Turkey to visit her friend Suna. The part that I live in is considered Aegean Turkey; the part we went to is the Mediterranean part of Turkey. Her friend lived in a small city named Manavgat, which is approximately one hour by bus from a more popular tourist spot, Antalya. I was lucky to find out that not only was it close to Antalya, but some other amazing cities, which had some of the coolest roman ruins I have ever seen. We were not sure where to go exactly to start out with; the trip meant two overnight bus rides, the second one putting Ebru back in Izmir with just enough time to get to work on Monday morning. As you know, or those of you who have traveled overnight, it is not the most comfortable thing ever, turns out that was the least of our troubles, but I will get into that later!

 

(View from the theater)

We left Izmir on Friday night around 8:00. We first met at the bus company port near Ebru's house to take a small bus to the bus station. Once we got to the bus station we hopped on what turned out to be one of the coolest busses of all times, and headed off to Antalya. You may be wondering "how cool can a bus be?" the answer is freakin cool. This bus, aside from being relatively comfortable, had a TV where you could watch live TV, a list of movies you could watch (even some in English) and had a USB port where you could plug in and charge various electronics in the back of every seat. I used it to keep my ITouch charged. This bus, among all these other great features, had free wireless internet! This was pretty great, I even chatted with some of you probably reading this on Skype from the bus, so if you are one of them, congratulations. The ride there was fine. We were tired still upon arrival because for one, it was around 7:00 am, and two, you can only sleep so much on a bus. Suna met us and we headed back to her house to catch a quick nap then off to see some tourist spots.

(flooded walkway at the waterfall)

Our first day included a "waterfall" and another small town named Side. To start out the story of this day I will explain why I put the waterfall in quotation marks. First reason is that it was only maybe six feet high at most, so not really what I think of when I think waterfall, and two, and the biggest reason, is that the rain and melting snow from the mountains changed it from a waterfall into a rapid! I will post a picture of this to give you a visual of what I mean, but a quick description is that there was so much more water than usual trying to go over the waterfall that instead of falling from one level to another, it created more of a hill of water, or rapid. This excessive amount of water also meant that the entire area around the waterfall was completely flooded. There is a viewing area by the river that you go to see the waterfall, it was sadly under water, and however, you could not get anywhere near even the viewing area because the water came so far up. We had to stand approximately 150 feet away from the river because it was flooded that far back, included all viewing areas, and tourist gift shops. We went up into the restaurant which was on stilts (finally some architectural foresight) to get the only real view of the river possible. It was pretty cool just because it was all flooded, I may have been less interested if it was normal.

After this we headed to Side. The great thing about where we were was it was so close to travel between these various locations, so getting there took us only 20 minutes. The ride there was great also. Along the way you already got to see ruins along the sides of the road, buried under some dirt, in someone’s backyard, or anywhere else around you. This area has so many that they are just there, not part of a tourist attraction, not owned by the state necessarily, just part of the scenery. For me it was really cool. Once we got to Side I had some surprises. One was the great amount of ruins around to see, and two the long sand area leading up to the beach. One thing that made this area unique was that many of the ruins were in the sand leading up to the beach, which made for an interesting sight. The ruins and the ocean came together in a way that you could imagine how it may have looked when it was inhabited.

We started out by just walking along and looking at the first area of ruins, some random parts of what used to be a city. First some city wall, then a town square, then a market area. We made our way up the sand bank there you had a nice view of the various ruins, the old theater, and the ocean. We decided first we would walk down to the coastline and enjoy the view of the Mediterranean. Along the way we encountered some old buildings half buried in the sand, including what seemed to be an old church, and an ancient hospital (according to the signs). From the coastline itself you could not see too much because the sand bank dropped down again the regular beach area, but it was still a nice view of the sea.

We now decided to make our way towards the first big attraction, the theater. Along the way we found what I think was an old market area, if I remember correctly. This area was really cool because the facade of the old market was relatively well intact and you could find columns and old sculptures half buried in the sand and lying around. It was like something from a movie. It looked very untouched since the day it was still used. If something had fallen down, there it would lie, if the wind blew, the sand covered it. It was a great sight.

From there we got to the theater. This theater overlooked an old market square which still had many of its columns around the square still standing. The whole area was still together enough that you could understand a little bit about its old organization. The theater was not what it used to be, but from the first level down, it was still nearly perfect. The second level had been destroyed by the elements, and various earthquakes, which left parts of it, but not too much. The bottom half was great though, down to the ground. The backdrop was only half there anymore, most of it had fallen down, but still there was maybe 20 feet tall’s worth of it. When you looked closely you could see the various bits of art carved into the walls. I was lucky there; I was the only one in the theater and had a great view. It was all mine to enjoy. Ebru didn’t come in because she is a jive turkey, and is not as interested in that kind of stuff as me. haha. Either way, to stand in somewhere like that alone, is really a wild experience. From the top of the first level you also have a great view out across the ruins and the sea. This view was one of the coolest views of all the places I have been.

(The temple of Apollo)

Next we walked through the current market streets past all the fake purse, lacost, and genuine fake watch shops. We were heading to the most popular attraction of Side, the Temple of Apollo. Not too much of the temple is left these days but there is one side of it where the four columns are all still standing with the roof area all together. You get a good feel how the rest looked from this part, and the type of artwork that surrounded the top of the temple. It is surrounded by ruins all over the ground, ruins of another in fact larger temple, a church, and some other various things. This all sits right beside the sea, giving yet again, an amazing view of the ruins along the coast. We spent the remainder of the day watching the sunset over the water, and the mountain range that curled around into the Mediterranean, off in the distance. It was a great day of sightseeing! From there we walked back to the bus stop and met Suna for a drink or two then to sleep, so we could get up the next day and head to Antalya

(sunset over the Mediterranean)