We took advantage of my cousin’s son’s short stay to get out for some nice day trips near Antalya. Philip visited for about a week in January before a stint of studying in Barcelona. I was excited to show him Perge — I had heard a year (or two or three) ago that the theater was now open for tourists. Doh! I should have gone as soon as I read the announcement. It’s closed again and sounds like it won’t be open for years. They need to do some stabilization work.
As before this is about the best view of the theater.
In more positive news they’ve moved the parking lot and entrance out of the center of the site. Now the stadium feels more like it’s actually within the archaeological area.
There’s restoration work going on, but it kind of looks like they’re building Perge!
I wasn’t sure what the circular area in the center of the agora was used for, but I overheard two guys about my age talking about it. I asked them what they knew. This area was Islamic for millennia, they explained, before the Prophet Mohammed was born (?). I expressed surprise. Yes, this land belonged to Turks for millennia as did Scotland and Troy because they both have the letter T. Hittites were Turks as well — see the T? I laughed. The men forcefully scolded me, told me I was rude and insulting for laughing and that I need to read different history books. There’s a lot of revisionist history in Turkey, but this was probably the most absurd and direct I’ve experienced.
We tried to stay away from those two so I don’t know what they have to say about the Roman hamam.
Mostly what we see at Perge are colonnaded streets.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mosaic grasshopper before.
This fountain was only discovered/uncovered in 2014 — after my first visit to Perge!
Philip and I walked to Aksu where we met Ferda, Seda, Bektaş, and the kids for a piyaz-köfte dinner — my birthday celebration. The next morning after dropping the kids at school the five of us drove up to Termessos for another day of Hellenistic rocks. We didn’t arrive at the theater till after 11am, but we were the first ones there that day.
As usual that place is incredible. It’s certainly the highlight of the site.
We had time to walk through one of the upper necropoli to reach the view at the fire lookout.
Looks like some nice snow-covered mountains over there, doesn’t it? That’s what we said as well. For that excursion two days later we phoned Şerife and (German) Philipp and made our way to Gökkaya Tepesi above İmecik Yaylası.
Philip assured us it was only a half day trip so it was almost 11am by the time we started walking. However, all the snow meant that we parked the car lower and farther south than Philip had expected. It ended up being almost eight hours of walking.
We walked on the road for a bit and then started heading up the mountain.
We walked along the ridge for over 2km to connect the two summits that are almost the same elevation — 2459m and 2454m according to openstreetmap.
Philip has climbed this peak a number of times. One of the reasons he likes it because of the view across to the more interesting peaks (from a mountaineering perspective) to the SE, Tunç and Bakırlı.
From there we started the fairly long trudge back to the car, barely arriving before dark.
Thanks everyone for three fun days near Antalya. It reminds me I need to get out more. The thing is Ferda has us traveling all the time! 😉
