We finished our time in Turkey with a great final two days. First we went to Pamukkale which was located about 3 hours from where we were staying in Selcuk. We took a minibus back and forth which worked out great. Pamukkale's claim to fame is a large range of hills that are covered with limestone. It is quite the sight, it looks far away like snow, but when you get closer it's rock which is relatively smooth with small grooves throughout. (Check out the pic!)
You start at the bottom of the hill and work your way up, they ask you to remove your shoes to protect the rock which makes walking interesting at times as the ground is very rocky and was sore on our pampered feet :) There are man made pools along the way which have clear water and you can swim, well more like sit, in these. From the top the view is pretty amazing, you can see over the city but it also gives you a view of the limestone and the natural pools that have been preserved. The water is clear and we had a beautiful sunny day so the water in the pools was light blue. Against the white limestone it was a pretty amazing site. We enjoyed the day swimming and exploring this unique place. It was very warm out, perfect weather...Steve got a bit too much sun. He should have borrowed Jess' SPF 70 sunblock!
The next morning we went to Ephesus which is very close to Selcuk. Ephesus is an ancient city and there are many ruins to explore. It's amazing to think this was once a city filled with people, everything was very old and some of the sites were very impressive.
Yesterday afternoon we left Selcuk to head to Kusdasi, a Turkish port, to sail to Samos, Greece. What we thought was going to be a straightforward trip turned into quite the adventure. Our hostel advised us on what time to leave to take the bus to the port, as it turned out we should have left much earlier! We got off the bus and begin what was to be a 'short' walk to the port. We still had to pick up our ferry tickets from the travel agency we'd booked with and were definitely short on time. We finally found the agency with very little time to spare and it turns out we were at the wrong office. The woman at the reception area was trying to help but there was definitely a language barrier. We ended up having to run to the other office, then run down to the port where we were ushered quickly by security who said the ship was waiting. Since we were leaving the country we had to clear customs, so they had us running to customs and then we had to put all our stuff through security (like at the airport). Then it was a final sprint to the ship. They hadn't been joking when they said they were holding the ship for us, it started to sail literally the second we stepped on board. Whew, close call!!! We were so happy to put down our packs, it was way too much running with those heavy things on.
We were on the ferry for about an hour and a half to Samos which is a beautiful island with big rolling hills and a great walkway along the water with cafes and restaurants. We head out tomorrow to Mykonos for about 4 days and are excited to explore a new island and rent atv's or something like that.
Thanks for reading, we hope all is well with everyone at home!
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