24/8/19 Pamukkale

After Aphrodisius, we drove about 1.5 hours to Pamukkale.  Passed throught the huge city of Denizli - population about 600,000.

Pamukkale is famous for its white travertine terraces.  Heiropoulos was the ancient city next to the terraces.

Heiropoulos

A popular place for paragliding

We're staying in another really nice hotel for about $65 including breakfast.

After the terraces and Heiropoulos we headed to Denilizi and up the mountain in a cable car - cost was about $2.  Way cooler at the top, with lots of families picnicking and enjoying the cool air. 

The donkey didn't like Dermot trying to pat him and decided to try and bite his leg!

23/8/19 Aphrodisius - spectacular!

Aphrodisius was fantastic.  Another ancient site dating back to BC times and abandoned in about the 15 century.

Really good museum, no crowds, and amazing ruins.  Here's a few of the photos.

Dermot on stage

The emperor

In the museum at Aphrodisius

Agrippina crowns her son Nero, who a few years later had her murdered

Nike I think??

21/8/19 Ephesus and carpet workshop

The ancient city of Ephesus - so huge, amazing, crowded, overwhelming.

On the walk back to town I stumbled across a carpet workshop just as a tour group arrived, so got to hear the explanation of how the carpets are made.  Some absolutely beautiful pieces of work.

Spinning the silk

Carpet weaving

The big sell.  The one I looked at was only $1300 AUD

Istanbul

The same piece with a light behind

The most expensive piece on display

20/8/19 Cesme and day 1 Selcuk

Great hotel for day 1 in Turkey and a really nice meal along the Cesme Esplanade.  Cesme is a busy holiday town - lots of resorts and beaches and tourists, but it had a nice feel about it.

Next day began our but tripping.  Otogar (big bus) to Izmir - very large coastal port of Turkey - nearly 3 million people!  Then onto a dolmus (minibus) where the only room for Dermot was sitting on a box.  Only a 1 hour ride to Selcuk though.

Chilled out in our hotel in the afternoon - Nazar Hotel.  Beautiful place run by a couple who are so helpful - Selmar and Ilker.  Both are registered tour guides and Ilker is an English teacher so has perfect English.

Caught up with a few of the locals drinking beer in the evening and were treated to an impromptu performance on a baglama.

19/08/19 Scootering on Chios

Chios is a Greek island off the coast of Greece, a 9 hour ferry ride from Athens.  It's very hilly in the centre, very dry and rocky with occasional valleys of vegetation, and small villages dotted around.  Chios is famous for Masticha - a gum from the Mastiha tree.  It's used for flavouring and making Elma chewing gum and Masticha raki.

Heading out of Piraeus - the main Athens ferry port

One of the 2 islands we stopped at on the way to Chios

We hired a 150cc scooter for the 2 days.
Day 1 was spent around the northern section of the island.

Looking down on the port of Chios

We'd met a guy in Thessaloniki who told us about Vollisos, the village on Chios that he was from and where his Aunt ran a tavern.  When we arrived and showed them a photo of their cousin they treated us extra special with Mum's homemade cheese, her orange flavoured spirit, coffee, plus gave us the best tips on what to order.  Goat, tzatziki, eggplant, salad, chips.  All super yummy and locally grown.

The beach was nearby, so headed there for a swim in the Aegean Sea.  Very nice.  Then the road back to Chios along the coast was super windy and fantastic scenery.

Day 2 was down to the Masticha growing area in the south of the island.  Visited the Masticha museum to learn the process.  The trees are a couple of metres tall, and around this time of year they make little cuts in the trunk and branches and the gum seeps out.  They then harvest it by hand and have a tedious process of cleaning the gum by hand picking all the dirt out of it.

The Masticha village of Pyrga

Pyrga again

Volcanic black rock beach - no time for a swim though

Then onto the ferry for the 30 minute trip across to Cesme in Turkey.

Coming in to Cesme

11/8/19 End of our riding days

We're calling it quits on the riding.  Dermot's had a cold for about a week, and the heat's getting to us.  So we're catching a train to Athens on Wednesday and will get our bikes packed and stored. 

We're then hoping to hire a car for a few days before flying to Georgia and then making our way south through Turkey by whatever means we can find and eventually ending up back in Athens to fly home.  We don't have a date yet, but I'm guessing the end of September.

One of the joys of travelling is the other cyclists you meet.  Today we caught up with a Swiss couple who we met in Austria back in June.

We couldn't find a cafe so here was the next best thing.   We've been following their travels and have been a couple of days behind them for a while.  They stayed just out of Thessaloniki to do some WOOFing (Working on Organic Farms) so we leapfrogged them yesterday on the train.  They're on their way to Iran.  They'd like to get to Thailand, but there aren't any easy ways to get through Pakistan/India.

Once we're on the road again I'll put up some more updates.

10/8/19 Kastoria to Lake Vegoritida

71km  Total 3,172km

We had a well deserved day's rest in Kastoria staying at a delightful family run hotel.

Christos and me

Kastoria is an interesting city that's had civilizations dating back 1,000s of years.  It was part of the Ottoman empire until the early 1900s.  In the past it had a large fur trade, with lots of Russians coming to buy them.  There seemed to be lots of empty shops now though.  There are over 80 churches in the area!  We visited just a couple of them -

Also checked out the Byzantium history museum.  Amazing old drawings of religeous art history of Kastoria.

Back on the road it's hot again.  Mid thirties.  We had a big climb - nice view at the top except for the pollution.

Love the Greek signs - I'm trying to learn cyrillic

Greek hospitallity is wonderful.  We stopped by a delightful tavern for lunch and ended up with a huge spread.

At our next stop for coffee we had a delightful person Rebecca look after us.  The Greeks drink a revolting cold nescafe called a frappe.  She assured us that what she was offering was a cold espresso - freddo, and it was really nice.

She then fed us a nice dessert of grapes in sugar and then finally found us a hotel for the night on the lake.  It's a basic hotel (with no airconditioning!!), but the restaurant down the road had a beautiful setting.