Myra and Santa Claus

From Olympos we drove on, across mountains and then into some of the coast's intensively agricultural zones, citrus and tomatoes mostly, the tomatoes mostly in plastic-covered greenhouses, acres of them, miles of them in the valleys, reminiscent of southern Spain, whole towns covered in plastic wrap. We stopped at Demre, to see the Lycian/Roman ruins at nearby Myra and also the shrine, etc., of St. Nicholas, who was bishop of Myra way back in the 4th century.

At Myra the thing to see is the Lycian house tombs, many

carved into the cliffs

Also the theatrical stuff

To wit...

But mostly the tombs

The St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen,
children, bakers, butchers, candle-stick makers,
et al.

Despite the fact there are no Greeks nor

Christians around (it's a long, unpleasant

story), Demre nonetheless has a

flourishing St. Nick trade--half a dozen

stores like this

Interior of St. Nick store; looks pretty Christmassy, right?

Trouble is, all they sell are these icon things...

which hardly make good tree ornaments;

nary a "ho, ho, ho!" in these precincts, nor

Rudolph, nor elves; so what you have here,
in my interpretation, is a Muslim take on a
Greek Orthodox saint, whose bones were
stolen from Myra by Roman Christians and
taken to Bari, Italy....and the rest is history...
well, actually, little of it is history, except the
theft part, but it's one of Christianity's most
beloved stories, except the theft part, and
we mustn't be too fussy about things like 
history, reality, etc.

Demre, plastic-wrapped city