Antalya Outtakes

Billboard-sized ad on a big rug store; we are still processing

this one...

I was trying to take a picture of the sign when the guard

came out and told me the bugger off...



More stone recycling in city walls...this time using Arabic



Cat on a mission; the bird got away

Small world after all: the Don Quijote Cafe in Antalya,

Turkey, where you can get eine tasse caffee [sic] und apfel

kuchen for just 3 euros

School kids all over Turkey wear uniforms, smart-loooking

uniforms, I think, and this is a display outside a school

uniform store near the bazaar

Unusual pose for Ataturk

Driving out of town, sign on a building advertising

kick-boxing, fitness, and muay thai: "the best muay thai, get

there earlier..."; really thai'd things together for us...

So we drove on, west, around the bay and found a beach

camping site at a place called Beldibi Tatil Koyleri; looking

back toward Antalya

Actually, we liked it so much, and the weather was so good,

we stayed two nights

Antalya

So from the museum parking lot we took the tram into the old town and spent several hours walking around and seeing a few of the sights. If you visit Turkey, don't miss Antalya and environs...very great scenery, heritage, ambience....

Clock tower



 

One of the things I wanted to see in Antalya

was the fluted minaret--remembering the

huge one in old Delhi--alas, it's under wraps

A peek inside the Mosque of the Fluted Minaret (c. 13th

century)

And a peek inside the wrap, a flute, some of

blue tile; actually it's a good bit younger and
a good bit smaller that the 200 foot high
fluted minaret at Qutub Minar (see the
November 16, 2008 post)

Hadrian's Gate

Old town street scene



Ruins of the Truncated Mosque



Why it's called truncated; it was originally a

2nd century temple (and probably an earlier

temple stood on the site; that's the way of

sacred sites), then a church, then a mosque,

then a church, then a mosque, then, best of

all, it burned down and became a truncated

tourist attraction

Antalya had the best collection of beautiful Mediterranean

restaurants I have seen; dozens of them; this one merely

typical

View across the bay, from the large park at the end of the

peninsula enclosing the old harbor

Ditto; the haze added to the interest of the mountains, we

thought

Looking back to the old town; the big flag is at the museum

More Antalya Archaeological Museum

In one of the halls of statues

The emperor Hadrian was very big here

As were the Three Graces (Grace Kelly, Gracie Allen,  Grace 
de Coup)

Part of the Hall of Busts

One of several Roman green men

One of the highlights is a large room displaying the marble friezes that once 
adorned the theatre at Perge

And another was the collection of local Lycian sarcophogi, perhaps a dozen of the 
big ones

For example...great condition

Detail

Rebecca, Rachel: your mother and I have been rethinking our plans for cremation 
and have decided we would like something like this instead; maybe scenes from 
our travels in the friezes (not the Trojan War, please)

Antalya Archaeological Museum

From Aspendos we drove straight in to Antalya, a sprawling city of a million, and found our way to our main goal, its archaeological museum. The museum was one of the best we have seen, for a variety of reasons, and so I will give it two posts.

The Lycian sarcophogus is their trademark, but there is much more

It has a beautiful setting just west of the sehir merkezi and a beautiful campus

Bronze age burial practice around here (for some): in a big amphora jar



I always tell her to stand next to something "for scale," then 
try to think of some outrageous caption...



Perfume or oil jar, 5th century BCE

Baby bottle, for feeding (seriously)

Roman legionnaire's canteen



One of the things we really liked was an entire section--a big room--devoted to 
the various major digs and the archaeologists behind them

Another was the overall educational emphasis of the place; I think I learned more 
at this museum--not merely about the collection, but about back-story practices and

technologies (where marble comes from, how it is mined, how it is moved, various 
types of sculpture, tools used by ancient sculptors, and so on)--than in any other I 
have seen; period; here's an entire large room devoted to pottery and especially the 
potter's wheel; and not dumbed-down to 9 year-olds, either

One of the great paleolithic finds in the world is Karain Cave, not far from 
Antalya--continuously inhabited for 25,000 years, first by neandethals, then 
homo sapiens, everything from low paleolithic to age of metals; the good 
stuff is in the museum here

Ditto



Cute little solid gold cupid earring; its mate

is still out there in the ground somewhere...

4th century BCE relief

Perge

We drove on from Aspendos to Perge, intending to do just a drive-by of that site, and heading on up into the mountains again to see Termessos, yet another ancient city site. But photographs of Termessos in a book at the shop at Perge, the distance out of the way, and the rough ground surrounding the ruins at Termessos, all convinced us to stay at Perge, do its stadium and associated sites outside the ticketed area, and to enjoy another day of not doing much. After all, the museum in Antalya is closed on Mondays.

The colonnades at Perge



Perge's pretty much intact stadium, from the closed end of

the horseshoe

Decorative piece on the ground...one of hundreds



South of the stadium, the best-ordered spare parts park I

have yet seen



View from the open end



Here, again, the seats were built atop enormous vaults; the

vaults on the right remain, although their seats have been

toppled, presumably by earthquake



Detail of vault and toppled seats

Interior of the same vault; well, I find this

stuff pretty interesting...

Across the road, and closed to the public (for

"conservation"), the amphitheatre

Later in the afternoon, I did something I have not done

since childhood, namely, crack open a cocoanut, drain (and

retain) the milk, and remove the meat; all this for a chicken

yellow curry Vicki was fixing; try explaining "shredded

cocoanut" to the guy in the Turkish produce department

sometime...

Anyhow, we were all set to spend the night by the stadium

at Perge, when, right in the middle of fixing the curry, the

night watchman approached and told us "problem" and we

must leave; which we did, heading back in the darkness to

Aspendos; oh well...