It's just so pretty...
Sep. 2nd, 2007 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineHalf-day travel to Pamukkale, to one of the nicer hotels we've been in- big complex with this spring fed swimming pool, all un-chlorinated and mineral-y, with this big courtyard with nice decks and those cushioned tree-house things I've been seeing around, which are startlingly comfy. Also, really nice bathrooms, actual shower curtains, little sample bottles of shampoo, and a computer with free internet! *does the awesome hotel dance*
We waited around, didn't actually head up to the site until about five, for the heat. I'm sad that I missed the museum that way, but it's a fantastically long hot walk through the travertine pools, a long way UP from the town.
There are old baths made into a museum, the absolutely beautiful restored temple mineral pool (which you can swim in for a jaw-dropping fee, considering it's the same damn mineral water in every gutter in town). Ruined building complexes, the old Plutonium, where the springwater and all the lethal gasses come out. Remains of city walls and several gates and arches, nice amphitheater, the martyrion of St Philip. Old amphitheaters make me so sentimental, in a really embarrassing way- I have, somehow, built them up in my head in a symbolic way, until they just seem to contain all the LIFE of the entire city, for centuries, and you sit there and just drink it up until all the ghosts around you and on the stage seem real enough that walking back out into ruins is an utter shock. I am a romantic, and classical cities are so alive and vibrant to me that it is rather embarrassing.
The travertine pools themselves are quite something, far huger in scope than I was remotely prepared for. Absolutely beautiful, calcified lace and wedding cakes. We saw at least four brides having their pictures taken there- it's obviously quite the trendy spot. Also lots of stunningly immodest tourist dress- those with digital cameras were playing a "most inappropriate tourist" scavenger hunt, which Damien won with matching his-and-hers flesh-colored thongs. I am not making that up.
Watched sunset at the top and walked back down through the pools in the cool. It's just about the most ludicrously romantic thing on the planet.
We waited around, didn't actually head up to the site until about five, for the heat. I'm sad that I missed the museum that way, but it's a fantastically long hot walk through the travertine pools, a long way UP from the town.
There are old baths made into a museum, the absolutely beautiful restored temple mineral pool (which you can swim in for a jaw-dropping fee, considering it's the same damn mineral water in every gutter in town). Ruined building complexes, the old Plutonium, where the springwater and all the lethal gasses come out. Remains of city walls and several gates and arches, nice amphitheater, the martyrion of St Philip. Old amphitheaters make me so sentimental, in a really embarrassing way- I have, somehow, built them up in my head in a symbolic way, until they just seem to contain all the LIFE of the entire city, for centuries, and you sit there and just drink it up until all the ghosts around you and on the stage seem real enough that walking back out into ruins is an utter shock. I am a romantic, and classical cities are so alive and vibrant to me that it is rather embarrassing.
The travertine pools themselves are quite something, far huger in scope than I was remotely prepared for. Absolutely beautiful, calcified lace and wedding cakes. We saw at least four brides having their pictures taken there- it's obviously quite the trendy spot. Also lots of stunningly immodest tourist dress- those with digital cameras were playing a "most inappropriate tourist" scavenger hunt, which Damien won with matching his-and-hers flesh-colored thongs. I am not making that up.
Watched sunset at the top and walked back down through the pools in the cool. It's just about the most ludicrously romantic thing on the planet.