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We stocked up on Turkish Delight in Selcuk, then boarded a bus to Pamukkale.
Pamukkale. An otherwise unremarkable hillside village, Pamukkale has been drawing visitors for centuries because of what is at the top of the hill. Since ancient times, calcium-rich thermal waters have been gushing from springs, and as the water spread over the surface and cooled, the dissolved calcium precipitated out to form bright white deposits metres thick in places. From ancient Roman times people have reckoned that the warm, mineral rich waters have therapeutic properties. Even an ageing Cleopatra attested to their efficacy after using calcium gel from the ponds to remove wrinkles from her face. Or so the story goes. But certainly during Roman times this was a popular place with the ancient city of Hierapolis built at the top of the hill. Like Ephesus, Hierapolis has a magnificent theatre dating from the 1st century AD, designed to seat over 20,000 spectators. It also had more than 15 public baths for residents and visitors of centuries past to soak in the warm curative waters. One of them, Ancient Pool, is still open for business.
In welcome bright sunshine we wandered through the ruins of Hierapolis and adjacent necropolis containing hundreds of impressive graves. We stopped by Ancient Pool for a picnic lunch of bread, cheese, olives and hot peppers that we shared with a young woman, MJ, from Korea who was travelling through Turkey alone and happened to be staying at our hotel. We then took our shoes off and slowly made our way down the steep hill, across the calcium deposits and through the natural terraced ponds. It was a journey through blinding white and pastel blue, a little other-wordly and quite beautiful.
Pamukkale is a small village; nearby Denizli is a large city with half a million people, and also unlike Pamukkale, not a tourist town. We made a couple of visits by minibus to Denizli to walk through the streets and markets, and experience a Turkish environment unaffected by tourism. We had dinner there twice; the first night we had excellent pide (Turkish pizza), and the second, earlier tonight, at a cafe where the choice was between charcoal roasted chicken and goat’s head. We decided to go for the chicken. For dessert we had Turkish cookies and Turkish dates, all too good for our own good.
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