Turkey Day Seven

After visitng the calcium terraces yesterday we head east along an ancient Silk Road to see the amazing landscape of Cappadocia. Along the way we stop and see Konya where the Mevlana Whirling Dervish museum is.

Mevlana Museum



Inside the museum

Sultanhani Caravanserai

Inside Sultanhani Caravanserai ( Paul on top)

An interesting water tap next to Sultanhani Caravanserai

Turkey Day Six

Today was definitely the best day of the tour, it was great to see the calcium terraces it was a beautiful day and we were very hot so we were a bit gutted we didnt have our swimming gear for the little pools up the top.

Paul and I standing in front of the calcium terraces. The lake was crystal clear

The little pools on the calcium terraces, as you can see people were in their board shorts and bikinis, unfortunately we didnt realise you could swim/dip in the little ponds!!

Paul looking cool

Running commentary from moi



A scenic view of the terraces



The theatre in the ruined city of Hierapolis. The Hierapolis is an ancient resort town built above the calcium terraces

Turkey Day five


Today we headed to the Temple of Artemis and had a guided tour of the ancient city and stadium of Ephesus. It was really cool to see the ancient city, especially the library and the stadium really amazing.

View of Ephesus



Old toilets at Ephesus - The guy sitting on the toilet was from our tour he was very entertaining :)

The crew with the ruins of ephesus library in the background

A closer view of part of the ruins of the library

I was playing with this cat, then one of the guys from my tour came over and started playing with it only for the cat to scratch and bite him.. he must of liked me

Believed to be the first advertisement

The Great theatre at Ephesus - It  use to seat around 25,000 people

After visiting the ancient city we headed to a carpet weaving show where we were shown how the carpets are made and shown the different carpets and why they have particular patterns woven in them - for example certain symbols will be symbolic to certain areas of Turkey. We did end up buying a carpet, they are very good sellers! It increases in value the more you walk on it, cant say that about many things!! haha.

Carpet weaving

Silk worms - The brush that you can see is lightly brushed over the silk worms to extract the silk and the silk is then placed on the wheel to spin the silk from the worm. Then at the end it is just the worm left. It was very weird to touch! From each silk worm was 1 mile of silk

Turkish delight shop - we got to taste a variety of sweets

Turkey Day four

After the long day at Anzac Cove we took a short ferry ride across the Dardanelles to stay a night at Canakkale. We saw the hotel bed and crashed! I set my alarm to wake us up in time for dinner but unfortnately we totally missed it!! Not to fear, we were waken up in time to have dinner and then back to bed :) In the morning we head off to make our way to Troy..

The Trojan Horse

Paul inside waiting to get inside the gates!!



This picture is showing the different boundaries of the city as time went on



Main road into the ancient city

Hopping on the bus again we made our way to Pergamum where we enjoyed a gondola ride up to the acropolis.

The lovely view from our gondola ride

Ruins of the Temple of Trajan

Theatre of Pergamum - It had a capacity to seat 10,000 people and is known to be one of the steepest theatres of the world.

Ashlea in the walk way down to the theatre.

Turkey - Day two/three

With an early start we headed from Istanbul to the Gallipoli peninsula for a BBQ lunch at Kabatepe with all the other ANZAC day tours.

Paul at Kabatepe after lunch with a lovely view in the background

Massive statute at Kabatepe

A short bus ride later we were at Anzac cove where we waited a loooonnnggg time to be let into the Anzac service. As the security plans had changed this year there was a longer wait than had been expected so after a good four hours in the hot beaming sun, we finally managed to get in and secure our place in the front row of the stands.

The trek to the memorial service - The Donkey.. I mean Paul :)

The hundreds of people waiting to get in - we had to go through a security check first (Paul managed to get his photo taken with the army guy who was searching him, must have been for a magazine or something...)

Anzac Cove - Memorial service (we made it!)

Ashlea all rugged up - getting ready for the looonnggg night ahead. Unfortunately we couldnt sleep very much as we were in the stands so it was a very long night as we tried to manoeuvre around to try and rest our heads on each other.. very uncomfortable! 

The terrain that the Anzac soldiers had to deal with

The morning after the memorial service

After the memorial service finished, we dropped off our sleeping bags etc so we could trek up the mountain in order to see the Australian memorial service and the New Zealand memorial service.

Speaks for itself... I hope

The beautiful Turkish memorial site

A statute on the way to the New Zealand memorial site (Chunuk Bair)

Turkey Day one

After landing late at night the night before, our next day started early and was packed full of the delights of Istanbul. The first stop we made was to the famous Blue Mosque. The Blue Mosque is the only mosque built with six minarets. It is known as the Blue Mosque because of the glazed tiles decorating its interior.

Blue Mosque



Topkapi Palace

Mehmet II constructed Topkapi Palace atop the Byzantine acropolis 1500AD. The palace was the residency of the Sultan, his harem and all his wives. Through the gates led to a nice park where you went to go to the museum. There were quite a few dogs and cats around the park, there were some puppies playing in the park it was very cute!!!



Inside the museum - the minbar

Inside Aya Sofya museum

Picture from inside the Aya Sofya.

Next stop was the underground cistern, it was very eery down there!!

Underground cistern

Underground cistern

Underground cistern

The weeping column - this is the only column in the cistern that has water running down it



Looking into one of the entrances to the Grand bazaar. Inside the bazaar are hundreds of shops selling carpets, ceramics, jewellery and a lot more!

This concluded our day and we were tired from absorbing all the information and navigating our way around the extremely busy streets of Istanbul.

Lion king

We were told this is another must see theatre show and it is a movie we remember watching as little ones. The costumes and props were fantastic and it is definitely a must see.

Outside the theatre