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Club Atrium Marmaris
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Club Atrium Pool
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Boat Sailing Up The Dalyan Delta
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Dalyan Delta
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Dave and Arthur
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Dave Swimming in Sulphur Water
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Dave Trying His Hand At Weaving
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Hierapolis
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Julie And Patsy 4 am In The Morning
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View Of Marmaris From A Hilltop
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Dave and Julie AT The Mud Baths Great Fun
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Thistle On A Mountainside
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We had a brilliant holiday in Marmaris, on our first visit to Turkey, again we packed a lot in with 4 trips, Pamukkale 6-30 am departure from the hotel, Dalyan mud baths, jeep safari and a village tour. We did want to go to Ephesus, but decided that 2, 6-30am starts were a bit much, it's a good excuse to go back to Turkey though.
We stayed at the Hotel Club Atrium in Marmaris, it has 54 rooms and is run by 3 really friendly Scottish ladies, its very clean with a good size room, the maids came in cleaning everyday and made the towels and sheets all fancy with love hearts, fans and other patterns, all the staff where very helpful, it also has a good size pool and poolside snack bar, it has its own private Turkish baths and massage rooms, and lots of evening entertainment.
Across from the hotel entrance are the Havana Restaurant and the Cuba bar. Luckily our room was on the opposite side of the hotel, the quite side, as I believe that the bar side of the hotel is noisy and quite lively at night with loud music. There are plenty of local shops, bars and restaurants. The Club Atrium is about a ten minute easy stroll down to the marina, sea front, hustle bustle of the shops, bazaar, enclosed market, bars and restaurants, or catch a dolmus (mini bus) for around 30p where ever your going.
We arrived at 6am Tuesday morning so we had a few hours sleep. The first morning Tuesday we had a very nice English breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee, at the side of the hotel pool, before going off to explore, get some provisions and book a trip for Wednesday.
We got a lots of tour brochures and listened to the patter from all the different tour operators, so we could compare prices at our leisure, don't rush in and don't forget to haggle. The first tour we booked was for the Pamukkale tour including breakfast, lunch and entry fees, the price started off at ?18 each, but we haggled and paid ?12 each, he dropped ?6 each, that's almost another tour paid for. All the other tours we managed to get for ?10 each all included lunch.
Pamukkale (Cottoncastle) And Hierapolis Tour
We were picked up from our hotel at 6.45am and travelled for a while with a short stop off, then back on the coach for 2hrs-30 mins to Mugla, were we stopped for breakfast, eggs, ham, cheese, toast and jam, tea or coffee. Then returned to the coach.
After another short stop, we travelled on to the co-operative carpet school Dogun Hali in Travas, were I had a go at carpet weaving, so somewhere there is a carpet floating around ("magic flying carpet")( floating Ha-Ha-Ha) which I have made a very small contributed too (3 double knots), we also listened too and watched a demonstration of the amazing yet simple separation of very fine silk thread from the natural cocoons and the fascinating process of using natural dye colourings made from walnut shells, oak apples, rabbit bush and cobalt blue. We then had apple tea and a chance to look, feel, walk on and to purchase some of the many fine and stunning carpets made of wool and silk. We also had lunch there, soup, meatballs, rice, pasta, salad, bread, apples and pears.
After another long drive, we drove through Denzili, we finally arrived 2-30pm at Pamukkale. Firstly driving through the ancient city of Hierapolis up the hill to the coach park above the ridge.
Pamukkale, Cottoncastle, is a totally unique sight in the world. With it's wonderful phenomenon of its mineral clad hillside and clear warm mineral spring waters, and is on a "Must See List" of your visit to Turkey.
The famous white travertines (pools) on the hillside are the result of thousands of years of calcium deposits left behind by the water flowing from a mineral spring at the top of the ridge. The warm mineral rich waters, which contain a mixture of CO2 and Calcium (Ca). As the warm thermal mineral spring emerges deep from underground, Ca is separated from the CO2 gas it produces the white layers that cover the hillside. The water also has healing properties as it contains dissolved aluminium, lime, sulphur and many other elements that are said to be beneficial for rheumatism, skin diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure, eye conditions and nervous disorders.
Firstly we had a stroll along the hilltop to a viewing point, then we walked down to the entrance to the hillside and travertines, we slipped off our shoes and walked barefoot down the snowy white hillside to the lower travertines through the warm clear running water, we were a little disappointed as we thought by looking at all the photos of Pamukkale and their magnificent, scalloped-shaped pools, filled with turquoise blue waters. We'd looked forward to seeing them for ourselves and that we would be able to sit in the pools, but not so, they are not open for public use, due to the wear and tear of people walking on them, none of the upper travertines are filled with water, having said that its still an impressive sight. We went onto the far hillside, as there was no one else there, to escape the hundreds of tourists.
Hierapolis
Behind the large extremely busy coach park (more than 30 coaches in all and hundreds of tourists) lie the sacred pool of Cleopatra and the ruins of the Roman spa town of Hierapolis. Cleopatra is said to have bathed there, the pool itself, it contains the remains of fallen Roman columns of the spa town .The water temperature averages around 35?C, it costs 15000000 TL (?7), (not included in excursion price) to swim in the warm mineral rich pool which was quite over crowded with people swimming and sun bathing.
Hierapolis, meaning "holy city," was an ancient centre for pagan cults until it was transformed into a Christian centre in the 1st century AD. Hierapolis, is an extensive open-air museum, which boasts the largest ancient graveyard, which contains over 1200 sarcophagi. Other historic monumental ruins include here are, the tomb of St. Philip, (St. Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who was killed there) also the Great Theatre on the hillside, the Roman Baths, Gymnasium and the Temple of Apollo.
The Pergamun King built the ancient city of Hierapolis in the II century BC. Later it came under Roman rule and gained much importance because of its warm mineral spa waters, the Romans would spend much time here socializing and relaxing in the warm soothing, healing mineral waters.
Later in 394 it came under control of the Byzantine Empire and became an important centre of Bishopric. In spite of this, when the Turks came to the area, they wanted to conquer Hierapolis city and because of continuous wars between the Turks and the Byzantine, the city gradually weakened until in the 13th Century a huge earthquake brought an end to its long history.
Dalyan and the mud baths Tour
This tour was great fun, we were picked up at 9.00am from the hotel, then on to Marmaris harbour to catch the boat at 9.45. We stopped off about 1? hours later for a swim in the beautiful clear water for about 20 minutes, we then sailed for another short time as we had lunch provided in the cost of the trip which was ?10. We sailed on to turtle beach, breeding grounds of the loggerhead turtles. The long beach is surrounded by fresh water on one side and salt water on the other. We stayed on the beach for around 1? hours, the sand was absolutely scorching and burns your feet, we swam in the sea water side of the beach and sun bathed for a while, then we boarded a small river boat and sailed up the Dalyan delta, it was like a scene from the film African Queen, with the reed beds flanking us on each side, I saw a really colourful Kingfisher (bird) sitting on a tree branch, I didn't have time to take a photo of it as we passed it fairly quickly. Slowly we sailed further up the river until the magnificent Kings rock tombs carved in the hillsides came in sight, we didn't stop for photos at this point we had the chance to take photos on the way back. We sailed on up the river for another few minutes until we came to the Caunos and the mud baths (the entrance fee is included in the cost of the trip). Firstly we went to the mud bath pool and covered our selves in mud, slapping it allover each other, everyone was having great fun. We left it dry for about 15mins I asked a man to take our photo, we looked like two aliens, Ha-Ha. Then when the mud was dry we went to the shower area and cleaned all the mud off each other, after that we went for a swim in the sulphur pool, very smelly, but very warm around 35?C, we had a beer at the bar and went back to the landing stage for the return trip back up the delta, were we took some photos of the Kings tombs, slowly we meandered back up the delta to turtle beach and boarded the large boat. We arrived back at Marmaris around 6.30pm, the transfer back to the hotel is not included, so we walked back about ?'s of a mile to the hotel.
Jeep Safari Tour
We booked our tour on the Survivor Jeeps (the yellow jeeps not all jeep safaris have water pistol fun) we read about it on a website somewhere, so we knew that we would be getting soaking wet as everyone has water pistols, I took a plastic bag to keep my camera safe.
This was a brilliant fun filled day out; it took us back to our childhood shooting everyone with our water pistols. Julie, I, Arthur and Patsy (a couple whom we met who were staying in the same hotel as us) were all picked up from our hotel at 9.00am in a jeep and taken to a muster point down the road in Marmaris. We bought our super soaker water pistols and filled them with water ready for our tour. There we met 7 more English People who came in the jeep with us, 11 people in all, our driver was called Ozzy and he was a good laugh and a great driver. There were 15 jeeps in the convoy in altogether.
First we went for a very bumpy drive down a dried up riverbed Ozzy purposely went over every boulder and bump that he could, We were soaking all the other people in the convoy and getting drenched ourselves!!! Ha-Ha he kept stopping the jeep half way down the hills and making the jeep jump and judder bouncing us all over the place.
We stopped to a road side tea bar as we drove up to it we saw that there was water streaming out from a tree branch that had a hose pipe hanging from, and all the jeeps were going under it, as we approach it Ozzy laughed as he stopped us right under it we got absolutely soaked and just for good measure he reversed back under the water. Arthur and I went on a mission to find empty bottles to fill with water, Arthur found a bottle that was full of what he thought was lime juice, he began to pour it out and I realized that it was in fact it was the washing detergent for the jeep windscreens, he quickly screwed the top back on, we scurried off like two naughty little boys laughing and giggling, He-He-He.
Off we went again only this time we had lots of water in the bottles we had collected, we went off road again into Hisaronu hills bouncing and bumping around then back onto the riverbed again. We drove through a pine forest and then through a little village were the houses were built in the hillsides Ozzy told us that this is were English, Irish and German people lived. We went through another little village, were we ambushed by some local children they were hiding behind bushes with buckets of water they drenched the jeeps as we all passed, but we got hem back as we returned fire they were all laughing and giggling at us, Ozzy new they would be there and slowed down as we passed.
Later we stopped off at Turgut for lunch at family run ranch and restaurant. I had meatballs, rice, salad and melon, I stay clear of the meatball as both Patsy and myself were both ill with Turkish tummy the next day, Julie had an omlette. Everyone joined in dancing; the lady's got the chance to win a bottle of wine in a competition He-He. Julie had a ride on a horse, its free to ride the horses and donkeys, but there's a box were you can leave a tip for the owners. Again we filled our water pistols and bottles with water, as we left the waiters and staff drenched us with water from a hosepipe.
After another bumpy ride we went to Orhaniye to Kiz Kumi beach here there's a sand bar that goes across the bay we walked across, there's a story about a young woman who to escape the pursuing army filled her skirt with sand and walked across the bay scattering the sand creating the sandbar, she must had a big skirt or been a big woman. Ha-Ha.
We set off to see the 1000 year old wishing tree (plane tree) at Bayir we walked round it three times and made a wish, we also got the chance to taste local pine honey, glad I wasn't the first man to try it, Ha-Ha. Our Last stop was at the Bayir waterfalls the water was very cold but nice for a quick dip, and the chance to refill our pistols and bottles, for a final drenching, then arriving back at the hotel for5.30pm.
Village Tour
Not really a great day out. Basically this tour visits the same places as the jeep safari except the riverbeds, only you get a chance to have a very quick wander around a village, there was a market but we didn't have time to shop there, we met a very nice family of Turkish farmers, were we had a look around their house and tasted their honey. I don't think they actually live in the house as there's a big house just to the side if it I asked who lives in that house and the guide just said another family, mmmmmm!!! also we visited a mosque We ate at the same restaurant at Turgut. We had omlette this time just to be on the safe side.
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