if the end of love is this hard. i would never love again. never again.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

turkey - antalya, istanbul part 3

yoz! finally the last part for my turkey trip - antalya...

25th April

Conference is finally over! Both of us could finally tour Antalya peacefully! It was a super duper expensive day tour that we sign up with the conference organizer. SUPER DUPER! But the tour guide was good. =)

First stop was to an archeological site – Perge (PEHR-geh). Perge is a place with much ancient history from the history of Trojan wars all the way to Goddess Artemis, and Alexander the Great invading the city. At Perge, we saw a lot of ruins that were left since many many years ago. Ruins of a city such as during the Roman Empire…

our tour guide ^-^

entrance to the ruins

Hellenistic-Roman gate-towers.

entrance to the location of the first Roman Bath in the city - southern bath house

Cold bath - Frigidarium (First stop)

Warm bath - Tiepidarum (Second stop) - before proceeding to hot bath, have to wait for their turn

used to be a place where there's a table (i suppose) at the rectangular area. meant to collect money for accessing the bath.

Hot bath area - Caldarium

the type of flooring years ago..

a place whereby statues of warriors were put in the arc area

pillar that has a marble base

a stone wall sign that most likely indicate the following row of shops are selling meat (*the knife and the hook - to hook the meat..?)

corridor of shops on the left and right

entrance to another lane of shop houses

chairs and supposingly "chess set" outside an entrance for the men. also an indication that the following row of shops are clothes or jewelry shops for the ladies. "chess set" is for those men who have to wait for their ladies finish their shopping.. =p

Next stop is Aspendos Theater – a very well preserved Roman theater in Turkey whereby concert was held last time. But in order to preserve it, another theater was built while the Aspendos Theater was used as a tourist attraction. =) Once again, this historical attraction has got to do with a Roman – roman emperor.

exterior view of the theater

a picture that can be seen on the ticket last time. a sad face = sad play will be played

apsendos theater (view: facing the audience from the stage)

climbing up the stairs of the sitting area

at the top of Aspendos theater

a nice tour guide that we briefly met showed / told us history of the theater. kept telling us that we look like korean / japanese.

After visiting the theater, we had lunch which was included in the tour package, a very pathetic lunch – bread with small piece of ham, slice of cake, orange, apple, and tomato. Plus! We had to stand under the hot sun to have it. While we enjoy the view of a river. Well, at least the view was really rather nice =)

=( lunch... =p

view at the top of the bridge

The last stop before our trip ended was a visit to Side (SEE-deh). It is said to be a traditional Turkish Mediterranean village with Roman ruins. Mr tourguide said that it was once give the Greeks to run the village although it belongs to the Turks. It is actually located really near the see. I suppose it is also near to Greece… The main attraction is actually twin Temples of Apollo and Athena whereby both Apollo and Athena were said to be the major deities of the city. We visited the temple of Apollon whereby description said that it was decorated with Medusa heads. I suppose there is a special reason why it was decorated with Medusa’s heads since Medusa was said to be feared by people many many years ago.

temple of Apollo and Athena

*note: Medusa's head..

26th April

Goodbye Turkey.

Woke up super early, 5plus turkey time to take the conference bus to Antalya airport before taking the flight back to Singapore~ Did not sleep at all during the flight. But instead spend most of my time watching movies! Haha… watched extremely lots of movies since it was a 13++ hours back to Singapore. Plus! I managed to “learn” some Korean words on the plane whereby I copied out almost all the Korean vocabulary that was found on the “learn a language program” keke.. ^-^

Overall, my trip to Turkey was good. I had gain a lot during the trip. More dreams, more wishes and I will work hard for them~ Hwaiting!

Movies watched:

summer wars (Jap Anime – recommend to watch)
spider man III
Jeux d’enfants (French; story line not that nice)
A shine of rainbows (very nice and touching. Got me crying non-stop =p)
Nodame Cantabile The Movie I (really good. Got me thinking a little. Not anymore now though)

signing out... 5.45pm