We spent a pretty restless night Friday. Our Kizkalesi hotel was right on the main drag and traffic was very, very noisy. The AC worked fine, we just didn't have any blankets so we alternated between turning it off and on. End result was not much sleep for either of us.
After breakfast of partially inedible food, we took the bus to Silifke with great anticipation that we would see lots and lots of things. Wrong. Turns out that the places we wanted to go to really needed a guide and the Tourist Center was closed for the weekend. Hang that idea out to dry. We did manage to take a look at the stone bridge dating to the 1st centry AD and the Silifke Castle which is perched high up on a hill. Naturally, we walked. The temperature was about 95 and we were about tuckered out by the time we spotted the restaurant right at the top where we finished off a 1.5 L bottle of water in the blink of an eye. The castle was interesting, a fair amount of rennovation and lots and lots of rubble everywhere. It must have been quite a place at one time.
Everything else we wanted so very much to see would have required another bus ride, a taxi, or special arrangements such as getting to the Gosku Delta to see birds and wildlife. So we made the decision that we'd go back to the Otogar and see what the bus schedule was for our next stop...Anamur.
When we arrived at the Otogar they informed us there was a bus scheduled to depart at 1:30 and only two seats left and no seats on the next two buses. Well, didn't we just fly back to the hotel and grab our things. On the way out David said, I'd like some money back which the dumbfounded clerk, but he gave us back all but 20 TL's. We got back to the station and basically they threw our bags into the luggage compartment and we got in our seats and the bus was moving.
After about 90 minutes the bus stopped. There were police in the highway and they were directing traffic off onto a detour. Our driver didn't want to take the bus there at all. In the end he gave in after we had been sitting there for about 30 minutes. The detour took us through villages and on roads that just were not designed for our big bus. We were clipping the lower branches of trees and just barely making it around some of the cut-backs. Eventually we got back on the main road and then we made the scheduled rest stop for which everyone was quite grateful. Plus they washed the bus!
Anamur is banana country! We were seeing greenhouses everywhere. But as we got down closer to town we saw very large ones filled with banana trees! Pretty amazing.
We arrived in Anamur and very close to the Otogar is a smallish hotel, the Dedehan, which we had already decided to stay at. The owner checked us in and we chatted, then he brought us to our room (which has a king-sized bed no less). We decided to eat dinner in the hotel (being the only guests that we can tell) and set a time for "fish." We had a wonderful, wonderful dinner; the fish was perfectly cooked and we have absolutely no complaints. Now in our room with Internet connection speed equal to what we have at home we are happy campers.
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| Stone Bridge |
There was a great view of the city from the castle ruins.
Everything else we wanted so very much to see would have required another bus ride, a taxi, or special arrangements such as getting to the Gosku Delta to see birds and wildlife. So we made the decision that we'd go back to the Otogar and see what the bus schedule was for our next stop...Anamur.
When we arrived at the Otogar they informed us there was a bus scheduled to depart at 1:30 and only two seats left and no seats on the next two buses. Well, didn't we just fly back to the hotel and grab our things. On the way out David said, I'd like some money back which the dumbfounded clerk, but he gave us back all but 20 TL's. We got back to the station and basically they threw our bags into the luggage compartment and we got in our seats and the bus was moving.
After about 90 minutes the bus stopped. There were police in the highway and they were directing traffic off onto a detour. Our driver didn't want to take the bus there at all. In the end he gave in after we had been sitting there for about 30 minutes. The detour took us through villages and on roads that just were not designed for our big bus. We were clipping the lower branches of trees and just barely making it around some of the cut-backs. Eventually we got back on the main road and then we made the scheduled rest stop for which everyone was quite grateful. Plus they washed the bus!
We arrived in Anamur and very close to the Otogar is a smallish hotel, the Dedehan, which we had already decided to stay at. The owner checked us in and we chatted, then he brought us to our room (which has a king-sized bed no less). We decided to eat dinner in the hotel (being the only guests that we can tell) and set a time for "fish." We had a wonderful, wonderful dinner; the fish was perfectly cooked and we have absolutely no complaints. Now in our room with Internet connection speed equal to what we have at home we are happy campers.
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