Tuesday Kas (transliterated Kash)

After a pleasant breakfast in our Antalys hotel's small garden we took a taxi to the bus station. Our driver being the Turkish version of Michael Schumacher, we made it in time to walk through the doors of the otogar and say "Kas" (in Turkish the "s" has a hook under it making it an "sh" sound - transliterated it would be said Kash)  and were ushered right out the door to the bus and moments later were on the way!  Good timing!

The road from Antalya to Kash is either right on the edge of the mountains by the coastline or in the mountains themselves.  The bus ride is about 4 hours with a few stops to pick up additional passangers.  We like to think of the driver as "fishing" until the net is overflowing...which means standing room only.  It is a beautiful drive and nearly impossible to get photos out the windows, but such is life.  The color of the sea water is the most absolutely amazing blue, neither of us has ever seen anything quite like it before.  And there are little beaches everywhere some only 20' long where there might just be one family.

We particularly like the bottom line of the sign....hum...what did they mean?

Private beach!

Another private beach but hard to get to.

We are staying in the Ani Pension here in Kash, where Ersin Cote (a Turkish author) works as a desk clerk as he cannot make enough from his books to be self-supporting.  He has written at least five books so far and showed them to us.  When we checked in we were given a coffee on the terrace of the pension and enjoyed views of the city.

Maybe they thought we were on our honeymoon!

We headed out for lunch and had pide (like pizza only without the red sauce.  Shown below is spinach and cheese pide.  It was very yummy!

Spinach Pide

After lunch we headed to the harbor to look at the boats.  This is really a nice little harbor and it's easy to see why folks would like to come into it as it is very protected.

After the harbor we sought out the ruins and saw the theater which dates from the 1st century BC and could seat 4000.  It has had some reconstruction done, but none-the-less impressive.  We were surprised at the acoustics as you could really hear quite well so it's easy to understand how in the ancient times theaters didn't need sound systems.

From the 1st Century BC, supposed to seat 4000, there are 26 rows.

View of the city and harbor from the theater

View of the city from the other side of town, near the Doric Tomb

Doric Tomb.  Because this is on a steep hill with very little space in front of it I just couldn't get back far enough to show the whole thing using the little camera!

We walked back to the pension and now are relaxing with the AC.  Today's temperature must have been in the mid 90's and it just drains you to be out walking about.  We are headed to Fethiye tomorrow on the 10 am bus.

This whole experience of not having the rental car has been a mixed blessing.  There are some roads we probably wouldn't have enjoyed driving (I am speaking for myself).  But we've been tied to the bus schedule and we don't have much flexibility so we've missed out on things we could have gotten to if we'd had the rental car.  Next time, and I'm sure we'll come back here, we'll base ourselves out of one or two towns or cities and do excursions by car or motorbike and not miss out on some of the things off the main road!  This isn't saying that we have not enjoyed this because we certainly have.