How Do They Get all those Big Stones Way up There?

Day 36; Sunday, May 10

I went up to Termessos, another of those impossible cities made from really big cut stones way up the hills. The literature on the place said it was 1,000 meters above sea level, but after walking up there this AM I would have sworn it was 1,000 meters above the parking lot. . . .








They also said, pretty damn casually, truth be told, that you could elect to just kind of stroll on down to the coast, which was probably about 15 Kilometers away. And then, of course, you’d have to come back for your car!

This is a place built between two steep cliffs, and if you wanted to put a cork in a geographic bottle around here, this is where you’d do it.

Some cork.

Some bottle.

Alexander apparently checked this place out and thought turning the locals (Psydians—another group to deal with) into allies might be somewhat easier than walking all the way up (even from the parking lot) to do battle with them.

So it’s a full city up here---

theater,







temples,





city hall,



concert hall, residences, baths,



bakeries, cemetery



. . . . you know the drill.

What Alexander couldn’t do, though, plate tectonics could--- some major earthquakes up here finally ended occupation.










On the way back into town, I passed this little (you can see how little based on the size of the fuel truck down on the road about halfway between me and the waterfall/giant head).




Well, it’s Ataturk, of course, and I have already shared with you the presence he still has--- photographs in almost every shop and store, his image on a flag-like hanging from lots of windows and building walls (in red and white, of course), biographies in grocery stores, statues in the main square/roundabouts of most cities, stamps, the money, the name of the major streets in almost every town/city, little desk calendars and wall calendars and on and on.

What you won’t see is cartoons . . .

What you may not know is that any disparagement of him, his person or his character, his accomplishments (which by extension I’d guess means the whole country) is strictly forbidden.


On the domestic side, in my elegant $15 with breakfast digs— and meals in this courtyard,




And it’s in this oldest part of the city, almost no motor traffic neighborhood full of bougainvillea.



I might add they have retro-fitted all the rooms with en-suite bathrooms.

They are about the size of three phone booths and contain all the normal gadgets— the shower handles are in the wall, as the whole bathroom, of course, is also the shower.

And they have little tile floors and a drain that’s where the water runs out--- very standard. Lucky I’m not down at the river, I suppose, for these prices. But I’d have thought that they’d engineer the floor so it sloped toward the drain, or at least was level, or if it wasn’t level, provide a squeegee on a handle so you could encourage the water toward the drain.

But, no. There is still water on the floor in the low spot from this AM’s shower.

And it’s now just a little before 6.

But I'd rather be here with a wet floor than in Puyallup. . . . .