So Wednesday! Wednesday was quite the day. From Urfa we left bright and early for Kahta. The town itself is rather unimportant and small, but surrounding it are the Roman Bridge and Mount Nemrut.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. We drove for a couple hours before the guide had the driver pull over at none other than the Euphrates River. So we hung out for at least 15 minutes skipping stones, wading (well.. I waded, everyone else thought it was too cold and didn't stay in very long), and taking epic photos.
(Garet is just to the left being a boy and trying to make the biggest splash he can...)
Once the long-suffering tour guide had finally herded us all back onto the bus, we continued our trip. For lunch we stopped in some town whose name came from "seven heros" but that I cannot recall. Juliana, Carly and I set off to find a place with both doner and pide. And ended up in a gender segregated restaurant. Ever been in one of those before? Me neither. And when we ordered, the entire floor (women upstairs, men down) watched us. Yeah, we're foreign. Yeah, we speak Turkish. Stop staring, please?
When we had arrived at our hotel, we checked in and quickly changed into our "proper mountain clothing". The guide figured it would be about 10 degrees colder by the time we were on our way back. I merely changed out of my flip flops and grabbed a sweater and my camera. Off we set towards the Roman Bridge:
Of course we're walking past the signs. We're exchange students. That's what we do! Hehe.
The bridge! With 3 pillars! Looks nice, eh? Quaint li'l bridge just minding its business...
Except that it's freaking HUGE. (Yes, that's what she said, har de har har) We reached it and I couldn't believe the size. It looks so innocent and normal sized from far away.
Then, after we had walked across the bridge, a bus picked us up and we went up, up, up! To Mount Nemrut! We took a stop on a hill with ancient stuff on our way, and did a quick "hike" to these.
Here's me with a really old column thing and a huge valley.
Huge valley. Old column thing. For scale, the lower crack in the thing is where my head was.
Okay! Here we're on the way up Mount Nemrut. At this point the bus is still driving us. But I love being above the treeline. It just looks so cool!
What's that? You're cold?! Here, have my sweater. I'm off to run in the snow, anyway. It'll just get in the way! I'm upholding the Canadian stereotype here in Turkey. The guide was terrified when I didn't change into pants before coming.
The Path up to the peak.
The view.
The top! Full of tourists and everything! We made it in time for the sunset and hung out up there for about half an hour. There are large heads on this side and large bodies on the other. Also, there was more snow. But! Sunset-
At that point, we headed around the little hill of scree and took some pictures there before being herded down by security.
That's all for today, folks!
On another note, I presented to my Rotary club last night... in Turkish! So that was really exciting for me. And I'll be moving families in the next week or so, so look forward to hearing about that!
Love,
Maeghan
When we had arrived at our hotel, we checked in and quickly changed into our "proper mountain clothing". The guide figured it would be about 10 degrees colder by the time we were on our way back. I merely changed out of my flip flops and grabbed a sweater and my camera. Off we set towards the Roman Bridge:
Of course we're walking past the signs. We're exchange students. That's what we do! Hehe.
The bridge! With 3 pillars! Looks nice, eh? Quaint li'l bridge just minding its business...
Except that it's freaking HUGE. (Yes, that's what she said, har de har har) We reached it and I couldn't believe the size. It looks so innocent and normal sized from far away.
Then, after we had walked across the bridge, a bus picked us up and we went up, up, up! To Mount Nemrut! We took a stop on a hill with ancient stuff on our way, and did a quick "hike" to these.
Here's me with a really old column thing and a huge valley.
Huge valley. Old column thing. For scale, the lower crack in the thing is where my head was.
Okay! Here we're on the way up Mount Nemrut. At this point the bus is still driving us. But I love being above the treeline. It just looks so cool!
What's that? You're cold?! Here, have my sweater. I'm off to run in the snow, anyway. It'll just get in the way! I'm upholding the Canadian stereotype here in Turkey. The guide was terrified when I didn't change into pants before coming.
The Path up to the peak.
The view.
The top! Full of tourists and everything! We made it in time for the sunset and hung out up there for about half an hour. There are large heads on this side and large bodies on the other. Also, there was more snow. But! Sunset-
At that point, we headed around the little hill of scree and took some pictures there before being herded down by security.
That's all for today, folks!
On another note, I presented to my Rotary club last night... in Turkish! So that was really exciting for me. And I'll be moving families in the next week or so, so look forward to hearing about that!
Love,
Maeghan
4 comments:
Your pictures are so beautiful! That looked like a fun trip.
Ha ha! I love the snow! I can just see everyone shivering and Maeghan all like "Pssht! Wussies!"
haha I love the splash.
A gender segregated restaurant? I don't know what to think. I guess it would be cool...
And KUDOS for upholding the Canadian stereotype! Heh. How cold was it actually? It's no big deal though, considering we live in igloos and all.
How did your Turkish presentation go? I bet it went well.
Oh wow it's so pretty!
I'll thank you forever for not leting me freeze that day. Hi everyone, I'm the Brazilian girl to whom Maeghan gave her sweatshirt!
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