Termessos ruins

The ancient village ruins of Termessos in southern Turkey:

Underground city of Derinkuyu

Here I am with Dianna in the underground city of Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, Turkey; in which an entire city was carved out of rock deep underground:

Painted cave church in Cappadocia

A small painted church carved out of rock in the Soganli Valley, Cappadocia, alongside countless cliff dwellings:

Cappadocia in central Turkey

This is the strange and beautiful landscape known as Cappadocia, one of the most amazing places I've visited in the world:

Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, Yosemite

I went hiking today at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, in Yosemite National Park here in California (I'm visiting family nearby for the holidays). It was dammed in the 1930s (after much protestation from John Muir) but is still incredibly beautiful. Click the subject line above for some photos.

photos of Turkey (click here)

Click the subject line above to see a bunch of new photos from my travels with Dianna around Turkey.

Back in Antalya (click here for images of Pamukkale)

Dianna and İ are back in the medium sized city of Antalya, on Turkey's south coast, after a week of driving around western Turkey. Summing things up briefly, we left here in a rental car last Monday and drove to Kabak, near the town of Fethiye. Kabak is the last little village before the beginning of the 300-mile Lycian Way trek; which I had been considering doing on this trip, but which will have to wait for another time. We stayed for two nights in a little cabin in a gorgeous setting amidst beautiful mountains that hovered right over the sea.

From there we continued west to a small town called Koycegiz, that had some hot springs nearby that we wanted to check out, which turned out to be really nice. We stayed there another two nights. Then from there we headed north to Pamukkale, a popular tourist attraction and for good reason. Geothermal phenomenon there has created a bizzare landscape of white travertine with natural hot springs scattered all throughout a large area that looks something like frozen waterfalls cascading down white cliffs, but is actually a hard chalky substance. Click on the subject line above for photos to see what it looks like.

From Pamukkale we headed back east and spent one night at the small lakeside village of Egirdir. Today we continued south from there, stopping for a short hike in a national park, through trees shedding their leaves alongside a remote lake. Then we came back down to Antalya and are staying tonight in the same hotel where we stayed previously.

A couple of days ago we were making our travel plans, and decided to check for cheap flights online, since it's a long ways from here to Cappadocia in the center of Turkey. We lucked out and found dirt cheap tickets for $30 each. So we ended up booking flights from Antalya to Kayseri, near the Cappadocia region, and then from there back to İstanbul. We fly out of here tomorrow morning and will spend five days exploring Cappadocia, before flyıng back to İstanbul. Then we have just two full days in İstanbul before İ fly back to San Francisco, and Dianna flies back to Athens...Hopefully İ'll get the chance, either in İstanbul or else back home, to talk a little more ın detail about Turkey since İ've been skimming over things with short posts. And also İ'll be posting photos whenever İ get the chance, as well as videos. But for now it's time for us to find something for dinner, and then get some much-needed sleep before flying out in the morning.