Afrodisias - Gün 2

The second day we woke up and had some traditional Turkish kahvaltı, then headed to the tour company for their "Guaranteed Afrodisias Trip- 9:30am". Of course, this being Turkey, "Guaranteed" means "Only if there's 4 people who want to go." So, the company scrounged up another tourist, and we paid a bit extra.

The driving through the countryside took us through pomegranate, apple, and orange orchards. We saw fields of cotton and corn all growing in the valley, surrounded by mountains. We passed through villages of varying sizes- with cars, without cars, tractors, village children...

At one point in time Afrodisias was a capital of a Roman province, largely developed by the sponsorship of a wealthy native. Most of the buildings were from around the 2nd century AD.


The Tetrapylon- a decorative entrance to the city


The Bouleuterion- a sort of city senate house


The Afrodisias Stadium which seats 30,000 people. It had special seats reserved for important people, as well as Tanners and Goldsmiths
The stadium had a few cats that could spot of soft heart from across the 270m length of the structure. So, we gave a cat a few pretzel sticks.


Turkish schoolchildren holding a race in the Stadium
There were a fair number of French tourists, but we also ran into a Turkish school group. They held a few sprinting races in the Stadium and the winner received a prize of 5 YTL.


Various ruins at Afrodisias


Afrodisias Theatre


Screaming faces- decorative accents for the theatre?


Cats begging for food
We sat down for a rest at the end and ate some of our snacks. We were quickly mobbed by 4 kittens. The cats here eat anything- bread, cookies, and pretzels. It was hard to resist their mews, so dad fed them his left over Tomato A la turca Dorito crumbs.

We were dropped off at the Denizli Otogar around 4pm, which meant we had to spend 8 hours waiting for the next bus to Ankara. We walked a bit around the city and stumbled upon the shopping district. This entertained us for a few hours, but we headed back to the Otogar when things started closing up. It wasn't so bad, but it was a loooong time to wait.