Pamukkale "cotton castle" in Turkish

 

I'm in this amazing place called Pamukkale  and in this post. we're going to see the ruins of an incredible city from ancient  Greece and we're also going to explore. The coolest hot spring landscape  ever. I mean look at this place. oh yeah we're also gonna do this  

 

Good morning. good morning! this is 8 a.m. in Pamukkale in Hotel Pamukkale. I'm having breakfast which is very  similar to what I had in Mardin, and I'm starting off the day with a cup of  tea. This place is such a beautiful town. You can sort of see the mountains behind me  way over there. A lot of flags of turkey too all over the place. There's a  picture of Kamal Ataturk, the father of the Turkish nation as he's called. It's time  to start the real adventures for the day.

 

So I'm about to go try paragliding  and you can see the parachutes over there in the back of the car, so we decided we're not gonna do it today  because it's too windy and too dangerous and I completely trust their judgment. okay so the morning plans did not  go like I planned at all ,but it's not a big deal because there's still a  lot of cool stuff to see. it's still a little cold and supposed to rain so I'm wearing my winter  jacket but I'm also wearing my swim trunks ,because it's supposed to get warmer during the  day. yeah the weird [ __ ] you do when you travel.  

 

so i guess I'm walking for the next  one hour. this walk is super scenic ,but this is turning out to be a lot more work  than i expected it to be. well the cool part is ,I'm going to see some of the Turkish countryside  right now I'm at this farm.  look at that. where is the south door? how many  kilometers is the south door away? oh over there! okay? okay. so i was walking for  the last one hour and some minutes to get here.  

 

This is where google maps told me to come  but this gate is not open. The security guard was nice enough to point me to this other  spot which looks like it's a kilometer away ,but you know might be another 30 minutes of  walking, hopefully not too long. I'll try the bitter chocolate one. So after walking for nine  kilometers and two and a half hours, I'm basically back where i started off. So if you're walking to  Pamukkale don't trust google maps too much and if you start seeing farms and cows around you & dogs  start barking at you, probably going the wrong way.  

 

so right now I'm in the ruins of Hierapolis which  in Greek means holy city and as you can probably tell from the name it was an ancient Greek city  This place goes back thousands and thousands of years to 700 bc. That's when the first temple on  the site was believed to be built, but it was most prominent under the Roman empire around 2000  years ago when this was a city where a hundred thousand people lived and the main reason the  city was prominent or the city was even created  is because it's right next to these hot springs  You see that white surface?

 

 That's the calcium carbonate from the hot spring water that has sort  of deposited over the surface making it this color and for thousands of years people including very  famous people and emperors have come here to enjoy .these hot springs and many of them have even died  here, which is why there's a pretty big Necropolis or dead city here where all the people that came  here to live and died here were buried. Pamukkale by the way means cotton castle in Turkish and looking at  all this white behind me you can probably take  a good guess as why it was named that. Pamukkale  was designated a UNESCO world heritage site.  

 

In 1988 along with Hierapolis because of how  historic it is and how cool it looks to be honest ,right now I'm at the amphitheater of Hierapolis  and if you know anything about Greek or Roman history you probably know that theaters used to  be a huge part of their culture, so this building ,right here was a pretty prominent part of the  city back in the days, but if you notice this place just like everything else in Hierapolis  it's in complete ruins and the main reason the city was destroyed over and over again is because  of earthquakes. And there were quite a few of them.  

 

Over the last couple of thousand years and  usually after a major earthquake the city was rebuilt by the residents. But there was  one big one in 1354 that happened and the city was never really rebuilt after that so  it got neglected and covered by layers and layers of limestone until the 20th century  when it was finally recovered and restored look what I found. hello turtle! definitely was  not expecting to find a turtle.. wait it can't be a turtle, it's on the ground. I think it's  a tortoise or however you pronounce that

 

so this place behind me right now is the  sanctuary of Apollo or a temple of Apollo which seems to be fenced off right now with no  way to enter. I'm guessing it's because of C***** or something right now I'm at this  place called the Antique Pool or Cleopatra's pool because the  Egyptian queen Cleopatra used to come swim here. I think I'm gonna go in for  a dip here. The water is 36 degrees (Celsius) which is perfect right now it's kind of chilly outside  The coolest part about this hot spring that  

 

makes it better than any other hot spring I've  been to is that you're swimming literally in the middle of ruins of ancient Rome and ancient  Greece. So there's pillars right here I've been to quite a few hot springs  but none this historic yet I have to say okay guys I'm finally at Pamukkale and this  place is so so so cool. They don't let you come up with shoes on here, but don't worry  the white stuff is not slippery at all.

 

 It grips to your feet so you're not going  to slip and fall, but it's so cool. There's like perfect blue water. Everything else is basically  white. There's a reason it's called Cotton Castle if you really reach into  the water you can sort of grab some of the calcium carbonate over here

 

hello puppies, it's almost time to leave but  I found the cutest puppies ever.Those puppies are afraid of me. I don't have  any food to give them even though they look hungry so I'm gonna head out now and try to find  some food for myself because I'm also hungry okay guys i was super hungry  but the lady who runs the hotel is preparing a big meal for me just  in the next one hour and 10 minutes  

 

so i just went and got some baklava. Let's try  one now let's see what the baklava here is like Not as sweet. I'd say out of all the baklavas  I've tried so far, probably one of my least favorites. It's still good still.. I don't  know.. maybe it's too healthy I don't know what ,it is. It's prob... definitely not healthy . it's baklava but it doesn't taste as good thank you so much. Starting off  with some Turkish soup I guess made from little bits of noodles and  tomato sauce. This is French fries? yes meatballs. meatballs. salad, mixed salad  and rice. Looks really really good

 

all right that's it for today 6 45 am and I'm  about to go on another hot air balloon ride same story. We were supposed to  get on the hot air balloon and I don't think that's happening  anymore because it's too windy and it's probably too dangerous again. It's  a new day I'm giving this one more shot okay guys i think we're  actually doing it this time.  

 

we're jumping off this cliff. This might  be really dumb don't try this at home.i check your connection don't touch anything I'm changing the takeoff spot because the place where we were going  has wind coming from the wrong way here's good? keep standing

 

laughs, 600 meters (up) that is so cool landing pads that was crazy. This is without a doubt  the coolest thing I've done in turkey by a mile. At the beginning I thought we're  almost gonna hit something on the way up there was like this one part where we curled our  legs to avoid getting hit and I thought we'd lost control. I seriously thought we're gonna  crash and maybe not die but get like pretty badly injured, so I was just bracing for that but then  we made it and then.. there's the view I'm still by the hot springs that's  Pamukkale we were  right on top of it, that was so [ __ ] cool

 

that was incredible. I think the part that  made it extra rewarding was the number of times I tried to do [ __ ] over the last  two days and it didn't work out yesterday .it didn't work out with the balloons this  morning and it didn't work out in the first spot when we're trying to paraglide, but I'm  leaving all that in that video because I think that's how life works and that's how travel works  and I shouldn't try to tell you otherwise.

 

 Things don't always work out but when they do, that  makes it that much more fun. The only reason .I was able to do this thing today was because  I missed my flight intentionally that's leaving in the next 30 minutes or so and I pushed it  back to the evening, just so I had a better chance at doing this and in the end it was worth  it. Definitely worth it. Took a nice two-hour nap  but I still don't know how to get to the airport  Shuttles straight to the airport don't really run anymore because there aren't any tourists so  I think I'll have to catch a bus from here to  

 

the closest city, Denizli, and then from there  hopefully I can find a shuttle. Now for food this is Turkish coffee .I'm not a fan.. oh my god.so I tried this the airport too the other day and  traditional Turkish coffee is I guess not my thing ,what I'm not looking forward to is that the other  day, at the end of the coffee there was this thick layer of stuff that i really didn't like so  I hope this one doesn't have that either but we'll find out. Chicken doner is here. Very fitting way to  have lunch in turkey. So this place is supposed to be pretty cool because it was recommended  on TripAdvisor and the food looks pretty  

 

good . There's a nice little view of the thermal  spring behind me, the last time I'm seeing this ,so people have been coming to this place from all  over the world and leaving messages for the host and it's pretty cool. Someone left a guitar pick  too, this is so sweet. I think I'm going to leave a message here too especially since they gave  me some free tea with the tulip cup. That's what these are called. I found out finally. They were  so so friendly. Fitting way to end the vlog.  I'm gonna go back to my hotel, pack this stuff  up inside my bag so that's it for this one  

 

if you do want to keep up with my stuff, i.e. these  adventures in real time, I've been posting stories about everything.

I'll catch you guys on the next  one from somewhere in Turkey