Antalya
In the morning about 20 of us did the optional tour to Perge and Aspendos. I wasn’t particularly impessed with Perge. It’s just like all the other ruins we’ve seen, and we were there for what felt like a really long time. The main attraction at Aspendos is its theater, which is one of the best-preserved there is. It was originally built in the first century, and somehow all this time somebody’s been keeping an eye on it. It was interesting to see the intact stage building; there was one with every theater but we’ve had to use our imaginations except at Aspendos. my girlfriend found a necklace and earrings in the Ministry of Culture’s gift shop and paid $48 for them - I plan to give her the money so they’ll be a gift. After lunch we spent a little while in a leather shop - I was rather uninterested. If they’d had pants or skirts or even gloves I’d have looked at them, but all they made was jackets, belts, and purses. Shortly after we got back to Antalya it was time to leave again for the afternoon’s tour. We went to the Museum of Archaeology, which I would have liked a lot more if it had a mock dig set up; even so I enjoyed the statues (we played “identify the goddess by her attributes”) and the costumes. At the gift shop, run by the Ministry of Culture, we found the same jewelry my girlfriend had gotten in Aspendos - and the necklace was almost $20 cheaper (we didn’t bother asking about the earrings). After the museum our guide took us on a walking tour of Kaleici, the historic district of Antalya. We got back to the hotel around 6:00, which meant another 90 minutes until dinner. We were pretty hungry, so we decided to go buy dinner on our own. We wandered into a shopping mall, and I was absolutely stunned to see a tattoo parlor - Muslims aren’t supposed to get tattoos! I tried talking to the girl who greeted me at the door, but she didn’t speak much English and was only able to tell me that prices start at 30 million lira. She invited me in, though, and I obediently looked at a portfolio in the photo album she gave me. What surprised (and somewhat alarmed) me was that the entire shop was within a very small storefront. The sign mentioned “genital” (I’m guessing piercing), and I suppose they just close the blinds for that. There was just one chair near the back wall, and while they probably use fresh needles I didn’t see any autoclaving equipment - hopefully it was in a cabinet. I had hoped to be able to talk to them about tattooing in Turkey, but the language barrier was too great and I didn’t say much. I took a picture of the shop from across the mall anyway, just because I was still so surprised to have found it. We had dinner on the balcony of Burger Queen Pizza (on the same street as Burger Land and Burger King), which was nicely decorated with Roman columns and similar things. We both had small cheese pizzas, about 7″ in diameter (I’m just guessing) - larger than a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza, anyway - and fruit drinks. I was amazed to find that the entire dinner came to about $4.75. We changed some money after dinner, then got dessert at the hotel - dinner is included, so why waste the opportunity?