Kusadasi to Pamukkale

Wednesday 27th april 2011

I had a real feeling of regret checking out of our hotel in Kusadasi, it was so beautiful, overlooking the Aegean sea, waking to the sound of the ocean. We drove to a leather production and export warehouse in the morning. They put on a fashion show for us, we had little glass cups of Turkish tea (cay... Pronounced chai), and they even dragged up two people from our tour to model some jackets on the runway. It was a bit of fun :-)
I didn't see anything i liked, and a little man called Ekin befriended me. I tried on a few jackets thinking to myself that poor Ekin was wasting his time and commission on me coz I was NOT buying anything today...
BUT...
Then he showed me the new Versace jacket, it had a zip off fleece hood, and had this excellent choc brown woodgrain type coloring on the leather. It's made of lambskin and is 0.4mm thick (apparently this is very good). I didn't care about statistics, it was so deliciously soft and fit me like a glove, so I took Lisa's advice and just bought it!! I will never see anything like it again, and i adore it to pieces. Next problem, finding somewhere to stash it in my backpack.... Inisight tours must get some kind of kickback, because they had 2 buses there, and there were 14 jackets and 3 bags bought on our bus alone, all in 1 hour!

Then we drove on to Pamukkale which means Cotton Castle. We walked through the ruins of Hieropolis to the white limestone cliffs at the city's edge, the thermal waters rush out of the rocks over the cliffs and keep the rocks looking pristine white. It was spectacular. The view over the countryside to the horizon was amazing... Quite literally catching my breath.
Our hotel was quite nice, though not as flash as some of the others, but it did have free thermal pools to use (you just had to buy the sexy grey swimming caps for 4 lira). It was like the hottest bath you could stand, which never cooled down. The water was at 35 degrees and there were plenty of signs stating any longer than 20 minutes was potentially very hazardius to your health! Oooh I'm luxuriating on the edge of danger!