Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: One down, six to go.

Even though this is a small community, fairly closed down for the winter season, they still have a really nice bus system. We woke up early, which only posed problems for the preteens, and took the 9am bus to Bodrum. The buses run every 1/2 hour starting at 7 am and the last one home from Bodrum is at 9 pm, every day. The ride was comfortable and only about 30 minutes. Not too pricey, 14 TL, about 10 bucks one way for all four of us. The other choice was renting a car for around 65 TL, about 50 bucks for a day. So the bus it was.

Bodrum was much busier than Gundogan right from the start. A much bigger town with more of a year round population as well as a night life. A little tourism info center in the bus mall provided us with a good walking map of the town. From here we set off towards the waterfront about 300 yards down one of the main streets: Cevat Shakir. This was loaded with shops and doner stands, people and bank machines. It almost felt like a really tiny Istanbul.

The street ends at the harbour, home of some of the most beautiful wooden yachts I have ever seen. Maybe 100 or more all lined up and docked for the winter, I guess. This short walk brought us to one of our destinations in Bodrum: the Bodrum castle. The Crusader Knights of Rhodes built the Castle in honour of St. Peter in the 15th Century AD on the site of an earlier palace and temple. It is presently home of the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, no scuba required.

The castle juts out into the sea on a large jumble of rocks, and it has been restored since the 1960's. Big towers and ramparts as well as a large courtyard with a mosque that now houses a replica of an ancient sailing ship. Everything in the whole museum is salvaged from wrecks off this coast. The oldest was around 15th century BC. Lots of intact amorphae, copper, anchors, ivory, jewelry, glass and all kinds of other stuff you might want to trade thousands of years ago. One of the coolest things was a very small gold seal, which was very old even when the ship sank years and years ago. This particular little thing was an Egyptian seal bearing the name of Queen Nefertiti. The only one ever found bearing her name. I guess the priests who came after her decided to erase her from the history of Egypt. So anything with her name on it is exceedingly rare. All in all, this museum was really cool, set in a castle, and filled with sunken treasure.

After putzing around here for almost two hours, we needed some food. This was easily solved a short way up the street we had come down earlier. For a couple Lira you get a great kebab sandwich, and complimentary tea. Hunger slaked, we decided to wind through the maze of tiny streets until we arrived at the Tomb of King Maussolos.

This is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the namesake for which all other burial chambers of its kind would be named forever. Now it must have been pretty amazing in its time, for when Alexander the Great conquered this ancient city he did not smash down the tomb but rather honored it and its incredible beauty. It once was immense and really pretty, but now it is just a pit filled with bits of column and a few passages - sort of catacomb like. It was cool anyway as you could actually walk all around the inside of the tomb and burial chamber and touch all the old bits of column and stuff. Pretty cool field trip.

From here we walked down the old main drag of Hellacarnassus now called Turgutreis Street. Another crazy narrow street. This led us past Ali Baba road and Artemis Street right back to the bus mall and the bazaar, which is held on Tuesdays and Fridays. The weather was a bit cloudy and when we got to the bazaar it started to look a little ugly, so we darted inside to have a look. I swear, Turkey is the place to buy your mandarins. Just loads of them, and super sweet, for like .30$ a pound. I wouldn't be surprised if we have eaten 15 lbs by now. Not just mandarins but all kinds of fruits and vegetables, spices and cheese, and sweets, teas, coffee, whew! We made it out of there with pounds of spinach, carrots and mandarins, some chocolate and a cookie for like 4 bucks. The cookie was free.

The bus was ready to leave just as we arrived, so, yeah. We only scratched the surface of Bodrum... so much history and many more interesting sites to see here. As well as the legendary night life which will have to go on being legendary. Anyway, it is easy to get here so we might undertake at least one more trip.

This next week gives us the Muslim holiday Bayrami, sort of a sacrificial lamb holiday. People eat and have fun and take a week off work. Nice. And yes, it has the same name as the other Muslim holiday we observed in Bulgaria, because they both mark the end of Ramadan... only this one is seventy days after the first bayrami.

So on the menu for us is more lounging at the beach, and ... not much else. Rough.
Big love to all of ours, and Happy Birthday to Paul, Rory, Josh, Nicole, Caitlin, Elaine, Diego of course, Bryan, and Tim. And if I forgot you, let me know I'll add ya in!

Oops, and lovely Phoebe too!