Day 4 - Ride to Denizli

 

Our ride today will be a totally different type of ride from yesterday.  Hills, mountains, and very welcome cool air. Our target is the city of Denizli, North of the Taurus Mountains. Right now we're sitting in a gas stop in the middle of nowhere, about 120Km northwest of Antalya.

Jon was out at 7:30am this morning while Alex was too lazy to get up.  He walked out to the square and accosted the only guy in the square.  A few questions later he had a tour guide.  "I help you and you help me a little bit," he said.  He turned out to be extremely knowledgeable about the Old Town part of the city.  Above is the King's Palace dating back nearly 2,000 years. 

The original walled city only had one entrance.  This ceramic shop now occupies that spot.  

During the Ottoman Empire Roman structures were updated to include Ottoman architectural features, like this entryway to a Roman Christian church.

Second entrance added to the walled city in the 2nd Century.  The gate was built to honor Emperor Hadrian around 180 AD.

Finally Alex got up and after a nice breakfast the hotel manager hand drew our maps out of old town (which we learned from yesterday's experience is a damn confusing place to drive).  Here they are taped to Jon's bike.

Here we are right now.  Somehow the seats didn't get any softer on these bikes overnight

Jon's early tour = old man.

Gas station owner upon internet request, "Only for you..."  Godda love these Turks.  So, while we're getting ready to leave a guy walks in with this baby.  Jon smiles at the baby.  Dad walks over to Jon, hands him the baby and disappears.  Really.....

 

 

 

 Don't worry Kim,  The dad came back 2 minutes later.  Mustafah is NOT coming home with us!  This is just more confirmation that kids love Jon. We're off to Denizli, we'll check back in in a couple of hours.

 

 

Stopped at a strange meeting/place restaurant that looks like a castle (looks like the entrance to Dutch Wonderland).  These two kids came running out and both shook Jon's hand, very excited to see us. They told us their names, the types of bikes they ride, and wanted to know all about the GS1200s.  Not a word of English was spoken.  One second later, they were on the bikes for the picture.  Clearly, not much happens around here.  We're big news...

 

We sat down (they shoed the boys away) and was offered a 'special' lunch for the two of us.  He pointed to his rump and said, really fresh - lamb is in back.  We don't really know what we ate, and we're quite sure it was 'special', but wouldn't order it again.  It was fun though.