We’re in Turkey! Our trip started with a trek along the famed Lycian Way, but that post will wait until I have the multimedia experience to share with you (Very Adventure! Getting so fancy!).
Also notable is that Chris’s sister has joined our travels for two weeks, starting in Cappadocia. Everyone say hi Annie!
Now fast-forward to our third stop: Pamukkale, one of those sites that was mostly unknown until the Instagram Explosion of the late 2010s. Though in my humble opinion, the series of brilliant turquoise cascading pools on a bright white hillside backed by Roman ruins merit the attention.
The journey started out inauspiciously. We had a connection in Istanbul, but our first flight was two hours late, making us miss our second flight. (EVERY domestic flight in Turkey connects through Istanbul — I now know that airport like a new friend who I was really excited about at first, then tired of her endless shenanigans, but still have to hang out with all the time.) One airport hotel, early morning wake-up call, and short flight later, we arrived at Denizli Airport and our luck really turned around.
It might seem mundane, but good airport transportation experiences are few and far between, so I will sing the praises of Denizli forever. We walked off the plane, grabbed our bags, went out the main doors and there an official airport minibus took us directly to our hotel in Pamukkale (an hour away) for $5 per person. One of my continuous travel stresses is getting to and from airports — they’re usually inconveniently located, expensive, and difficult to navigate. So you can imagine my delight when this one was anything but! [To all my friends who work-trip to Istanbul, you could and should so easily do a one-day trip to Pamukkale!]
We checked into our hotel and started our short walk to the Cotton Castle, so named because there’s a myth about a giant building a castle out of cotton (the area’s main crop). Pamukkale literally translates to “cotton castle.”
Earth is amazing — I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s not snow, it’s not salt, and it’s not chalk. It’s calcium! Over centuries, calcium-rich water has bubbled up from the depths of the earth, evaporated, and left its shiny white deposits behind. It feels like plaster where it’s dried solid, smooth and a little bit slimy where it’s still silty — very fun to wiggle one’s toes in.
We walked up the roadway that apparently used to have hotels on it but now has a series of manmade pools. In the painful irony of tourism, so many people were into coming to Pamukkale that the town built up to support the tourism, which required more water to be diverted to the town, which ultimately fundamentally changed (destroyed is a strong word since it’s still pretty cool) the thing the tourists were coming to see. Today restoration is in progress, with water intentionally directed to different parts of the castle at different times to maintain and rebuild its structure (called “travertines”) and tourists only allowed on some sections. Though of course I wish I could have seen this in the 60s or whenever it was at its “best,” it was still worth the trip!
It looks like we’re in a wintry wonderland, but the water is naturally warm! Plus the benefit of being here in shoulder season—in addition to the lack of crowds of course—is that the air is a very pleasant 70-ish degrees.
We’ve seen a lot of “influencers in the wild” on this trip (and sometimes fall into that category ourselves). In Cappadocia you can rent flowy dresses for your photo shoots, and at Pamukkale you can hire a designated “photo service” man (they wear t-shirts) and rent a set of angel wings for your pictures. 😂.
At the top of the castle are the ruins of Hierapolis, the ancient Roman city built around the pools which were both sacred and renowned for their healing properties. (We still don’t know if or how a calcium-rich soak, leaving white streaks on our skin, is good for us…but I’ll believe it.) Hierapolis—meaning “sacred city”—was believed to be founded by Apollo, and the hot springs’ vapors were associated with Pluto, god of the underworld. Next to the Temple of Apollo there’s a cave (closed off obvi) emitting poisonous gasses, thought to be the entryway to the underworld.
We spent a couple hours floating in Cleopatra’s Bath, a warm water pool supposedly given as a gift from Marc Antony to Cleopatra. An earthquake in the 7th century toppled Apollo’s Temple next to the bath, and its columns have been in the pool ever since. Seems like we should not be allowed to just swim all over almost-2000-year-old columns? But we are and we liked it! Some people on the internet have called this part an overpriced tourist trap, but they are wrong; it was a goddamn delight and $6 well spent.
Above the pools, we made our way up to a very epic amphitheater (we are never not seeing amphitheaters) amongst a hillside covered in ruins and wildflowers.
Wrapping up the day with a spectacular Turkish dinner, free wine (shout out to White House Restaurant), an ice cream cone, good times were had by all!
Hi, I was wondering if you could help me please. I’ve had angel wings pictures taken with one of them photographers but only bought a few of them which I now regret. Could anyone give me a contact details or the name of the company so I could purchase the rest of them please 🙏 I’ve only been there a few days ago. I’d appreciate any help!
I got to go to Pammukale and Hierapolis in summer 2000, right after my freshman year of college. My college theater troupe spent three weeks in Turkey, never leaving the Asian side. It was AMAZING. I still dream about it. I'm so glad you go to swim around the ruins and climb all over the amphitheater.