Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

The plan for today was to watch the world camel wrestling championship and then catch a train to a plane to Istanbul. Sadly, it was raining heavily in the morning, and apparently camels hate mud. So they'll probably have the wrestling next Sunday. I wandered around the ruined Basilica of St. John to fill some time. It was quite wet.

I ended up running into a bunch of people I'd seen before. First was couple from Wisconsin who I'd run into in Pamukkale, and who'd been on the bus to Selçuk (or rather the Bus to Aydın, and the minibus to Selçuk). They were at the bus station, where they'd discovered the lack of camel wrestling just before I did. They're headed to Istanbul to take the night train to Thessaloniki to go to Meteora. When I mentioned that I was flying to Istanbul instead of taking a bus, and they found out how cheap that was, they started wondering how cheap it would be to just fly to Athens. Probably a lot cheaper than two days of travel including a night train.

Second was a Spaniard, who I'd seen in Göreme. He'd seen me walking down from the ridge over the Red Valley and asked me if there were hiking paths over that way (lots of paths, but not much marked, and lots of areas that look like people's houses). Here he was wondering how to get to the Castle, which I knew was on the hill beyond the Basilica.

The train from Selçuk to the Izmir Airport (which is actually only halfway to Izmir) was easy. My flight was delayed a bit, and the hotel I was planning to stay in didn't get my email requesting an airport pickup (my mailserver says that their email provider is graylisting), so I didn't actually get checked in until almost 10pm (getting there from the airport by public transit involves a subway, a tram, and a funicular). This time I'm staying near Taksim Square, rather than in the historical/tourist area, so there were plenty of fast food places open at 10.