Pamukkale and Hierapolis

We had an adventure travelling Pamukkale and Hierapolis. I had booked our train tickets through the Turkish Rail system website, despite some English translation much of the website remained in Turkish. I booked the eight of us to travel to the train station identified by the website as the closets to Pamukkale (retrospectively I should have book us to go to Denzil, the largest nearby city). We arrived Sunday mid-afternoon at a train station in a small rural town. The station conductor did not speak English and had no idea why we were there. As we exited the train station onto a dirt road with very few buildings, we met a very welcoming and friendly Turkish family. We initially were not sure if the gentleman we met was a shyster or if he was trying to help us. His wife then joined out group bringing Turkish baking to share with us, particularly the children. Through Google Translate we were able to establish that we were looking for transport to Pamukkale. He offered us a cab at an exorbitant rate, but also told us that for much cheaper price we could take a local bus. We all agreed that the bus would be our choice (still $50 USD to travel 8 km which initially seemed high, but later made sense). He walked us back across the railway tracks and asked us to wait at the corner, within a few minutes. He arrived driving a large bus, loudly playing Turkish music. He asked Alastair to sit in the front with him with Google Maps on directions, we ended up with door-to-door service! A very memorable and hilarious experience for all of us!


The ancient Greek city of Hierapolis was built on top of Pamkkulale “cotton castle”, a natural site where carbonate mineral deposits and thermal springs. Thousands of years of flowing thermal spring water have left amazing limestone travertine formations. Our first evening there we were enjoying the huge duck pond and view of the travertine cascade; the kids were enjoying climbing high on the limestone hills before a local guard blew his whistle at them. 

We began the day by exploring the city of Hierapolis a massive archeological site of an ancient Greek city. It has well-maintained city gates and public latrine, a monument to nymphs, a sanctuary of Apollo, a large amphitheater and tombs of the necropolis. The thermal visited springs at this site have been drawing visitors since ancient times. Today the Cleopatra Antique Thermal pools allow visitors to enjoy floating in the thermal water, while lounging on ancient columns. We were incredibly lucky that for most of our visits to these pools we were the only visitors going in the thermal pool (an advantage for Canadians with it being winter and Turkey being a Muslim country), allowing Aiden and Clark to play catch. We finished our visit with a tender barefooted walk down the limestone travertines (feeling a bit rushed to catch our airport transfer).

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