3 days in and we've seen tonns

I'm in Pamukkale right now after a whirlwind trip from İstanbul to İzmir to Çeşme to Efes to here. We left on Friday night and have managed to get a good feel of each place before moving on. The bus system is amazing here... you can get to anywhere from anywhere and have a several choices of times to leave.

On Friday we just packed our bags, hopped on a 12 hour night bus from İstanbul with absolutely no plans. Apart from extremely swollen feet from not moving for 12 hours, it was the perfect way to travel. We arrived in İzmir around 9 am, found a cheap hotel to drop off our stuff and went exploring. We saw the ancient ruins of the Agora and the Kadifekale (castle), looked through the Ethonography museum and went out for dinner and drinks. The next morning we took a bus to the small coastal town of Çeşme where we got to lay out and tan on some big flat rocks. Sun! I've missed it.

Being a female traveller alone in İzmir and Çeşme has been very frustrating at times... the men will not leave you alone and if you can't get the message of "leave me alone" across in their native language they just don't. In İzmir we got a self-appointed tour guide to the castle... I had no problem wıth thıs until he started announcing proudly to every person walking by that he was with 2 Americans. Like my tank top and bug eyed sunglasses aren't obvious enough he has to pull that out. Ok... fine. And walking around guys will stop and stare, try to get us into a disco with them or best of all have an impromptu photo shoot with us. Like I'm sitting on some rocks with Sarah minding my own business and next thing I know we are posing for indivıdual pictures with gross middleaged men draping themselves over us. NASTY. Get a life!

So we arrived to Efes, the ancient ruins of a huge city, to find an entire Carnival cruise ship touring. This was half welcome relief (Americans just don't DO that crap) and half disgust at how prepackaged their trip was and how they weren't really experiencing Turkey. We actually heard someone say "I just don't want to go back to the modern world." Too bad your cruise ship is a 10 minute drive away.

Haha well my time is almost up on the computer. We're seeing Pamukkale tomorrow and heading to Bodrum to finally meet up with Can our Turkish friend who will protect us from the nasty guys for the remainder of our trip! Yaya... sunshine time :)