Turkey Day 10 - Carpet buying, Loadicea Roman ruins & a cave

15/04/15

Robin & Luke holding hands down the main street in the Loadicea Roman ruins. 

It was a quiet morning, which is one of the advantages of spending at least 3 days visiting an area. Robin, Luke and myself had breakfast at 7am with Grandma & Julianne around 8-15am.

Today we headed out to visit Laodicea, a Roman ruin just 8kms down the road. This was an impressive large city with good Roman ruins. There was an impressive Roman road we got to walk down. I am enjoying walking down these Roman roads, when visiting Roman sites in the UK they are all granary’s and villa’s and don’t compare to the large elaborate Roman cites I am visiting here in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Grandma walking down the main street.

Luke & Robin approaching a Temple in Laodicea.

Robin, Julianne, Luke & Grandma on the temple steps.

The sacred area at the rear of the temple was protected by glass that you could walk on.

Luke was fascinated looking into the temple below.

Grandma standing on the glass above the temple.

Luke trying to get into a ruined fountain.

Luke & Robin clambering over the ruined fountain.

The family walking past a large but ruined theatre.

Grandma at a much smaller but more complete theatre.

Grandma and a Roman ruined house.

Robin striking a pose.

Julianne and Grandma trying to decide which was to go next.

Another ruined temple in Laodicea.

From Laodicea you can see the white Travertines that I climbed yesterday.

After spending several hours exploring Laodicea which was also mentioned in the Bible, in the New Testament which is interesting. The Basilica church was undergoing restoration and couldn’t be entered.

Then it was a 20 minute drive up the road to the Kaklik Cave, which has the same white calcium that I climbed over yesterday but instead falling into a large cave. There has been an elaborate setup and money spent to build stairs and a walkway around the cave but it has not been maintained which is a shame. So you see this water falling into a large cave with the impressive white rock but there are stairs missing and railings that have fallen into the water. I find it hard to believe time and money was spent building this facility and it has not been maintained.

Kaklik Cave.

Back at ground level is a swimming complex with all the bells and whistles which is all abandoned and looks very lonely and sad.

It was then back to the hotel, and while we were looking at rugs that you can buy from the hotel one of the hotel people said, do you want me to take me to a nearby village where they hand make carpets and we jumped at the chance.

Julianne was really keen to see real Turkish rugs being hand-made and this is what we got to see. It appears that there are still families which make rugs by hand and sell to the tourist market. Julianne got a good close up look on how they do it and we got to view an impressive range of carpets. They told us that normally they sell the carpets to distributors and not to the general public and it was 3 km’s off the beaten track down a rough road to find them – but who knows.

Julianne inspecting the carpets to ensure they are hand-made and up to her high standard.

Julianne getting in close to examine the work.

So several carpets where purchased which will make great souvenirs of our trip to Turkey and will look good in the house. It also turns out that they own the land above the Roman Ruins, which I visited yesterday, so I got a great view down over the top of the ruins – a great location.

Back to the hotel for another clay pot meal as it was so yummy 2 days ago.