Day 8 - Perge to Pamukkale

I couldn't connect to the internet last night, but I did write up a quick post. So here is what we did yesterday. I will try to post what we did today in the morning. One quick note before I go to bed, I sprained my ankle today, I was running down to get a picture in front of a giant pillar at the temple of Apollo at Didymus and I hit a patch of mud and my left foot slid out in front of me. if you all could pray that it doesn't hurt tommorow I'd appreciate it. Tommorow we're going to Ephesus which is one of the best sites to visit in Turkey, which means there is lots of stuff and lots of walking. Thanks.


We ran into some road trouble today, so instead of seeing Laodicea and Colossae today, we are leaving extra early tomorrow to see those sites.


Today we visited the ancient site of Patera at the coast and then we drove up inland and saw Hierapolis.


Hierapolis, Colossae, and Laodicea were the three cities that lay in the Lycus river valley. Hierapolis was well known for its hot springs. And now there are huge calcium deposits where the water used to run off the cliffs, they kind of look like petrified waterfalls, bright white, petrified waterfalls. Hierapolis is up on the top of a hill, like so many of these cities are. It was quite massive and has the best preserved Roman Theater in Turkey. The theater holds between ten to fifteen thousand people, and is in good enough shape that they still hold concerts there.



I think that Hierapolis is only mentioned in the Bible once, at the end of the book of Colossians, but it may have some significance to the book of Revelations (I’ll try to mention that tomorrow)




(Here I am standing on the top of the calcium deposits left by the springs. I bought that hat from an old lady selling stuff next the Hittite water shrine the other day. I also seem to have simultaneously lost my stocking cap I brought with me, which is unfortunate since it fit significantly better.)


The first place we saw today was the ruins at Patera. Patera was a major city in the Lycian League, which actually was mentioned by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers as a major influence on creation of the U.S. representative government. Patera was beautiful. It seemed like every direction I looked I saw one of those paintings by the French romantic landscape artists where they threw an ancient ruin into beautiful countryside. I decided today that if I every build a winter home, it will be in the ancient ruins of Patera, it was that nice.


Patera is a city that Paul changes ships in on his way to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey. The just recently uncovered the lighthouse that was there in the 1st century and would have guided Paul’s ship in or back out to sea.


In all of the theaters we visit, there will be opportunities for people perform something for the rest of the group. Dr. Rigsby got us started today with a song, “I’m my own Grandpa.” I recorded it on my digital camera and i was going to post it, but I decided I'm going to ask him first, to make sure he doesn't mind. Hopefully I'll get that up for you tomorrow.


Sorry for just the one picture, if I can post the video of Dr. Rigsby singing, it will more than make up for it. Thanks for reading. Until tomorrow…

Update, the hotel that we stayed in in Pamakkale had a "thermal pool" that was fed from the hot springs from ancient Iconium. I spent about an hour in it, it was amazing. Most of us just relaxed, except for some of the Koreans who did laps. That was amazing too, they're the best.