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Southbound Again: Wine Into Water
It’s getting pretty hot now. The dashboard temperature gauge blinks up to 37 on the drive back across country and we are hearing whispers of a Mediterranean heatwave which could at the very least break the 40 barrier in the coming week, so the vaulted ceilings and tall windows of our next apartment are a welcome sight. This place must have been a truly grand townhouse in its day. Built in 1735 and not converted to apartments until 1980, it’s our guess that the original owners, a family named Roques-Guilhem, had the 18th century equivalent of big bank accounts. The airy living room is a blessing: since leaving Paris two…
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Black Bulls, Roman Ruins And A Missing Ear: From Aix To Arles
It was a waiter in Aix who first gave us the idea. “If you love Aix”, he said as he put down our sparkling golden beers on the table, “then please go to my town, Arles. It is even more beautiful than Aix”. Well, it’s going to have to go some to achieve that, but maybe we should give it a go – why not? And so we hatch a new plan. Counter intuitively, all the websites tell us it’s quicker to make the journey between the two towns by taking one train down to Marseille and another back up country to Arles, which feels a bit like going from…
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The Wider Tunis: Carthage, The Coast And More
The teenage boys are just as boisterous on the train now as they were half an hour ago performing outrageous gymnastics on the beach, which in itself is pretty impressive, particularly if they’re practicing Ramadan and leaping around like that when they can’t even take on water. Now, on the train, they jump off and run from carriage to carriage at each station, open the doors while the train is moving, swap shirts and throw bags at each other: we just smile at the fact that wherever you are, whatever the culture…..boys will be boys. We are on the short suburban railway which runs out from Tunis, across the water…
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Roman History In Aspendos And Köprülü
Our third and final road trip out of Side in this current hire car session takes us to the wonderful sights of Aspendos and Köprülü Kanyon and turns out to be the best of the three great trips. Earlier on in this trip somebody said to us that the whole of Turkey is simply one massive museum with an absolute wealth of history, and the fact that you can, if you wish, buy a nationwide ticket which gains entry to over 350 such places sort of proves the point. Even we aren’t here long enough to do that! You’d think we might have tired of these sites (can you ever…
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The Cotton Castle Of Pamukkale
It’s actually quite hard to leave Selcuk, so we take one last stroll through town to bid farewell to Ali our new friend, Osman the guy at our favourite restaurant and finally Bora our host, and drive out of town with the unshakeable feeling that we have unfinished business here. The 3-hour-plus journey from Selcuk to our next destination Pamukkale turns out to be a rather uninspiring drive through mostly nondescript lands and industrial towns. A very decent kebab lunch stop at Burharkent is the only point of interest until the last few miles before Pamukkale itself, where at last there are cotton fields and fruit farms to decorate the landscape.…
