Antalya

Antalya is a city of interesting contrast one has only to walk through Hadrian's Gate to enter the ancient secor of Kaleici or step back through it to return to a bustling and modern commercial centre. We came here and immediatly set out to wander the narrow streets of the area to be rewarded with a resaurant overlooking the old Roman harbour and near some tower or other it was on the way back to the hotel that I made my great error, deciding to book a tour to see Perge Side and Aspendos. Now Aspendos I could care less about but perge and Side are among my favorite cities and having woken up earlt and gotten on the bus with the four people we would share our tour with as well as the guide I was immediatly disappointed as the guide began a longwinded and disjointed account of the area's history that showed at best a cursory knowledge of the matter he was supposed to guide us through.
My disappointment was revisited and redoubled when we spent longer getting to Side then we spent in Side, after a brief examination of the Temple of Apollo and adjacent Byzantine bathes we began walking back to the Theatre we had passed earlier and were promised a return visit to, this return visit proved to be fifteen minutes of looking at the outside Theatre wall while we waited for the bus to arrive, I left the group nd got a quick glimpse of more of the theatre and some of the agora but still came away very disappointed.
Aspendos was a repeat of these events we saw the amazing theatre and then turned back to the entrance and ledt the site abandonning the sign post pointing p the hill and pointing to an Agora a Nymphaeum an Aqueduct and other things to see but we turned and left and drove over to a somewhat intact section of the Aqueduct before once mor leaving the site with so much more to see.
by this time I was in a very sour mood I had booked the tour not to be shown around but for the convenience of the bus from one site to another and was not happy with how it had turned out. my mood however was lifted when we reached Perge, our guides already cursory knowledge left off here and I took over the tour group for a time before we went off our own ways and spent a decent amount of time exploring this fine site.
We spent that night in thecompany of some friends we had met on the cruise and then left the next day, after having visited the Archaeology Museum (a great visit with fine statuary) before catching a bus in the evening for Denizli.