Traipsing on the travertines

Having a wonderful time in Turkey! Internet access has been a challenge and tedious when found due to their different letters on the keyboard so apologies if these entries aren't perfectly proofread.
Our visit through Cannakale was very interesting and educational as it dealt with the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 during WWI. This is a very popular site to visit for Australians and New Zealanders as they lost many soldiers in this campaign. An Australian visitor was asked to read a one page summary of the last days/weeks in the life of John Simpson and his donkey and he choked up by the time he got to the end of his reading. He had many of us in tears, that's for sure.
From Canakkale we visited Troy and Pergamum on our way to Selcuk. We visited Troy in a full fledged thunderstorm all around us (I know someone called Mary who would have made her way back to the bus subito-presto). We arrived in Pergamum at 5 PM only to find out that the site closed at 5PM. Our tour guide negotıated an extra half hour for us so we did a quick run through, run being the operative word. The ruins of this Akropolis are quite nice to visit and the view of the city and valley below is quite spectacular. I'm glad I was able to see it even if only for 30 minutes.
Arrived in Selcuk at 10PM after a very very long day. Our first day in Selcuk was spent regrouping and booking most of our accomodations for the remainder of the trip. After a good day's rest we headed off early to visit the ruins of Ephesus. They are without a doubt the best we've seen so far in Turkey. The library entrance is spectacular and I was lucky enough to get some nice pictures void of thousands of tourists that were in from the cruiseships. In the afternoon we went to a haman for our first ever Turkish bath. It is certainly a very different experience that leaves you feeling very clean and well exfoliated. We were the only tourists there at the time we went so it was funny to exchange hand signals with the Turkish ladies who did their best to explain what we needed to do next and where to go.
I've fınally made it to the travertines part of the entry. If you want to find out more about this amazing natural wonder I suggest you do a search on Pamukkale travertines and read all about it. It's almost like seeing a glacier in the desert. Hot water rich in many minerals has left calcium deposits on the mountain terraces to create this permanent white winter wonderland. You can still walk on a small section of the terraces (the Turkish people are now more careful about futher damaging them by restricting public access).
Today we took a 5-hour bus ride to Fethyie where we are getting ready to set sail tomorrow for a 3-night cruise on the Mediterranean that will take us to Olympus. Crossing our fingers that we won't get seasick. I'll tell you all about it on the next post.