Turkey Day 6

On day 6 we left the hotel around 10 and took a bus to Denizli, about 40 minutes away from Heiropolis.  This was one of the portions of the trip that I was really concerned about but Ozcan (John) helped us secure tickets, and even called ahead to the bus station in Denizli to tell them to be on the look out for a couple of people looking for the bus to Konya.  We found the ticket office, had to wait for just a little bit while the guy at the window finished  his breakfast, then it was off to secure a cup of coffee, or should I say "Nescafe".  I know you hear Turkey you think Turkish Coffee, but we found out that the Turk's don't drink that much coffee.  We did have Turkish coffee, but as we found out earlier that if you want regular coffee you have to ask for Nescafe and get instant coffee.

We had the last 2 seats on the bus I felt a little bit like they put us there on purpose, but I think it was really because we just got the last 2 tickets.  We set off and after only 30 minutes on the road we stopped and waited for 40 minutes while they washed the bus and I am assuming allowed the bus driver and people to have lunch and they also washed the bus.  Back on the road the male bus attendant came around and served us water, and coke or our favorite cherry drink.  Unfortunately we didn't realize that if you got the coke they didn't offer you the cherry drink.

The scenery along the way was basically the same lots of wheat fields.  We did come over a mountain and had a beautiful view of a lake, I think it was Egirdir lake.  We arrived an hour later than we had expected about 6:30, so all in all it was a 7 hour journey.  The first thing we did when we arrived was to book tickets for our trip to Goreme in Capaddocia on the 11th.

We headed out to the tram into the city.  Lonely Planet said that it was 2.20 for 2 people which didn't make sense.  As we waited and as the next tram was approaching a man standing in line showed us a card and indicated to us that we needed to buy one.  I rushed down to a little store and recognized the word "billet", ticket from looking through Shin's book.  I was able to buy a card that was for 2 rides on the tram.  They have cards with 2 rides for 2.50 TL or 5 rides for 5.50 TL.

After arriving in the center of the city we got off and walked to our hotel.  So far it is the nicest hotel that we have been in, I mean the first thing we commented on was the fact that we didn't have to push the elevator door open by ourselves.  After we checked in we ventured out to a little fast food kebap place for dinner.  They sell the meat by gram in 50 gram incements, with a choice of as the waiter said,  "meat or chicken", we assumed the meat was lamb.  The young boy did a good job speaking to us in English and at the end of the meal asked us if we wanted chya, which was brought in from somewhere else by an even younger boy.  The meal was 23 TL in all.  Lonely planet warns of food poisoning in Konya, so far so good, but more on that subject latter.