The fantastic mosaics at the ancient city of Anamurium, Turkiye

The ancient city of Anamurium dates to between the 1st and the 7th centuries. I always have to think about that a little bit. Of course in Canada, anything old is maybe 300 or 400 years, at most. So when you come across structures that are still standing after 1,500 or 2,000 years, it's difficult to comprehend.

We had no plans to visit Anamurium until Ruth did a little bit of research to find out what there was to see along our route. And it turns out there is a lot to see! In fact, it was one of the better ruins sites.

Summer plans... booked another flight!

Sunday was a rain day. They had called for showers on and off, but it rained pretty steady most of the day. We didn't get out of the motorhome for a walk until around 5:00pm!

So we played some backgammon and yahtzee, and did some computer time. We want to get back to Canada this summer, so I did some searching looking at flight possibilities.

Another busy day, and a feast for lunch!

Lots of exploring to do in this area, and it was another nice day. Plus, it's an easy bike riding area with a good network of bike paths. 

So I got the bikes off and we went for a ride. First destination was the ancient fortress of Selinus.

Yep, this will do for a couple of nights!

We got up at 7:00am and hit the road right away Friday morning. Two reasons for this... first, it's a good way to warm up Max's interior without using propane, and second, we wanted to get out of the big city of Alanya before the traffic got heavy.

And we did... there was hardly any traffic on the road. 

That was a busy day!

And a much better one than the last few, because the sun was shining and we were able to get out do stuff! 

We needed to find a laundry. There were a few listings in the big touristy city of Alanya (pop 300,000), so we packed up early and drove the half hour or so into the city.

Life goes on

We are fine, thanks. We've received a few messages of concern because we are geographically fairly close to the action, so to speak. And yes, we are following the headlines and are aware of what's going on in the world. 

But we don't worry so much about "what if", so we continue with our plans, for now. 

Not much point in moving on

Another wet overcast day on Tuesday, but at least we managed to find a two hour window where we got out for decent walk.

Today is supposed to be worse, with pretty much non stop rain, and a total accumulation of more than two inches. We were going to move on just for the sake of moving on, but I think we've decided to just wait it out. We have electricity and a good strong cellular internet connection.

Train trip and Cyprus update

Yesterday evening, we published our February expense report. If you missed it, you can read it here. 

A few weeks ago, we told you about an overnight scenic train ride that we wanted to do between Ankara and Kars, or the reverse. Tickets are really hard to get, but we put in our request hoping that we might get some around the end of February when we were in Antalya area and we could have flown from Antalya to either Ankara or Kars to meet the train.

February Expenses

Had we not done those medical checkups and bought me a new pair of hiking boots, February would have been an all time record low month. Of course keeping in mind that February only has 28 days, but still!

We spent a total of $1,884 CAD ($1,487 USD, €1,322), but our actual living expenses were less than half of that!

Staying at our first official Turkish campground!

We got on the road around 8:00am so that we could take advantage of the early Sunday morning lack of traffic in order to get ourselves out of the city. We took the coastal route, which is a little slower going but we had done the faster route in the car when we were here in December 2020 and it was not a scenic drive through a lot of industrial areas.

The coastal route in this area between Antalya and Alanya is loaded with big resort hotels... one after the other.