I'm in this amazing place called Pamukkale and in this video we're going to see the
ruins of an incredible city from ancient Greece and we're also going to explore
the coolest hot spring landscape ever. I mean look at this place
oh yeah we're also gonna do this
good morning. good morning!
this is 8 a.m. in Pamukkale in Hotel Pamukkale
I'm having breakfast which is very similar to what I had in Mardin
and I'm starting off the day with a cup of tea. This place is such a beautiful town. You
can sort of see the mountains behind me way over there. A lot of flags of turkey
too all over the place. There's a picture of Kamal Ataturk, the father of
the Turkish nation as he's called. It's time to start the real adventures for the day
So I'm about to go try paragliding and you can see the parachutes over there
in the back of the car
so we decided we're not gonna do it today because it's too windy and too dangerous
and I completely trust their judgment
okay so the morning plans did not go like I planned at all
but it's not a big deal because there's still a lot of cool stuff to see. it's still a little cold
and supposed to rain so I'm wearing my winter jacket but I'm also wearing my swim trunks
because it's supposed to get warmer during the day. yeah the weird [ __ ] you do when you travel
so i guess I'm walking for the next one hour. this walk is super scenic
but this is turning out to be a lot more work than i expected it to be. well the cool part is
I'm going to see some of the Turkish countryside right now I'm at this farm. look at that
where is the south door? how many kilometers is the south door away?
oh over there! okay? okay. so i was walking for the last one hour and some minutes to get here
this is where google maps told me to come but this gate is not open. The security guard
was nice enough to point me to this other spot which looks like it's a kilometer away
but you know might be another 30 minutes of walking, hopefully not too long. I'll try the
bitter chocolate one. So after walking for nine kilometers and two and a half hours, I'm basically
back where i started off. So if you're walking to Pamukkale don't trust google maps too much and if
you start seeing farms and cows around you & dogs start barking at you, probably going the wrong way
so right now I'm in the ruins of Hierapolis which in Greek means holy city and as you can probably
tell from the name it was an ancient Greek city This place goes back thousands and thousands of
years to 700 bc. That's when the first temple on the site was believed to be built, but it was most
prominent under the Roman empire around 2000 years ago when this was a city where a hundred
thousand people lived and the main reason the city was prominent or the city was even created
is because it's right next to these hot springs You see that white surface? That's the calcium
carbonate from the hot spring water that has sort of deposited over the surface making it this color
and for thousands of years people including very famous people and emperors have come here to enjoy
these hot springs and many of them have even died here, which is why there's a pretty big Necropolis
or dead city here where all the people that came here to live and died here were buried. Pamukkale by the way
means cotton castle in Turkish and looking at all this white behind me you can probably take
a good guess as why it was named that. Pamukkale was designated a UNESCO world heritage site
in 1988 along with Hierapolis because of how historic it is and how cool it looks to be honest
right now I'm at the amphitheater of Hierapolis and if you know anything about Greek or Roman
history you probably know that theaters used to be a huge part of their culture, so this building
right here was a pretty prominent part of the city back in the days, but if you notice this
place just like everything else in Hierapolis it's in complete ruins and the main reason the
city was destroyed over and over again is because of earthquakes. And there were quite a few of them
over the last couple of thousand years and usually after a major earthquake the city
was rebuilt by the residents. But there was one big one in 1354 that happened and the
city was never really rebuilt after that so it got neglected and covered by layers and
layers of limestone until the 20th century when it was finally recovered and restored
look what I found. hello turtle! definitely was not expecting to find a turtle.. wait it can't be
a turtle, it's on the ground. I think it's a tortoise or however you pronounce that
so this place behind me right now is the sanctuary of Apollo or a temple of Apollo
which seems to be fenced off right now with no way to enter. I'm guessing it's because of C***** or
something
right now I'm at this place called the Antique Pool
or Cleopatra's pool because the Egyptian queen Cleopatra used to
come swim here. I think I'm gonna go in for a dip here. The water is 36 degrees (Celsius) which is
perfect right now it's kind of chilly outside The coolest part about this hot spring that
makes it better than any other hot spring I've been to is that you're swimming literally in the
middle of ruins of ancient Rome and ancient Greece. So there's pillars right here
I've been to quite a few hot springs but none this historic yet I have to say
okay guys I'm finally at Pamukkale and this place is so so so cool. They don't let you
come up with shoes on here, but don't worry the white stuff is not slippery at all. It
grips to your feet so you're not going to slip and fall, but it's so cool. There's like
perfect blue water. Everything else is basically white. There's a reason it's called Cotton Castle
if you really reach into the water you can sort of
grab some of the calcium carbonate over here
hello puppies
it's almost time to leave but I found the cutest puppies ever
Those puppies are afraid of me. I don't have any food to give them even though they look
hungry so I'm gonna head out now and try to find some food for myself because I'm also hungry
okay guys i was super hungry but the lady who runs the hotel
is preparing a big meal for me just in the next one hour and 10 minutes
so i just went and got some baklava. Let's try one now let's see what the baklava here is like
Not as sweet. I'd say out of all the baklavas I've tried so far, probably one of my
least favorites. It's still good still.. I don't know.. maybe it's too healthy I don't know what
it is. It's prob... definitely not healthy . it's baklava but it doesn't taste as good
thank you so much. Starting off with some Turkish soup I guess
made from little bits of noodles and tomato sauce. This is French fries? yes
meatballs. meatballs. salad, mixed salad and rice. Looks really really good
all right that's it for today
6 45 am and I'm about to go on another hot air balloon ride
same story. We were supposed to get on the hot air balloon and
I don't think that's happening anymore because it's too windy
and it's probably too dangerous again. It's a new day I'm giving this one more shot
okay guys i think we're actually doing it this time
we're jumping off this cliff. This might be really dumb don't try this at home
i check your connection don't touch anything I'm changing the takeoff spot
because the place where we were going has wind coming from the wrong way
here's good?
keep standing
laughs
600 meters (up)
that is so cool
landing pads
that was crazy. This is without a doubt the coolest thing I've done in turkey
by a mile. At the beginning I thought we're almost gonna hit something on the way up there
was like this one part where we curled our legs to avoid getting hit and I thought we'd
lost control. I seriously thought we're gonna crash and maybe not die but get like pretty badly
injured, so I was just bracing for that but then we made it and then.. there's the view I'm still
by the hot springs that's Pamukkale we were right on top of it, that was so [ __ ] cool
that was incredible. I think the part that made it extra rewarding was the number of
times I tried to do [ __ ] over the last two days and it didn't work out yesterday
it didn't work out with the balloons this morning and it didn't work out in the first
spot when we're trying to paraglide, but I'm leaving all that in that video because I think
that's how life works and that's how travel works and I shouldn't try to tell you otherwise. Things
don't always work out but when they do, that makes it that much more fun. The only reason
I was able to do this thing today was because I missed my flight intentionally that's leaving
in the next 30 minutes or so and I pushed it back to the evening, just so I had a better
chance at doing this and in the end it was worth it. Definitely worth it. Took a nice two-hour nap
but I still don't know how to get to the airport Shuttles straight to the airport don't really run
anymore because there aren't any tourists so I think I'll have to catch a bus from here to
the closest city, Denizli, and then from there hopefully I can find a shuttle. Now for food
this is Turkish coffee
I'm not a fan.. oh my god
so I tried this the airport too the other day and traditional Turkish coffee is I guess not my thing
what I'm not looking forward to is that the other day, at the end of the coffee there was this
thick layer of stuff that i really didn't like so I hope this one doesn't have that either but we'll
find out. Chicken doner is here. Very fitting way to have lunch in turkey. So this place is supposed to
be pretty cool because it was recommended on TripAdvisor and the food looks pretty
good . There's a nice little view of the thermal spring behind me, the last time I'm seeing this
so people have been coming to this place from all over the world and leaving messages for the host
and it's pretty cool. Someone left a guitar pick too, this is so sweet. I think I'm going to leave
a message here too especially since they gave me some free tea with the tulip cup. That's what
these are called. I found out finally. They were so so friendly. Fitting way to end the vlog. I'm
gonna go back to my hotel, pack this stuff up inside my bag so that's it for this one
if you do want to keep up with my stuff, i.e. these adventures in real time, I've been posting stories
about everything that I've been doing here on my Instagram so follow me there if you want
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I'll catch you guys on the next one from somewhere in Turkey