Olympos

July 13, Monday / Cirali: Finishing three perfect beach days. Days one and two were exclusively devoted to the kind of beaching stuff that really needs no description. Today we did find the motivation to walk down to the end of the beach in order to look around the ruins of Olympos.

Olympos was founded – nobody really knows when – perhaps the second or third century BCE. They knew it had some prominence back when Lycia was Lycia (when?). Absorbed by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Genoans, and ultimately the Ottomans. I gather the place effectively died out as a city around the 15th century. An odd sort of history – it picks up in the middle of things and ends in the in-between as well. Just goes to show reality does not always follow the chapters of the history books.

What was neat about Olympos was that this was a city largely unexcavated. Unlike a place like Caunos (last year) where all the old foundation stones were pretty well layed bare and you could see the outlines and the streets of everything- this place had the feel of the ruins among the vines and weeds as they might have looked back in the nineteenth century before most people bothered to care about these things. Here were all these walls and pillars in the forest – make of them what you will....

The hike was also nice. It involves a long walk down the beach and then up along a trail following a little fresh water stream. My impression is that a lot of people access the beach this way, so there is an odd mix of relaxed Turks dragging their coolers and kids to the beach and earnest tourists clambering around looking at the stones.

This break in Cirali has been really nice. Most days we've gotten to the beach for an hour or so in the later morning and again in the late afternoon or early evening. Each day we've had dinner at a restaurant somehow associated with the hotel – but a nice place, and my assistants efforts at Turkish have endeared him to the waiters, so we are nicely treated there. We finished things out tonight by splitting one half of a large fresh fish (a grouper pulled from the sea – we are assured – earlier today).

Not much to say about beach life. I think perhaps the beach is an unsung cultural constant – a refutation of relativism. Every place, every culture and religious or ethnic group no matter how distinct in other ways seem to relate to the beach in exactly the same fashion. There is something about the waves and the sun and the semi-nudity that simply undercuts concepts and ideologies of all sorts. It is the triumph of percepts over concepts.

Tomorrow, however, we fly back to Concept Land – we should be in Constantine's City in the later afternoon provided we find our plane on Antalya set and ready to go. Our time here is dwindling. I have two or three more “must sees” in Istanbul (Topkapi, Hagia Sophia, Galata) – some shopping. We will be back in Boston on Friday evening.

Most Remarkable Thing: When you dive under the water here, there is this high grinding sound from the zillions of little round stones rolling over on each other in the surf. It's sort of like a really soothing dentists drill – if that sort of sound is conceivable.

Photo: The signs say this is part of a Roman temple, but my own eyes and my guidebook say that is a mistake. This is a gate to the Roman city of Olympos.