The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
The Road to Gulluk

The Route Natureland Efes has been a wonderful first experience in Turkey, and an easy segue into a new culture. We are sorry to go ... and at the same time, anxious to see what lies ahead. So after yet another marvelous breakfast on the terrace, we loaded all our stuff back into our trusty Renault, said goodbye to Seval and her crew and headed south.

Our destination is the Turkish fishing village of Gulluk, just above Bodrum on the map. There is a fairly new four lane highway that would get us there in about two hours, but after talking with the Aussies a couple of days ago, we thought we would take their suggestions (and the back roads) to see a few more historic sights on the way down.

The plan was to visit the ruins at Priene, Miletos and Didyma. We got to Priene easily enough and made the rugged climb up the hill to site. There was no nicely inclined path like at Ephesus, but a steep climb up high steps improvised, I suspect, from debris found at the site. The sun was out, the day was getting hotter and so was I. So we looked around a little, made our way down the hill and turned the car's air-conditioning on high!

The road took us to Miletos which looked interesting from a distance, but we were still recovering from the heat at Priene and our visit turned into a drive-by viewing when we saw there would be a lot more climbing involved to see the place! we thought Didyma would surely be more geezer-friendly.

We were doing pretty well, I thought, with the signs to Didyma appearing regularly as we headed south. But suddenly all that reassurance disappeared. By the time we realized we must be off the track, had gone too far to turn back and try to re-locate the proper route ... and we were getting burned out on antiquities for the day, anyway. So we fired up the GPS and let Gertie direct us, hopefully to Gulluk.

And direct us she did ... into the hinterlands, through tiny villages, up and down winding mountain roads, along unpaved byways and past scenes we never would have seen from the main road. Eventually she guided us to where we wanted to be ... although there were times we weren't so sure just where we would end up.


Once a city of 4-5000 people, Priene was built around 400BC. It is mostly piles of rubble and broken columns at this point, but you can see there was once some significant architecture here. The four columns are all that remain of the Temple of Diana, a project funded by Alexander the Great. I always found it interesting that the massive columns found on ancient Greek buildings were really fluted discs stacked on top of one another. Notches in the plates held wooden pins that kept the pieces aligned.


Miletos looked interesting but we couldn't bring ourselves to leave the coolness of the car and start climbing in the hot sun again. The other shots are a few of the things we saw along the back route to Gulluk.


We have rented an apartment in a development known as the Beach Residence. As with many of the condo developments along the coast, the unit is owned by a couple in the UK who rent it out when they are not using it themselves. It is a two bedroom, two bath apartment furnished adequately with few frills ... except an ocean view from two of the three balconies. This gets particularly spectacular at sunset. Yes, that sunset photo was taken from the front balcony ... cropped slightly to spare you the telephone poles!


[Itinerary Page]

© 2013 Restaurant Doctor