Perge

Today was so amazing- we were up early to get on the bus to go to the ruin site of Perge (pronounced PER-GAY). We (Cam, Terry, and I) travelled by bus to Perge which was about 45 minutes from our hotel. Our tour guide was really knowledgeable and had a lot of information for us, but I'm sure I won't be able to remember it all before we leave here and go on to Guinea. It was so interesting to see a city that has so much history. As we walked, Cam and I tried to picture what it would've been like in its prime- merchants bartering for their goods, streets crowded with animals and carts, and possibly that guy, Paul walking down the street looking for a good deal on some new sandals.

It is really windy today, and being that the ruins site is so close to the mountains, it made for a pretty chilly morning. And by chilly of course I mean it was probably like... 10 degrees. After we head to Guinea, I'm pretty sure we'll freeze to death when we arrive back in Canada!

We walked around for about an hour with our tour guide explaining things as we went. We saw the Agora or "marketplace" where the merchants would have their shops set up to sell their goods. We walked down "main street" that also had pillars on either side of the road where there would be more merchants, and there was also a water canal that ran down the middle of the road, kind of like a boulevard, that fed a fountain at the Acropolis. The Acropolis literally translated is "top city", and its pretty much the tallest building in the city. There was a Roman bath chamber- kind of like the Turkish bath experience we took in a couple days ago- so that was interesting after having tried it.

After we got back on the bus, we were told we were going to make a stop so we could do some shopping- sweet, every tourist needs more useless trinkets, right? Well, we were taken to a leather store, as Turkey is a large exporter of leather. Their leather is purchased for clothing by such designers as Gucci, Versace, and some others that I couldn't understand translated from an Italian name through a Turkish mouth. We witnessed a fashion show- just special for us- which I just couldn't stop laughing through. Then they proceeded to take us 'downstairs' to a HUGE space in which there was tonnes of leather goods. We were told that would find really good deals here as this is kind of like an "outlet" or something. Every tag I looked at for the most HIDEOUS leather apparel was at LEAST $1000 Euros, so I'm not sure where the great deal comes in... I couldn't stop laughing the entire time we were there as I was so utterly confused as to how that fit in with our morning tour of Perge. You know that saying, "Tour an ancient city and then buy some leather"? Yeah, neither do I.