Thursday, June 6 Silihili to Aydin

Thursday morning after breakfast, with a meeting deadline looming in Aydin, we paused to walk through some of the ruins at Sardes, not far from Silihili. Sardes was the capital city of the kingdom of Lydia. It dates from the Persian empire and continued to be important during Roman and Byzantine eras. The church at Sardes was one of the seven referenced in Revelations. The ruins are particularly impressive for the proximity of the ancient market street, Roman baths and Jewish synagogue.

Cam walking along the market street.

In the Synagogue.

In the Synagogue.

Sam in the doorway of an enormous building. Pool is behind him.

Johanna and Sam.

Cam and Nicole.

Afterwards, we drove without stopping to Aydin. This meeting was an unplanned last minute add on. While Cam drove, I spent some time on the phone with the office assistant getting a hotel for the night. The idea was that Cam would drop the kids and I at a local mall, while he went to the meeting.  As the drive progressed, we discovered that the people he was meeting were anxious about his arrival, because they had planned to feed him lunch.

Using the GPS to locate a mall in a city you've never been before and where you don't speak the language is not stress free.  The first mall turned out to be nothing more than a grocery store and although time pressure was mounting, we drove some more and finally found a mall that actually had stores.  I had to use my Canadian bank card to get enough cash out of a Turkish bank machine so that I could feed the kids and fund our afternoon. After a bit of a look around and lunch, the kids decided that they would go see Epic which was playing at the theatre - in Turkish.  I took the opportunity to wander on my own.  Cam met us at the mall about the time the movie let out and we headed to the Aydin Park Hotel where we had supper and a quiet evening.