Turkey: Pammukale: Cleopatra Swam in These Thermal Waters

This night bus from Nevsehir to Pammukale on the Nevsehir bus (has been our favorite in Turkey so far) it was $25 pp, took about 8-9 hours total with fewer stops.

Cris Sneider our Italian friend that we met in Istanbul, highly recommended visiting these Roman ruins and ancient mineral water spas. She had Ruby convinced when she said “imagine Cleopatra and Marc Antony bathing in these same thermal heated waters so many years ago”.

This place is definitely worth the side trip. WOW, there are so many insane ruins of the old city Hierapolis. and the coliseum ruins rival any other we’ve seen before!

We stayed at Hotel Goreme, a really awesome budget option at 29 Euros/nt with a great breakfast and sparklingly clean swimming pool (which we definitely took advantage of in the summer heat). They picked us up from the bus station and let us check in super early. The owner recommend we wait until 3 pm in the summertime to visit the terraces and he was right because otherwise it is too blindingly white and hot! You can easily catch a shuttle to the North Gate of the Hieropolis from the hotel.

We had another incredible sunset overlooking the bright white travertine terraced pools filled with aqua blue thermal water.

We enjoyed soaking our feet in the warm waters.

Little did we know. . . we would soon be carefully walking down these steep, slippery terraces in the dark to get back to town. (We figured out that this is apparently the only way to get down after searching for another option). We are glad that we had a flashlight with us and that we are doing this when we are young and healthy because we could see how easy it would be to slip and break a hip on this otherwise! At least we did enjoy the fireworks in the sky from our high viewpoint on the walk down.