Pamukkale to Selcuk

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014 Selcuk
This morning we got up at 6:45, showered, ate a couple of oranges and were at the bus ticket office down the street by 7:45. A van took us to the Denizli bus station where we exchanged our vouchers for real tickets and got on the bus to Selcuk. This bus had tv and music on the seatback systems but no movies. We still had a flight attendant who served coffee and juice but no sandwiches.
On the bus we had a nice chat about travel with a young couple from Beijing. He's a lawyer who studied in New York and now works for a Boston firm in Beijing while she works for the government. We meet lots of young well-educated people who travel a lot and are much more citizens of the world than we are. Always enjoyable.
About an hour into the trip, soldiers waved us over into a side lane that looked like a smaller version of a truck weigh station in Canada, except with no scales or building. They brought a drug sniffing dog onto the bus and let it into the luggage compartment underneath. The soldiers took each Turkish person's ID card but were not interested in foreign passports. On their second pass through the bus, they motioned for me to open my day pack and they looked through it along with feeling my money belt that I wear around my neck and under my arm. Looking for drugs or weapons, I suppose. All was well so we were back on our way in less than 10 minutes. However, I get the impression that holding drugs in Turkey might be a really bad idea.
We had several stops enroute so it took until after 1 pm to get here. We quickly got away from the scam artists at the bus station, consulted our notes, asked a couple of Americans and found our way to Homeros Pension. Our hosts are really friendly and helpful and our room has very nice Turkish decor, unlike our last room in Pamukkale which was very bland. Tonight we're going to have dinner in the breakfast room/lobby in the other Homeros building across the street. We've been promised a full, all-inclusive Turkish dinner for 19 lira ($9.50) each.
We hadn't really eaten today so we asked about restaurants for lunch. A friend of the owner walked us down the street to a really good little diner run by a lady who spoke no English but had great food. I'm not sure what we had but it was all good and she even brought us a heavy cream and coconut dessert called Kadayifli Mhhallebi for free. Lunch cost 23 lira ($11.50) total.
We walked around town a bit. It's quite nice with some pedestrian streets and outdoor cafes full of older men playing some kind of backgammon or weird scrabble all afternoon. The men seem to gather for coffee or tea and conversation while there are few women to be seen. Someone has to work.

 This is the lounge area of our pension, on the top floor just below the roof terrace.

Downtown there is still a remnant of the old Roman aqueduct that carried water across the valley. Storks nest on the top of the pillars through the summer.
After scouting around a bit, we bought water, nuts and beer and retired to the roof terrace to enjoy the sun and 24C temperature. Tomorrow we tour the ancient city of Ephesus, 3 km from here.