The month of June rolled in for us while wide-awake on an 11-hour bus ride from Goreme to Antalya. While enjoying the town of Goreme, in the Cappadocia region, we were for the most part in central Turkey. The remainder of our Turkish travels will be along the Southwest coast, a much more humid environment with mostly beach towns. We were anxious for our arrival in Antalya as our 8:30 PM to 7:00 AM bus tour consisted mostly of spotty patches of half-hour catnaps and boredom trying to follow the Turkish movie being played.
Antalya was a much bigger city than anticipated and after struggling to find our hotel we were excited to explore the sights. The biggest attraction is the Antalya Museum and naturally we made that our fist stop. We took the coastal route to the museum and were surprised to see (despite it being very gloomy out) how the mountains in the distance come right down to the seashore. While the colors and terrain don’t directly reflect Big Sur, the geographical formations of tree covered mountains running to the ocean reminded us of our engagement weekend up in Central California.
The museum has made a name for itself for the exceptionally well-preserved ruins it has on display from the 2nd century AD. In the 1960’s an archeologist discovered a site by the name of Perge, within which there were nearly perfectly preserved ruins of an entire community. In addition to the statues of Perge, we saw artifacts dating back 2 million years and a huge collection of beautiful coins from the Roman era. One of the other great sites at the museum were the huge sarcophagi that as you can see from the picture below with Jennifer were both massive and very well preserved. 
On our return back to the hotel we stopped by the Roman-era clock tower and the Yivli Minare Mosque. Both of these towering structures stood confidently sound and appeared in a similar fashion as they likely did centuries ago.
After returning to our peaceful poolside room, we threw on our bathing suits and went out to the sun to enjoy the warm weather. Other than dosing in and out of sleep while reading our books, the only other highlight was Sam making a huge seen by knocking over and breaking a glass of wine that he snuck out to the poolside deck. 
We set out to find some dinner and came across a Turkish native that we had bumped into throughout the day exchanging brief hellos and smiles. Although he was on holiday visiting from central Turkey, he still had a recommendation for us on a place to grab some native food. Unfortunately he only knew the name of the place so we wondered the streets with him until we finally stumbled across it. Along the way we found Hadrian’s Gate, which we couldn’t locate earlier in the day. Although we forgot to take a picture we have included an image from the Internet.
Our meal was tasty and halfway through our Turkish friend who had left came back asking if he could join us until his friends were ready to go out. During our time with him we learned all about his family, life in Konya, the Muslim faith and their marriage ceremonies. After dinner we did a little bar hopping enjoying some great live music and capping the night of with a glass of wine at a spot with harbor views.
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