Isn't Turkey an awesome place.
For anyone with even a passing interest in history, Turkey should be at the top of your desired world destination list.
Many of the major events and significant, defining places of Western and Christian history are actually located in modern day Turkey. The people are incredible, the history multi-layered and never ending, the geography varied and the tea, ever-present and ever-available, is unforgettable.
It's interesting to see Greek ruins, with Roman structures built on top, like the stadium at Aphrodisias, and then other places with Ottoman structure built on top of Roman, very cool.
This is very typical of history, especially religious sites. There are often half a dozen layers or more of temples below the modern day mosques or churches.
In addition, most of us don't think much past Roman or Greek civilizations, but there are many sites in that part of the world that contain layers of past civilizations that we've never even heard of.
It is a sobering reminder that civilizations come and go for a variety of reasons, internal and external, controllable and uncontrollable. We returned to the U.S. with a different perspective on the "permanence" of Western civilization relative to those we'd been exposed to that lasted thousands of years only to completely disappear. History can be a great teacher - if you let it.
Seeing all your pictures, I bet you have been to Morocco. Awesome place and great ruins there too.
Not yet, but hope to do the northern tier of Africa one of these days.
Love the chariot groove shot.
