Pamukkale, the Cotton Castles

The Travertines of Pamukkale 

It was the place I'd dreamed of visiting as a child. I remember staring at the National Geographic magazine and saying to my parents "I'm going to go there someday." It was my first memory of a desire to travel. Last weekend, I finally got to do it! It was magical! We entered the site of Pamukkale through the main walking entrance, mesmerized by the mounds of white calcium deposits artfully sculpted by nature, laying before us. I turned around and did a double take, bringing in the beauty behind the cotton castles (the nickname for Pamukkale) -- beautiful mountains that seemed to float in the sky, snow-capped and looming contrasting with the flat valley which lay before us, green and yellow in all it's plainness. It is a wonder to me how such a thing as this has come to be.

Throughout the day, I couldn't stop myself from closing my eyes and taking in every sense. As we sat onto of the calcium pools, after finishing our climb, the rush of a hot stream gushing through its man-made barriers, almost unable to hold back its intensity. The sound of a thousand little streams, slowly trickling down the endless travertines into the pools below, each racing the next to rush down the quickest. We made our way from the bottom of our travertines to the top, wading through perfectly blue shallow warm waters backwashed with bleach white pools made of calcium carbonate. A mere forty degrees Fahrenheit outside, the water was in places, steaming- creating  beautiful view of rising steam all around the travertines. After we reached the top, we sat on the wooden benches and dangled our toes in the warm water before we started exploring the city of Heriopolis- an ancient Roman city that rests on top of the mountain. More on Heriopolis to come...

The whole trip, I felt like a little girl, excited to explore the world again, with eyes open only to the beauty of the world!