We set the first non-airplane alarm of the trip last night so we could get up early enough to beat the heat. The forecasted high for today was 108. After a quick hotel breakfast we were at the Hierapolis ancient city shortly before it opened at 8.

After many earthquakes over hundreds of years, much of the city has collapsed. Despite this is we were able to get an idea of the scale of it. There were broken columns and large stone bricks as far as we could see.

It’s safe to say Millie is 110% over ruins. None of our usual tricks worked to keep her engaged. Eventually we just gave up and Nick ran ahead to see the things he wanted to see while I sat in the shade with her.

I passed the time pretending not to be bothered by her incessant scream-whining and finding interesting pieces of ancient pottery. There are shards everywhere. It was cool to later see the full pots in the museum and imagine what each of these pieces were used for.

We met up with Nick again and began the walk towards the one thing Millie was actually interested in, the Travertine pools.

One half of the mountain is completely calcified and a blinding white. It is terraced down with spring fed pools in the rock, fed from the ancient pipes above. It was packed but super cool.

We walked down far enough to get away from the hoards of people. Millie wanted to strip down to swim in the water. We obliged.

The sun was very bright and it was getting hotter and hotter. We lasted until about 11:30 before heading back. We tried to see some things on the way, but the site is so huge that it was impossible to see everything in a morning.

We came back to the hotel and did Sunday movie night during the day to avoid the sun. The movie today was Happy Feet.

We did some swimming to cool down. Millie is now a strong enough swimmer that she can be by herself in the pool (with us watching of course). We reapplied sunscreen approximately 17 times.

We tried to shower but there was no water. Supposedly a citywide outage. After a day of sweating and swimming and endless sunscreen, all I wanted before dinner was a shower. We went to the restaurant looking verrrrrry shiny and red.

We had another reliably good Turkish dinner (kebabs, hummus, spicy tomato dip, lots of bread, watermelon for dessert). Millie didn’t cry over ketchup this time. We have 2 more days left in Turkey. I’ve loved it here but Nick and I both discussed at dinner how we’re excited for something new.

We came back to our hotel where the water is back on. A much-needed shower felt so sweet.