There is only one ruin of note in Didim, so Craig consented to a quick drive by on our way out of town after a very lackluster breakfast at the very lackluster (but cheap) hotel.  The Temple of Apollo was actually pretty nice but somewhat lonely with nothing else around except the modern town crowding in.  In its time, it was the second largest temple in the world, its 122 columns second only to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (one of the Seven Wonders of the World).  But whereas there is virtually nothing left where the Temple of Artemis is today, this temple has significant sections still standing.

It was a long drive through the mountains and along a rocky coastline to our home base for the next few days, Kaş, on the southern coast.  We had another picnic lunch in the car at an overlook as we approached the coast… soda and chips.  This has often been our practice on these driving days, since the breakfasts are usually so large we don’t need a big lunch.

We drove through a valley covered by orange and lemon tree groves, and began to notice numerous home built fruit stands along the side of the road piled high with oranges.  In places there were as many as five in the space of a hundred yards.  Finally we could not resist stopping to buy some oranges from a one of the roadside stands operated by an older lady.  We only wanted a couple oranges each, for a total of four.  That seemed simple enough, hold up four fingers and off we go.  However, with no common language skills, we had a failure to communicate whereby she started to put four kilos of oranges in a bag for us.  Unable to resolve the misunderstanding, we cleverly decided to solve the problem by handing her three Turkish liras, about $1.65, which we figured should be enough to get us four.  However, after she had already put nine in the bag and was reaching for more we realized we had overestimated the value of an orange.  We frantically gestured for her to stop and were able to get through at about the time she hit eleven oranges.  We got more than we expected, and she was paid for more than she gave us, so we all parted happy.

By 5 p.m. we were in Kaş, settling into the Hideaway Hotel with a beer on the rooftop terrace, overlooking the Western Mediterranean and a Greek island just offshore.  It was still a bit windy but we persevered with our beer, with Craig only regretting that he could not be in Juneau.  The town and its location are so beautiful that we planned to stay here three nights, and we were already confident that was a great idea.  And the hotel, despite its rather goofy name, was a gem.  Great breakfasts, friendly helpful staff, and very good dinners as well.  They lay out a vegetarian buffet every night up on the terrace (or just inside depending on the weather) and you can add meat or fish to it for a small additional charge.  We opted for the vegetarian tonight, and it was a plethora of hot and cold vegetarian dishes.  We may never have enough incentive to leave the premises for dinner.