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I really am not a morning person. Breakfast at the Colossae five-star hotel and thermal spa in Pamukkale. Lots of European and Asian tour groups. At mealtimes the huge dining room is a reenactment of the Tower of Babel. Which is not here but in Iraq.

My room has a jacuzzi. The water just sits there, though; it’s more like a small swimming pool.

First stop, the necropolis of Hierapolis, a big Phrygian city in Greco-Roman times. Sarcophagi in assorted shapes, some as big as houses. (Yes, we have bigger (much newer) mausoleums back home, fully-furnished with functioning kitchens.)

Then we stopped at the travertines of Pamukkale. That’s not snow on the mountains—the rocks turned white from the mineral deposits of the hot springs.

You can walk barefoot in the hot spring water. I was too lazy to take off boots, socks, leggings, get my feet wet, then put my footwear back on.

During a stop in Afyon I had a coffee and the local specialty: yogurt with honey and opium poppies. “Afyon” means opium, which is their primary crop. Opium is grown under government supervision in Turkey, for medicinal purposes.

The yogurt with honey and opium poppies is delicious. I don’t think I got high, but I can’t tell the difference between my “normal” state and intoxication.

This family of cats lives outside the restaurant where we stopped for lunch. The cats I’ve seen in Turkey are very friendly, or maybe I just reek of cat.

This was the view from my seat for most of the day. We’re driving to Konya, capital of the Seljuk empire. Why is it more exhausting to sit in a bus for an hour than to walk for the same period? I’m almost halfway through the Moby Dick podcasts but I keep drifting into unconsciousness.

This is the “filler” part of the trip; things pick up once we get to Cappadocia. On the other hand I’ve communed with the highways of Asia Minor. This song kept playing in my head.

By the time we got to Konya it was nearly closing time at the Museum of Mevlana (more familiar to us as Rumi) so we put off the visit to the next morning.