Thankskilling (The B Movies)

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Countries I've visited via MapLoco

By Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.


China, Mexico, Canada, Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco, England, India, Colombia, Russia, Turkey

Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

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The Walls Closing In

By Jack Brummet

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ATIT Reheated (from 2008): The Roman stadium at Aphrodisias, a/k/a Ἀφροδισιάς a/k/a Afrodesia, Turkey

By Jack Brummet, Eur-Asia Travel Ed.



Afrodite in all her glory, but minus her cabeza,
in the museum at Afrodesia - click to enlarge


Del runs out from the gladiator's entrance to the stadium - click to enlarge


another section of seats - click to enlarge

Aphrodisias, a/k/a Ἀφροδισιάς a/k/a Afrodesia, is in Asia Minor, about 230 km from İzmir.

Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love (and if you've seen her sculptures, you'd believe it), and at this site there once existed her cult image, Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. The city was built near a marble deposit that that was heavily quarried during the Roman period, and the marble sculptors from Aphrodisias became famous in Rome. See Keelin Curran's post about Turkey in Ruins for more information and Afrodesia photos.


A long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The Temple of Aphrodite is a focus of the ruins, and restoration is ongoing. However, what really knocked me out most about Aphrodesias was the stadium. But so did the temple, the statuary, the fantastic relief friezes, The absolutely amazing Bouleuterion (Council House) is on the north side of the North Agora, and is fantastically reconstructed, and on a more human scale. But it was the stadium that enchanted us most--partly because it was used for gladiatorial and wild beast exhibitions (e.g., slaughters), but mostly because of the grand scale. You could feel those 30,000 citizens filling the marble seats.

Can you imagine charging out here to fight your fellow

gladiator with a trident? Click to enlarge


another long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The stadium is thought to be the best preserved of its kind except for the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (which we didn't get to see...yes, we did miss a few ruins!). I would love to see a rock show there one day.

A section of seats at the top of the stadium - click to enlarge

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Drawings from Turkey: Goreme, Cappadocia, Istanbul

Drawings and text by Jack Brummet 

[2'x2' surplus hospital muslin with Sharkie[tm] and pencil]

click to enlarge

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The Roman gladiatorial stadium at Aphrodesias in Turkey

The gladiator stadium at Aphrodesia in Turkey has to be probably my favorite ruin ever (and we've seen them on several continents).  It was massive and very well-preserved.  My sons had a gas leaping around, darting out of the warrior tunnelts.  You could somehow sense the thousands who battled and died there--like the scene in the movie Patton where Gen Patton says to Gen. Omar Bradley, "I was here Brad.  I was here with the Carthaginians two thousand years ago.".  While we were there, we met the guy who was revisiting the place for lonely planet.  He was the only person we saw at these magnificent ruins. We saw a handful of people at the great museum there, but out among the temples and stadiums and theatres, we saw no one.

click to enlarge

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Alien Lore No. 142 - The UFO sightings outside Istanbul, Turkey

Many people in the UFO community, and elsewhere believe this sighting, and video, to be "one of the most significant UFO videos of all time." The footage also shows two extraterrestrials on tape. The sighting/incident took place in a compound in Kumburgaz/Istanbul and was witnessed by nearly a dozen residents and filmed by a night guard (unfortunately I missed it, although I was in the vicinity last summer). The images captured are expected to have a tremendous impact throughout the world and be listed as the most important UFO/extraterrestrial images ever filmed.

As is often the case, thanks to Jeff Clinton for the tip...Jeff is often rumored to be the progeny of President William Jefferson Clinton. He is no blood relation to the soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. . .

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Painting: The collonades at the Ephesus, Turkey ruins

click to enlarge

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Photo: Aphrodite's legs, from the museum at Afrodesia, Turkey

click to enlarge

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The Stadium and other goodies at Aphrodesias/Afrodesia, Turkey

Afrodite in all her glory, but minus her cabeza,
in the museum at Afrodesia - click to enlarge


Del runs out from the gladiator's entrance to the stadium - click to enlarge


another section of seats - click to enlarge

Aphrodisias, a/k/a Ἀφροδισιάς a/k/a Afrodesia, is in Asia Minor, about 230 km from İzmir.

Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love (and if you've seen her sculptures, you'd believe it), and at this site there once existed her cult image, Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. The city was built near a marble deposit that that was heavily quarried during the Roman period, and the marble sculptors from Aphrodisias became famous in Rome. See Keelin Curran's post about Turkey in Ruins for more information and Afrodesia photos.


A long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The Temple of Aphrodite is a focus of the ruins, and restoration is ongoing. However, what really knocked me out most about Aphrodesias was the stadium. But so did the temple, the statuary, the fantastic relief friezes, The absolutely amazing Bouleuterion (Council House) is on the north side of the North Agora, and is fantastically reconstructed, and on a more human scale. But it was the stadium that enchanted us most--partly because it was used for gladiatorial and wild beast exhibitions (e.g., slaughters), but mostly because of the grand scale. You could feel those 30,000 citizens filling the marble seats.

Can you imagine charging out here to fight your fellow

gladiator with a trident? Click to enlarge


another long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The stadium is thought to be the best preserved of its kind except for the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (which we didn't get to see...yes, we did miss a few ruins!). I would love to see a rock show there one day.

A section of seats at the top of the stadium - click to enlarge

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America v The United States, in Greece or Turkey, anyway...

In both Turkey and Greece, when people asked where I was from. I said "The Unites States'" For a while. . .but when ever you said United States, they would almost always say back "ah, America." And so it became America. And I got to like saying it.

People were careful about demarcating America from the United States. The United States was President Bush and his war. America was Coca Cola, rock and roll, hip hop, and blue jeans; America was where relatives immigrated and did OK for themselves. I don't think I ever met a Greek (and a number of Turks as well), in our month there, who didn't have a cousin, uncle, or sister living in America. I've heard it's jingoistic to call ourselves America, when you also have our pals in the frozen north, Mexico, and Central America, who might also lay claim to that name. America.

Not only did I begin using the word America, but I was often reduced to describing where I hailed from as California. Maybe 10 or 20% of the people had heard of Seattle--but surprisingly enough, I met people who had been there, knew where it was, or had a shirt-tail relative there. But most people's faces fogged when you said Seattle, so it became sometimes this place up near Canada, or, more often, "just up the coast from California." And they got that. Images of California are common due to all the movies and television shows. Everyone knew New York City. And people often mentioned Los Angeles, Chicago, and Florida.
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Kara Güneş - great street music from Istanbul, Turkey

One of my favorite musical experiences in Turkey were the times I watched Kara Güneş play on the Istikal Cad (a block or two from our apartment in Istanbul). I bought a great CD of music from them (it home-made, burned), with 13 tunes. You can hear four or five of their songs on their myspace site.



They play on the street a lot, as well as other venues, and are very good, and pretty young. I don't know a lot about them, other than they attract large crowds on Istikal (a very musical neighborhood) and most of what is written about them is in Turkish. They play native instruments and drums, but listening to their music, they I hear hints of musics from the west like rock and blues and folk/country accents of string band music. At times, their music reminds me of the jazz band Oregon, when they were really soaring...

Among the little I've been able to discover about them is that the late Kemal Kan, a Turkish director and writer, directed a movie of the same title once. I don't even know the titles of their songs, since the CD I bought from them didn't have functioning ID3 tags...so they're song 1, song 2, etc.
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Poem: Rocks, flowers, and walls

Ruins at Knossos - click to enlarge

I sometimes see the faces of Turks and Greeks
Fog in bafflement
When a tourist snaps a photograph

Of a pile of shattered bricks
Or a hole in the ground.
I can almost channel their thoughts:

Don't you have your own
Rocks, flowers, and walls
In America, Holland, and France?

Did you really come this far,
This 12,000 miles
To take pictures of a dog?
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On the move again,from Rhodes to Seteia, Crete

We're kind of in the phase of our trip like "If it's Tuesday, it must be Rome." After two days on the island of Rhodes, we are flying to Seteia on the island of Crete tomorrow afternoon. A lot of these flights are costing an incredible $3o USD (pretty amazing when you consider that gasoline, and presumably, kerosene (aka jet fuel) costs about $11 USD a gallon (quit your belly achin' America). When we refilled out rental car with 7 gallons, the tab was $75 USD.

The trip on the ground, in the air, and on the water so far::::::::::::::: fly Seattle--> to Calgary-->to London-->to Istanbul (stayed a week)--> fly to Izmir-->drive to Selcuk (stayed three days)-->Drive from Selcuk-->to Datca (stayed three days)-->Drive from Datca-->to Marmarise-->sail to Rhodes, Greece (stayed two days)-->fly to Seteia, Crete, Greece.

From Seteia, we will take a bus to Heraklion, Crete and visit the famous, awesome, and controversially reconstructed ruins at Knossos (where Icarus and Daedalus flew their ill fated mission) and the home of King Minos, anwhich Keelin and I visited previously in 1982. From Heraklion, we will sail to Naxos, and then to Santorini, and finally to Piraeus (which is the port for Athens). After a couple days in Athens visitd all the bull worshipping. After visiting the great ruins there, we will board a plane for home. Wah.
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The Food In Turkey ( a very subjective take)

Turkish breakfast




The Turks claims this is one of the six countries in the world that is food self-sufficient. They grow everything they eat and drink. At least that’s what they claim. I’m not so sure about the Coca Cola (or the just as good and half the price Turka Cola). I don’t know who the other five countries are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one is Mexico.

On the whole, Turkish food is serviceable. I’ve never had bad food here, but then again, I’ve never had great food. In general the quality level doesn’t vary much. And there are roughly 12 dishes that you see everywhere, and they rarely have many local or creative twists.

The number one snack food on the street is grilled corn, which somehow came here from the new world and became a local favorite. Istanbul in particular has hundreds of grilled corn carts, but I saw it in most other cities as well. You also see carts selling incredible tasting almonds and pistachios.

The soups, both lentil-based and tomato based ones are very subtly spiced (usually no or little garlic and almost never spicy). They are almost always good. There is also a nice vermicelli soup in a tomato base, with oregano and mint.

Fresh squeezed orange juice is everywhere, and it’s cheap ($1 or $2 USD)and great. They also have excellent cherry, apricot, peach, and pomegranate juices.


Lahmacun, a respectable Turkish version of pizza

You see lime trees everywhere, and I’ve seen them in vegetable stalls a few times, but they are mostly ignored in favor of lemons. However, the most common form of lemon is bottled lemon juice, which is like bottled lemon juice everywhere…that is, pathetic. I think my time in Mexico has left me far preferring lime to lemon. Additionally, the fresh lemons never seem vibrant here, but always seem a little tired, like the peppers.

Mezes – Usually cold starters that include spreads, dolmades, and other nibbles. They are almost strictly vegetarian, and would be a good option for our veggie pals, and most of it would even work for more extreme vegan-Taliban.

You would have to work extremely hard here to maintain a gluten-free diet. The salads and soups would probably be safe, as would sis kebap. You could eat the pilaf, but sometimes, they have broken pieces of vermicelli in it, which would not work for celiacs. There are a lot of fruits and vegetables and meats, so you could piece something together, but it would not be easy.


Rice Pilaf. This is a much beloved food, but, alas, I find it pretty subpar and almost always far too oily. Of course, I have much the same complaint about restaurant risotto, and restaurant paella too.

Pizza. They have their own take on pizza (pide) — one comes with cheese, and the other with minced lamb, with a few other variations. The crusts are baked in a wood fired oven, and are excellent. You get a small pizza (enough for one person) for around $2.75 US.

Tea, or Çay (pr: chai). The number one beverage. Çay is served in delicate, small fluted glasses, usually with a couple lumps of sugar and a tiny spoon on the saucer. It’s very good tea. They also serve (but don’t drink themselves) a very tasty apple tea. One turk told me he drinks dozens of glasses of Çay a day.

Turkish Coffee – Is a suspension of water, coffee grounds and sugar. I used to drink it many years ago, at Greek restaurants, but I don’t have the heart for it anymore. When you finish, there is about an inch of sludge in the demitasse cup. People will read your fortune in it, like they do in tea leaves in the western world. Some places have espresso, which I’ve avoided. I don’t think I’ve seen a Starbucks here. I’ve been making do with one cup of the ubiquitous and execrable Nescafe, and am almost decaffeinated. Now I just have to quit drinking Turka Cola light.

Sis kebap, or Shish Kabob. Usually lamb. It is never bad, and is often very good. The marinated lamb (or chicken) is cooked over charcoal, and often served with eggplant, roasted tomatoes, and other vegetables.

Doner – Like the Gyro often served in America, but better because they don't put too much meat on. Lamb or chicken is cooked on a vertical rotisserie and as the meat chars a carver slices off thin slices for your sandwich. It is served on something like a Pita (Pide), but much better, with usually tomatoes, a little onion (never enough) and a touch of sauce (tomato or yoghurt based). These are great, ubiquitous, cheap, and pretty clean (e.g. very little oil).

Yoghurt – Yoghurt here is great, and comes in many varieties. In fact, at the grocery store, the yoghurt choices are mind-bending. The yoghurt section is an emormous aisle and very little distinguishes the dozens of varieties to the non-Turkish reader. So far our random selections have all been good.

Turkish Breakfast – This meal often gets you through from 9 AM to 6 PM. The basics include some fruit (apricots, or oranges); sometimes a feta-like cheese, and another local mild cheese; at least two kinds of olives—oil cured black ones, or brine-cured green olives; baskets of the good and ubiquitous French bread; cherry and strawberry jams; margarine or butter; Çay (Tea) or Nescafe (powdered instant coffee with milk); often an omelet or a boiled egg; and sometimes yoghurt. Breakfast was always good. A bagel like bread was often served too, almost always with sesame seeds baked into the crust. It is my favorite bread.

Shepherd’s salad – usually tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, parsley and olive oil. They give you wedges of lemon to season it, salt and pepper, and bread. Honestly, it’s kind of a feeble Greek Salad a/k/a Choriotiki…

Eggs – Eggs are very similar to those in Mexico…extremely fresh, with bright orange yolks. They come ten to a carton. A dozen is not a frame of reference here.

Drink – Some of the local wines are very good. Interestingly, alcohol is taxed at the grocery store at 18%. Efes Pilsner, a local brew is very good. Three or four other beers are available: Carling, Miller High Life, and two more local beers. Raki, an anisette beverage is fiery, and pretty good if you have just one or two. Foreign liquor goes for $40 to $80 a bottle, but locally made vodka (votka), gin, and raki is reasonable. The local version of diet Coke is very good (Turka Cola) and half the price of the American stuff.


Wines made in this region are reasonable (10-15 USD), and pretty good, but you also see really mediocre wines from elsewhere, like Yellowtail from Australia, selling for $40. A bottle of French wine we buy in the US for around $15 goes for $60. In short, stick with the local wines, liquors, and beers, or just drink Çay.

The local "French" bread is very good, and they serve it at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It goes for an incredibly cheap seventy-five cents at the bakery...still warm.

The two times we’ve had a kitchen in an apartment, I have gone to the grocery store and cooked dinners (like I do in Mexico). Shopping in a Turkish grocery store is like being on drugs …you aren’t even sure what about half the goods are and the labels and pictures don’t often tell you what is inside. A package of Oregano may have a picture of a monkey and it is ground more like we grind thyme (when you can even see the packet’s contents). As always, vegetables are the easiest to buy, since they’re not packaged. I can tell when they are ripe, old, expensive, etc. Meat is tricky—the cuts are far different than ours, although they treat chicken exactly the same as we do. I could usually tell what I was looking for by the texture. Cheese was a total crap shoot—we locked onto one we liked and stuck with that.


Fruit was like fruit anywhere, and the best here seem to be cherries and apricots and oranges, and, of course, watermelons, which Turks love. Every day you see dozens of trucks hauling in watermelon and a large percentage of people you see on the street are carrying one home. It is a frequent desert.

They love baked potatoes here. The potatoes are basically Russets, and they serve them with all sorts of toppings. Yoghurt, of course, and various dips and spreads, and chicken, and olives, and salt and pepper.

Although most of the vegetables are excellent, the peppers are always a bit tired. And don’t try to buy just one banana or head of garlic! You take the whole stalk, or nothing, and if you break the rules, you get a good-natured scolding.

I was cooking dinner last night (sis kebap, Greek salad, and tortilla Espagnole) and I had Del run to a store to buy salt. He had to draw a picture of a table with diners and a salt shaker. Finally someone in the store said “[in Turkish] Oh, he wants saray tuz!” When Claire went to buy feta the first time, we ended up with goat cream cheese. Two times I ended up with buttermilk when trying to buy sweet milk. It’s always an adventure…
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Turkey in Ruins

By Keelin Curran
All This Is That History and Archeology Editor






Turkey is in ruins, and fully alive at the same time. I love ruins, and did not fully realize when we selected this destination for our trip exactly how much in heaven I would be here tramping around the churches, columns and caves.


A salvaged frieze from the Temple of Afrodesias


Aphrodite (aka Venus) herself, from the Afrodesia Musem of statuary, friezes, etc. Click to enlarge.

In college, one of my sidelines was Greek archeology. I even took a few semesters of Ancient Greek. On one of our earlier trips to Greece, I tracked down a just-discovered (1979) Minoan temple site destroyed by an earthquake in 18th century BC—Anemospilia—see http://www.uk.digiserve.com/mentor/minoan/anemospilia.htm based on the xeroxed information my professor at Hunter College (whose name I don’t recall, but who was an acolyte of renowned Greek archeologist Emily Vermeule) had handed out to the class.


The gate to the Temple of Aphrodite. Click to enlarge.


A close-up of the gates. Click to enlarge.

I travelled by bus, and tramped around the hills near Iraklion to find it. It was not much—just three rooms you could imagine based on the stone foundations, but they had done sacrifices there that brought the place to life—and death--as this passage describes:


Del Brummet ponders a statue of a philosopher in the excellent Afrodesias Museum. Click to enlarge.

“The west room is, in many ways, the most interesting. . . . [t]his room was used for blood sacrifices. Uniquely in Crete, three skeletons were found in the room. Two of these people, a man and a woman, had been killed by the earthquake and resulting fire. Another male skeleton was also found in the room. This body was found lying on an altar. A knife was resting on the skeleton. The feet had been tied and it has been argued that the young man had been sacrificed and the blood drained from his body. If so, it might well have been his blood in the vessel found in the antechamber next to the skeleton. It is most likely that the normal victims of sacrifice would have been bulls, but in the face of seismic activity which threatened the whole community, it may have been considered necessary to make a human sacrifice.”


Colum Brummet emerges from the gladiator's tunnel at the vast 30,000 seat stadium at Afrodessia. Click to enlarge.

This is about as dramatic as it gets in the ruins world, but well illustrates the open-ended speculation (along with tolerance for sifting and digging) required to do this work.


The 30,000 seat stadium & gladaiatorial venue at Afrodesia.

Anyway, since that 1982 trip to Anemospilia, I haven’t been able to indulge my ruins interest until the last few weeks. The family has been most accommodating in patiently going along on trips to see Agia Sofia in Istanbul, (not a ruin, an amazing, living space from 6th C BC but still a lasagna of one culture on top of another, as ruins often are), the cave dwellings and churches of Goreme, and more recently, the ruins riot that is Ephesus, and most dreamily, the ruins of Afrodisias.

I barely know where to start in talking about these experiences. Goreme and Cappadocia were the most mysterious and humbling. These cave refuges of troglodytes and early Christians were often built at great heights above the current ground level—or far below ground. How did they get up there? How did they tolerate long seasons underground? You have a sense about how scared these people must have been, much of the time, threatened by Hittites and Romans et al. The spaces are so small. They would have known everything about each other—a contrast from our life of screens and large dwellings. And the simple, repetitive and sometimes beautiful scenes of the life of Christ in these churches give one the sense of how much reinforcement is necessary to start a religion from the ground up.


Jack in the Bouletarian theatre that served as the ruling council's meeting place as well as a theatre and performance space.

Then, Ephesus and Afrodisias. These two cities give a living sense of Roman life, in its beauty and brutality. The museum near Ephesus had a riveting exhibit on gladiator culture in ancient Rome, complete with an analysis of the wounds suffered by gladiators based on the skeletal evidence. This culture existed among the beautiful marble buildings and statues; blood and circuses and Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe. Yet you can not help but compare the artistry born of imperial ego, politics, wealth and will in these urban spaces with those we inhabit and find our world poverty-stricken in comparison.

At Afrodisias, up until the last few decades, the town of Gehre was built right on top of Afrodisias. Townspeople built there modest houses braced by the bottoms of roman columns, and crushed their grapes in roman baths. The Temple of Aphrodite, unreconstructed, was a field for their livestock. Seeing the pictures of Gehre (since moved a few kilometers, sadly, to allow the excavation) gives one the sense of how we are just the latest layer in this earth lasagna.

Okay, I will stop. Thanks to you All This Is That readers for indulging me in this Turkey travelogue. We have more ruins to go, so life is very, very good for that reason and all the others that make travel so great.
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Poem: Moslems vs. Nazarenes vs. Pagans

1.
Moslem shepherds steal ınto the strange caves wıth paintıngs
And scratch the eyes out and throw stones at the heads
of figures on the frescoes.

2.
The Crusades.

3.
The Christians charge in
And carve crosses into the foreheads
Of fallen statues in the Roman ruins

Like somehow that will make up for
Whatever they did or didn't belıeve

4.
A lot of us don't belıeve this
But they were all people just like you and me.
And ın some strange way
They were just all tryıng to save each other.
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Pıgeon Valley ın the Goreme

click to zoom in on Pigeon Valley

Our last trip in the Goreme was to Pigeon Valley. The views were incredible, and the shops pathetic. I mention the shops, because this was perhaps the one time our driver stopped by a site where he might have been im cahoots with the merchants. We were, as always, stalwart ın our defenses against The Merch. The offerings were the usual, and as always iın Turkey, they were not overly aggressive. We came for the views and that's all we took away with us. Selah.

İt was a great road trıp, but in retrospect, having had a car a few days ın Selcuk and Efes, we're pretty good at operating our own tours. But our driver dıd cap it off by giving us a watermelon feast iın a meadow across from the caravanserai.

click to enlarge

Our driver was a good guy, and we all liked hıs grandson Abdullah... Anyhow, I am still a litle out of order here. . .İ have yet to write about our day ın Ankara, the plane flight to Selcuk, or even the really fascinatıng bus rıde from Ankara (thumbs up to Turkish Aır!). And I stıll need to write about Ephesus. And my essay on Turkish cuisine. And our Pensione owner ın Goreme. And, after today, our visit to St. John The Baptist's basilica, and Ephesus, of course, not to mention the fantastic Ephesus Museum.

Colum, our driver, Abdullah, and Del - click to enlarge

We didn't learn much about this valley, but there are hundreds of dwellings carved from the tufa hillsides, as well as a lot of stone and masonry houses constructed as infill (real estate name drop).

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Ephesus: my favorite ruins of all time

The Theatre at Ephesus - clıck to enlarge

İ'll write about this more, when I get 'net access and some free time again,m but Ephesus ıs by far the most impressive ruins I have ever seen ın Europe or Asıa. Here ıs one quick photograph of the theatre. It held 25,000 people. It stıll does. We were hoping to be able to catch a performance there (can you ımagine how cool ıt would be to see a play a play by Sophocles Aeschylus there?).

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The Selime Monastery and the İlhara Gorge

OK....the internet here in our hotel is sketchy to say the least, complıcated by the Turkish keyboard, whıch ıs dıfferent enough that it took me half an hour to figure out whıch keys to hit to log in...

The İlhara Gorge

The Ilhara Gorge - The family hiked with our young friend Abdullah through the Ilhara gorge. My knee was killing me (since in remission...I thınk I torqued it ın that run of eıght mıle walkıng days up and down the steep steps and hılls of Istanbul...ıt seems good for more abuse now), so I waited for them at the end, where I wrote a poem (see: http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2008/06/poem-in-greme.html), drew two pictures, and drank three glasses of chai.

Claıre and Jack drinkıng chai on the creek at the end of the gorge

Inside the sanctuary

We also vısıted another church in the hills,(The Selime monastery). Yes, another cave church, but this was the most elaborate and complex of any we visited in Gorem (and we visited at least six or seven). The church itself was far more archıtectural and elaborate that the cruder ones we'd see hacked out of tufa ın the Underground City. The sanctuary was a very tall barrel vaulted structure with two domed apses on a T ın the front. The frescoes were again paınted by schooled artists, and the overall finish seemed to indicate that the people who buılt this ıntended ıt to be more permanent.

The outside of the Monastery

Claire and Abdullah ın a room ın a cave ın the monastery

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