I Went Up To Hell And Down to Heaven?

This last weekend we went on another excursion, it was awesome. Our first stop? Heaven and Hell. To get to Hell you take a short walk up a hill where you very suddenly come across a huge hole in the ground. A crevasse, if you will. There is no way down, just straight drops all around, so you can't go to the bottom. But to give you an idea of how deep it is? We dropped a small rock over the edge and counted 10 mississippis before it hit the bottom. It's deep, and I couldn't get a picture to even show the top of the hole.

Heaven is a huge gash in the earth, which creates a deep valley area filled with trees and caves. It really was very beautiful. Unfortunately, you have to descend 455 steep and uneven steps to get there.

At the bottom is the ruins of an ancient church, and behind that is a huge cave, with more wet and slippery steps to climb down. I'm stupid and forgot my shoes, and flip flops don't do well with slippery, so I waited near the top while the others explored the cave.

The worst was going back up those steps. Whew, that's when I knew I was really out of shape.
After our short trip to Heaven and Hell we headed out for Uzuncaburc. This place was cool. It's the site of multiple Roman ruins, and was actual a plot of land designated for the gods, and the main feature was the temple of Zeus. I know, Roman ruins for Zeus? We can't figure it out either. All we know is that they're old, and they're cool.

The thing about ancient sites here is you can climb all over them. There is really no sense of preservation, like in the States. Unless it's behind glass, you can touch, sit on, climb, kick, lie on...whatever. But it sure makes for some fun times.

After Uzuncaburc we went to Kizkalesi which is a beach town. After a late lunch on the beach (check out my GINORMOUS sandwich)...

We checked out the local landmark, the Korykos and Kizkalesi castles. That's right, one landmark, two castles. The story is that the king at one time was told that his daughter would be bitten by a snake and die before her sixteenth birthday, so he built a castle for her out on the sea so she could avoid her terrible fate. Turns out the week before her sixteenth birthday the princess was bitten by a snake that had made its way into a basket of grapes that had been sent over, and she died. Sad huh?

From one castle looking toward the other

We didn't go out to the castle on the sea, but it was so fun to climb all over the ruins of the one on land.

And then we walked along the Mediterranean, enjoying the cool water and the amazing sand.

The sand was really brown, even looked like dirt, but it was so soft and fine!

And then Spencer stepped on a bee...

Haha, Spencer's dad even brought it home with him

Classic. But it was beautiful. The perfect end to a great day.