Three weekends ago, I went on a school trip to Antalya. Antalya is a city located on the southern coast of Turkey, where it is warm and beautiful. Actually, on Saturday, it was rainy and cold (which, as I found out afterwards, was the weather all over Turkey), but on Sunday, it was gorgeous. The trip was fun, but rather unorganized. It all started on Friday night, when we met at school to wait for the buses. We were told to be at school by 11:00 PM because the buses were going to come at 11:30. That didn't happen. We were all there on time, but the buses weren't. They didn't come until 1 in the morning, and we didn't leave Afyon until 1:30 AM! The whole trip was kind of like that.
The first place we drove to was Alanya, which is a small city near Antalya. Alanya is about 7 hours away from Afyon. We had two buses, I was on the first one, and my bus kept arriving at places way before the second bus did. For example, we arrived in Alanya an hour before the other bus. So while we were waiting for the other people to arrive, we walked along the beach in Alanya and had breakfast. Once the second bus arrived, we visited Alanya Kalesi (Alanya Castle), which is built on top of a cliff and provides a spectacular view of the city as well as of the coast. The next place we went to was Damlataş Mağarası (Damlataş Caverns). It's this ginormous underground cavern filled with stalagmites and stalactites, which was formed between 20,000-15,000 B.C.
The next place we went to was Manavgat Şelalesi (Manavgat Waterfall). It's a small waterfall, but a pretty one. There was a glass blower near the waterfall, who was making glass animals. He was really talented, and I ended up buying a little family of glass penguins from him.
After seeing Manavgat, we went to Aspendos Theater. It was built in about 155 A.D. by the Greeks and has enough room for 15,000 people! It has been beautifully restored and is amazing. We spent some time there, and then we went to Side, which is another town near Antalya. There are a lot of Roman ruins all over Side, among them, an amphitheater and Temple to Apollo, and even though I had been there once before with my host family, it was cool to see them again.

On Sunday, the first place we visited was Düden Şelalesi (Düden Waterfall). It is a somewhat large waterfall park, and is really pretty. We also saw Kurşunlu Şelalesi (Kurşunlu Waterfall), which is smaller than Düden, but just as beautiful. After that, we went to the main city of Antalya and wandered around there for a bit. Sunday afternoon was a good example of how the trip was unorganized: the group got separated into 3 smaller groups, and it took us 2 hours to locate each other, and then we spent another hour just sitting in a park waiting for the buses. So unfortunately, we wasted three hours that could have been spent doing stuff in the city, but whatever. The trip was still fun. The last place we visited before coming back to Afyon was a beach, Konya Altı Plajı (Konya Altı Beach), to be exact. The ocean was freezing, (that would be the Mediterranean, by the way), so I didn't go swimming. But that didn't deter everyone, we had some insane members of our group who dove right in.

On Sunday evening, we were supposed to leave at 7 and then arrive in Afyon at around midnight. However, like the rest of the trip, this was not on time either: we didn't end up leaving until 10:30, and we arrived in Afyon at 3 in the morning on Monday. So that was fun.
But besides the perpetual lateness and unprepared-ness of the trip, I had a good time. The next school trip will be this Sunday, and it is to Pamukkale. I am planning on going on that trip (and the one in May to Çanakkale as well), so I'll let you know about them when I get back!