Alahan it to you

Turkey keeps getting more and more beautiful.

We drove north today from Silifke towards Konya and stopped en route to switch vehicles. This was because we were making a detour up to a mountaintop to a 5th century monastery, and our bus would never make it up the hairpin turns.

In our vans, I remembered a sentiment I'd felt several times this trip, of really preferring the idea of staying on the road, as the local drivers confidently winged up the winding gravel road.









But it was worth the trip.





Home of Basilian Nuns, Alahan Monastery was built in the late 5th and early 6th centuries.














One of its remarkable elements was the cruciform baptismal font, with three steps down and three steps out which reveals the individual's dying with Christ (see Paul in Romans 6:3-5) in the mystery of the Trinity:




















You can see the font through the window--





The easternmost church was the most complete:














It was doing well with arch support:















All in all, it was a mountaintop experience: