Turkey - Wednesday 5th October

Another gorgeous day, and we rocked up super early to beat the cruise ships crowds, to the ancient city of Ephesus.

The first thing you notice is that there are lots of marble pillars lying round the place, until you keep walking through and they have actually reconstructed the ruins to reflect what the city would have looked like. Awesome. 

 Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Turkey. In the Roman period, Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world.The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Gospel of John may have been written here.

Goddess of Victory - Nike. Can you see the tick?

There were masses of cool Greek carvings and stuff, like Nike, the goddess of victory, and there was also the meanest cat in Turkey. We also got told that apparently cats was the reason that Prussia beat the Egyptians in one of the many ways they had. The Prussians gathered up big sacks of cats and when it came to the battlefield they pulled the cats out and all the Egyptians dropped to their knees and the Prussians attacked…..myth? I think so.

The best thing we saw was the The Library of Celsus, was originally built c. 125 AD in memory of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, an Ancient Greek. Designed with an exaggerated entrance — so as to enhance its perceived size, the building faces east so that the reading rooms could make best use of the morning light. It really is amazing that this is still standing in Turkey which is bit on a fault line.

Sally what did you teach Lou about stray animals?

Another awesome structure was the amphitheatre which could hold 45,000 people in it's day and is said to be the largest outdoor theater in the ancient world. Out guide sang us a little song in the theatre which was pretty cool.

Ruins ready to be put back together

We had lunch in a beautiful little restaurant in the middle of nowhere, there were pear trees everywhere and we sat outside under the trees while we ate our Goremes, which are Turkish pancakes, thing layers of pancake mix with spinach, feta and eggplant. Delicious.

After lunch we went to a Carpet Making "museum" which was a thinly veiled attempt to hide the blatant carpet selling that was going on. It was amazing to see how they are made and how much work goes into them, but then the guide took us underground into this maze of corridors with carpets everywhere and we had a feeling that we weren't going to get out alive.

They buttered us up with Raki, the local Turkish spirit, which tastes like liquorice (e.g. heinous), and then he proceeded to show us about 500 carpets, which got a little tedious in the end. A few people in our group went into negotiations with buying a carpet but we made a quick escape and sat in the sun to wait.

Hamish on the Raki or Lions milk as the Turks call it.

It was a scorcher of a day so when we got back to our hotel we sat by the pool which was nice to chill out. Then we walked down to the habor of Kusadasi to see all the cruise ships up close. We had a drink at a waterfront bar and enjoyed being by ourselves rather than in a group of 35! It was a beautiful evening and we watched the sun go down which was just spectacular.

Dinner was the normal buffet of salads, random combinations and a couple of westernised hot dishes (on a side note, they started serving hot chips for breakfast at this hotel….)

Highlight: Seeing the ruins reconstructed,makes it come to life and almost makes you feel like you are on a film set!
Lowlight: We weren't huge fans of the carpet making experience, felt very salesy.
Interesting Fact: There was an underground tunnel built from the Library in Ephesus under the road to the brothel opposite, apparently husbands and wives would come to town and the husband would go to the "library" but actually go to the brothel.