Kusadasi/Ephesus October 15

On Tuesday, October 15, we woke up in Kusadasi, Turkiye (how I should have been spelling Turkey all along :-)

Look at that blue sky!!

According to whatsinport.com/kusadasi, just 30 years ago Kusadasi was a sleepy, traditional Turkish seaside village, dependent for its living on fish, farming and honey production.

Guess what is their big money maker now? Tourism! Why? One reason is that many Christians want to see Ephesus. Ephesus is where Paul had a two year ministry and where the disciple John and Jesus mother, Mary, are supposedly buried. With a population of more than 250,000, Ephesus was the fourth largest city in the world.

Ephesus is one of the best preserved ancient classical cities in the eastern Mediterranean. Ephesus was an important seaport as early as 600 BC, but over many centuries silt filled the harbor and today the city is a few miles inland.

Here we are looking at a model of the city as it once was.

Aren't those columns amazing?

I loved the kitties and we saw them all over.

This one looks like Harvey.

Sign above belongs to photo below:

The Bouleuterion housed the meetings of the council (boule) as well as musical performances and contests. The building was erected around 100 AD. There was evidently a roof at one point.

What a grand entrance!!

The weather was glorious and Ephesus was amazing.

Below -- Ephesus was home to a large medical school. This symbol is a serpent entwined rod wielded by the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be used in modern times, where it is associated with medicine and health care.

We are walking down the street. The bus let us out on one side of Ephesus and we literally walked all the way through and the bus picked us up on the other side.

We were walking through a town that was once bustling with people and activity.

Once again -- look at the details - so intricate.

We were headed up the hill to see the Terrace Houses - well preserved Roman homes built on three terraces. These were the homes of wealthy people.

Look at those mosaic floors. They were made by skilled craftsmen and they must have taken hours and hours of labor.

The houses were built on the opposite side of the road from Hadrian's temple.

Hadrian's Temple was built on one of the busiest and best streets in Ephesus and it was on a street that connected Hercules' Gate with the library of Celsus.

The photo below is the public toilets of the time! Seriously. I'm not kidding. You sat down next to others to take care of your personal business. We laughed about not wanting to be the person in the corner!

Our blue shirts look great with the blue sky!! hahaha!

The terrace houses are covered by a roof now.

The houses date back to at least the first century BC and the people had mosaic floors, running water, clay pipes for heating, gorgeous painted frescoes, and more.

The archeologists were hard at work while we were there. It was so cool to see them reconstructing pieces of the homes.

There was graffiti on the walls showing gladiators and animals and words.

Once again - the details were/are amazing.

Look at that view!

Small world -- Susan was traveling with our relative Nathan. Nathan was married to Nancy, Mark's first cousin, until she died of breast cancer about 10 years ago. Nancy is who introduced Mark and me. Mark's family and Nancy's family grew up on the same street togethre so they were close. Nathan and Susan are both doctors and it turns out that Susan was roommates with one of our Tuesday night Young Adult's mother. It sounds crazy confusing - I'm just not doing a good job of explaining it. Eliz, our Tuesday night YA, has taken combined family vacations with Susan's family all of her life! They have taken a lot of photos together so we took this one to send to Eliz. We didn't find out about this until we were on the ship!! That is the library of Celsus behind us -- soooo cool!!

We sat down for just a moment in the shade and Brian shared a little about Paul and Ephesus with us.

This is a huge theater and it is in great shape. It is built of marble and at one time could hold up to 24,000 spectators!! We kept talking about how expensive marble is today when we redo our bathrooms and kitchens . . .and here is a massive theater made of marble.

At this point, we were given some free time in Ephesus. We ended up in the Ephesus Experience museum. We went to find a bathroom and the museum guide told us to do the museum first. It was so amazing!!

After Ephesus, we headed to an outdoor restaurant for lunch.

It looks like we had chicken kebabs and meatballs and rice again :-).

After lunch we headed to another rug shop where we saw how they hand process the silk.

It was so fascinating.

We saw folks making the silk rugs -- these employees weren't children like we saw at the Carpet School.

They took us into a showroom and made shure everyone had a seat. They brought out trays of wine and Raki, which is similar to Greek Ouzo. The young men put on a show of rolling out carpet after carpet - seriously - a show of young men and strength and rugs!

After the show, a LOT of salespeople flooded our group. They were diehard salespeople who didn't want to take no for an answer. I had planned to buy a 2 X 3 or 3 X 4 rug for our powder room but the silk rug was $4800 and I just couldn't bring myself to spend that.

We headed back to the ship and I snapped this photo -- these are the stairs opposite the elevators. Even the stairs look slightly luxurious.

We had dinner reservations in the nice steakhouse that night. It was fun!

I had french onion soup and a petite filet and it was yummy!

The centerpieces were beautiful.