Today we left Istanbul on a 9:00 flight to Izmir. When we arrived there was some confusion about where our bus was allowed to pick us up at the airport, which resulted in a tirade of Turkish argument among our tour guides and the traffic enforcers at the airport. The traffic enforcers won and we had to walk all the way through the covered parking garage out to the front where the bus was allowed to pick us up. That was a little bit of aerobic exercise! We then drove the hour out to Selcuk, near the ruins of Ephesus and the Virgin Mary's house. We went to the Virgin Mary's house first. Its up a steep mountain in a lovely wooded area and is a shrine very popular with Roman Catholics. Legend has it that Mary settled there in her later years, the evidence being the comment Jesus made on the cross giving Mary to the beloved disciple (John) and him to Mary as mother/son. Since John was in Ephesus, the story goes that Mary was there too. Also in the 19th century a German nun, who never left Germany saw visions of Mary in Ephesus and in the house in the woods and when explorers listened to her description and went there they found this little stone house. We walked through the shrine noting the chalice and paten that Pope John Paul II had given and the rosary from Pope Benedict, and then returned to Selcuk for lunch. The food at our lunch place was some of the best we've had yet. It was a buffet of all kinds of delicious Turkish meats, salads, breads, stews etc. Then we returned to Ephesus and toured through the ruins. It was very hot, well in the 90s (which is cooler than the last time I did Ephesus!) but fascinating nonetheless. When we got to the amphitheater, which seats 25,000 we went down on the "stage" area and it was amazing to speak and hear the acoustics in that amphitheater. With no amplification a person who projects his/her voice can be heard clearly all the way at the top of the theater.
On our way out of the ruins, we stopped for Turkish ice cream. It is similar in taste to our ice cream but the consistency is very different - almost like taffy - and the guy who sells it loves to tease tourists by flinging it around in ways you could never fling our ice cream without having it land on the walls! We were pretty grateful for the cold refreshment after the heat of our walk through the ruins. Then we went to a ceramics factory, which has been in the same family for over 700 years and got a demonstration of how the beautiful tiles and ceramics for which Turkey is known is made and we had a chance to do some shopping there. Then we made a stop in Selcuk at a beautiful mosque, where we observed evening prayers and the imam, who is a calligrapher, gave us each a card with a blessing in Arabic on which he wrote our names in Arabic calligraphy as well. At that point we were pretty exhausted and most of us slept on the hour's drive back to Izmir. We stopped for dinner and finally drew up at our hotel at 9 PM. We have to be up at 4 for a 5 AM departure tomorrow for Cappadocia so I've had my evening gin and am ready to crash! Bonnie is so tired she didn't even want a glass of wine this evening!
No comments:
Post a Comment