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Thursday, April 30th, 2009

It’s really spelled Ephesus, but I’ve been having trouble pronouncing it for some reason and these letters help. We took a bus (a nice big coach this time) to Kusadasi in order to be near Ephesus as well as the ferry to Greece, our next stop.

Our time here in Turkey is winding down, but we had one last amazing day at Ephesus. It was a city of nearly 250K people that flourished from about 800BC to 400AD. St. John and St. Paul lived here too. The ruins are extensive and some buildings and streets are nearly complete. There are remains of everything from a 20K-seat stadium, a theater, and houses to baths and even public latrines. It was fantastic to walk through it all imagine people going about their daily lives two thousand years ago.

Before we came here, we thought Egypt was THE place for archeological sites, but Turkey turned out to be a great place to discover some history.  Here’s the Library of Celsus in Ephesus:

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The American Outpost

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

 In our last few weeks of traveling through Dubai, Egypt, and Turkey, we’ve heard very little English except on CNN or BBC.  Occasionally we’ve met some Brits, but no Americans… until we got to Kas (it’s actually spelled with a “special” S character that I don’t have on my keyboard and pronounced like kosh).  We were a little early for the normal tourist season here, but the few people in the hotels, boats, and restaurants all seemed to be American.  We met quite a few nice people here and it was refreshing to hear those Yankee accents again.  I’m curious as to why we were all drawn here, but always glad when I see Americans getting out there and traveling.

Kas has a lot more to offer than just a being a “little US” on the Mediterranean. We heard that there was an ancient amphitheater from the 1st century BC (“restored” in the 2nd century AD), and it turned out to be just behind our hotel.  It’s almost completely intact and could seat about 3000 people.  The amphitheater isn’t the only interesting historical site here though.  The are tombs from the Lycian period everywhere – even in the middle of town.  We also took a boat ride to Kekova where there are sunken ruins on the shoreline and underwater where the city collapsed during an earthquake.  There are quite a few other significant places around the area from these and Roman periods which combined with the beautiful Turquoise Coast make this one of my top “must return” spots.

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Stuffed

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

For those of you familiar with Turkish and Greek food, the word “dolmas” will make your mouth water. We found out that it actually means “stuffed”, as in leaves, peppers, other veggies filled with rice, meat and seasonings. There is a very similar word in Turkey, “dolmus,” which refers to the local mini-buses, and we now know why.

We flew south to warmer temperatures and arrived in Antalya. To get from there to Kas, we needed to catch a bus which everyone assured us would be very easy. It was, but instead of the big tourist coaches, the only one leaving when we needed to go was a mini-bus, a large van really, with names of various cities it would stop at on the front. It seemed pretty nice and very cheap, so we hopped on and started out with a few other people on board. As we pulled out of town, person after person flagged down the driver and either handed him packages to deliver or came aboard themselves. Pretty soon all the seats were filled, but the driver still stopped for more people. He pulled out some little plastic stools and plunked them down in the narrow aisle between the seats. More people got on. More luggage and boxes were shoved into the space in back of the seats until duffle bags spilled over onto the heads of those in the last row. Finally satisfied that there was no more room he pulled out with 22 passengers in a vehicle about the size of our campervan in NZ.

The next thing he did was to pass around a bottle of what I can only describe as “lemon pledge” scented cologne. Just about everyone splashed on a little, so that soon the whole bus was citrusy. I supposed the smell could have been worse, so we were actually thankful for that. We spent the next 4 hours squashed into our seats, holding our bags on our laps. The bus was truly stuffed and so were we.

The happy ending is that we arrived safely in Kas and woke up to beautiful sunshine, blue skies, and blue sea. It was worth every minute on the dolmus.

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Shopkeeper’s Philosphy

Friday, April 24th, 2009

We’ve spent the rest of the week in Istanbul taking in a few more sights and doing some research and planning for the next part of the trip. We visited the Grand Bazaar, the Egyptian/Spice Bazaar, and the Topkapi Palace. While the palace is beautiful, the treasury within it holds incredible examples of huge jewels and religious relics, one of which is supposedly the Staff of Moses. Is it real? What do you believe? In any case, it was good to be the Sultan.

While I still haven’t learned to sleep through the Muezzin’s call in the morning yet, I am starting to really like the food here. The kebaps, the pide bread, and pastries are so good. Surprisingly there is also a growing wine industry here. Although many restaurants don’t serve alcohol, you can find wine in some shops. Unfortunately we don’t know much about the types of grapes or regions here, so choosing one has been a game of chance. When Eric puzzled over why a very small bottle was more expensive than a much larger one, the clerk gave us some advice to live by, “Good money, good drink.”

A view of the palace:

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East (almost) meets West

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

We arrived in Istanbul to a beautiful sunny spring day and tulips everywhere. The drive from the airport is lined with these flowers in every color imaginable. It was a nice introduction to the city and we’re starting to settle in here. We’ve got our Abkil (a weird little smart key device that you can prepay for all the buses and trains), and have been getting around pretty easily on the metro.

We’ve walked through the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and the Taksim area, but the real highlight for me was the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia). The soaring dome inside is amazing, but even more so when you realize that it’s about 1500 years old and has survived earthquakes, wars, and religious conversions. It was the largest Christian church in the world at one point, but was then transformed into a Mosque, and finally a museum. Supposedly the Statue of Liberty could fit inside with room to spare. It’s certainly amazing and makes me wonder how they built it when the rest of Europe was in the dark ages.

We also took a ferry up the Bosphorus, the divider between two continents. Istanbul straddles this waterway and is the only city that is in both Europe and Asia. We had a great idea that we’d have breakfast in Europe, lunch in Asia, and then dinner back in Europe again. The fog didn’t cooperate however and the ferry had to turn around about 3/4 of the way up the channel. “Very Dangerous” was the reason, and we weren’t going to argue. We settled for all three meals on the west side of town. The east will have to wait.

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