This weekend was almost a long weekend - that is, we had Tuesday off so we logically took the Monday off and made it a 4-day weekend. What to do with so much free time? I know: last minute trip! My friends Brad and Rachel and I found a great deal for an all-inclusive trip to the western coast of Turkey. The location was chosen both for its proximity to a great archeological site, and because it was bound to be warmer and sunnier than Vienna!!
We flew off Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. Yawn! The upside of travelling so early is that we arrived at our hotel early afternoon, so we didn't waste a day travelling. Upon arrival, we threw our stuff into our room and went to look around the place a little. Then we wanted to go into Kusadasi, a nice town just down the coast a little. We walked out to the main road to wait for the minibus that supposedly ran every 30 minutes. After about 25 minutes wait (because of course we had just missed the previous one), a minibus came our way. Hooray? Not so much: the bus is quite full. The three of us are standing there, and the driver asks us if one or two people want to get on. Ummm, no. So he drives off. OK, now what? Conveniently, a taxi drives by and stops to pick us up.
In Kuşadasi, we wandered around the beach a bit, and then made our way to one of the bazaars. We looked at touristy crap, nice things too, lovely ceramics, etc. Some shop owners helpfully and laughingly told us they would like to take our money. Kind of nice to be so direct. We ended up in a carpet store, with the full attention of Mike the salesman.
We spent about 90 minutes in that shop, looking at a thousand variations on carpets. Mike was very nice, chatting with us while at the same time asking questions to figure out which carpets to show us. We were served hot apple tea - twice, and only after such a long time did the haggling really begin. The trick is to seem rather uninterested, and start your offer at about 50% of their price. But it's usually done quite amicably, without too much pressure, so it's all good. Brad and Rachel left with two rough wool carpets in geometric patterns. I splurged a bit and took with me a small (really small) 100% silk carpet. I plan of using it as a wall hanging, it's too beautiful to walk on!
We then went in to dinner. The food was buffet style of course, with plenty of options so that we were quite happy with every meal. I think I had olives and some sort of creamy white cheese at every meal - so good! After dinner, we sat ourselves in the lounge area with some drinks. We chatted and played cards while listening to the... music-making person in the corner. Not sure what to call him: he had an electronic keyboard, which he was tolerable at, but he also proceeded to
The next morning, we headed off to Ephesus. It is the ruins of an entire city, including baths, library, houses etc., though only part of the city has been excavated. Legend has it the Amazons first founded the city, but who knows? In its heyday as a major port, it had about 200,000 citizens, the 2nd largest city anywhere. We walked around the site with our guidebook, soaking in the history and the atmosphere. It was fabulous, very impressive. There was one covered area, designed to protect the fragile frescoes and mosaics of the rich people's houses that had been excavated. We were some of the few tourists who paid to go into that area, and boy was it worth it!
We then headed to the closest town, Selçuk. There we first visited the Epehsus museum, containing some of the finds from 50 years of excavation on the site.
After that, we wandered a bit until we found the Basilica of St John (the Apostle) at the top of a hill. Selçuk is where St. John and the Virgin Mary came in about 50 A.D. to escape persecution. The basilica is where St John is purported to have written his Gospel. The Basilica is in complete ruin, but enough remains to give an idea of the size and importance of this site. It is also where the tomb of St John is located.
Just before we left the Basilica, as we were looking at the Isa Bey mosque, the call to prayer began. It was a strange, peaceful yet impressive feeling to be at a site of such Christian religious import while listening to the song of the muezzin. By the way, I really do love that sound!
We got back to the hotel early, and ended up in our room after dinner to watch some TV and just relax. That was half the purpose of this vacation anyways. :-P
We then went in search of a restaurant for lunch. We ended up right next to the harbour, where we chose a variety of fish and seafood dishes. I'm not much of a seafood fan usually, but most of these dishes were fantastic! Especially these little fishies (anchovies? sardines? one of them, anyways) that were fried to a crisp - so they were fish fries, really. Yummy!
We strolled away the afternoon around Kusadasi and Pigeon Island, and returned to the hotel for another beach sunset watch. For some reason, all three of us were exhausted at this point, so after dinner we went right back to our room. We were all asleep quite early. Now, this was a very good thing, because we had to get up at the unholy hour of 3 A.M. to catch the bus to the airport.
All in all, a wonderful little break!
And to wrap up this blog post, here are a few non standard pictures I took along the way:
Banana flower
Ancient scribble (translated) on a wall in Ephesus
Beware of falling woman?
The barman insisted on making me a drink. It's got 3 kinds of alcohol, about a kilo of sugar and every possible decoration... Undrinkable!
My favourite store sign of the weekend:
Ham chips, one of the greatest snack foods ever!
Token pretty flower
Every tourist took a picture of themselves in between these columns, touching them with arms outstretched as though holding them apart. I couldn't reach, so I improvised...
Stray cats EVERYWHERE, from the hotel to the ruins of Ephesus. And all of them little and fluffy!
Smile!
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