Ephesus & Kusadasi Turkey

This is inside one of the "Terrace Houses". These are the houses of the rich in Ancient Ephesus. They have amazing frescoe's on the walls mosaic tile floors. They are also quite large.

This is an example of the mosaic floors in the Terrace Houses.

This is the 'Ephesus Library'. This was considered one of the great libraryies of the ancient world, along with the library in Alexandria.

This is the city's Theater. It seats 25,000 people. This means the city itself had about 250,000 people as the Theater's were built to hold 10% of the population. This is the stadium where St. Paul preached to the Ephesians and is still used today to do live outdoor concerts.

Today we stepped back in time again as we visited the ancient Greek settlement (and later Roman and then Byzantine) of Ephesus. At one point over 250,000 people lived there. It is a magnificent archaeological site with work still continuing. we walked along the streets paved in marble and got a sense of the city. It would have once led down to the harbor, but now Ephesus sits 4 miles inland due to thousands of years of silt buildup and such. We saw the 3rd oldest library in the world. The front 2 levels have been beautifully restored. One of the neat things here is that they are restoring a lot of it so you can really get a sense of what it was once like. We also toured a few of the "terrace houses" which were the houses of the rich. Right now about 4 houses are being excavated. they were enormous multiple story homes with amazing mosaics and frescos. It was amazing to see. Right now most of the work is focused here as they hope it will give them more information about the city. It is clear that work will continue here for many many years and more amazing sites will someday be open to public view. We saw the public toilets, the parliament building and the enormous theater that could hold 25,000 people and they still use it for concerts and plays during the summer now. Our guide Emek gave us a wonderful tour and we were glad that we'd hired her.

After touring Ephesus, we went to a rug merchant and were given a lovely talk on how the Turkish rugs are made by hand. We also tried Raki, a local drink similar to Ouzo, but much stronger. I only managed 2 sips! We ended up buying a small silk rug to hang on the walls in our new house. They were all so beautiful that it was hard to choose.

We returned to the ship for lunch and then headed out for some swimming. The water was chilly and not as lovely as it looked from a distance. Dan went all the way in, but I only waded in part way, but we can say that we went into the Aegean Sea now. After this outing, I was very tired and so I curled up with my book and then had a long, long nap. We've been enjoying our balcony and stateroom a lot on this cruise. It is so relaxing to sit on the balcony with a good book and take in the sights. It is amazing that we've seen so much already on this trip and still 2 more port calls and then more time in7 Venice. Tomorrow is Santorini.