Thursday 30 October 2014

Family Trip: Turkey (Ephesus)


Ephesus was the reason we made our trip to Turkey.  It got a scant half day out of our week-long stay on a day-long tour that covered Ephesus, the home of the Virgin Mary, the Basilica of St. John, and the Temple of Artemis.  Somehow the theory of taking young children on an educational trip to ruins (evidently some of the most well preserved in Europe, for that matter) of a famous city that they've learned about didn't quite connect with the reality of taking young children on an educational trip to ruins of a famous city that they've not studied for over six months.  All that is to say that this blog post will be even lower on the text to photo ratio than my typical posts.

Here's my best guess at reconstructing the route for our tour.  We started at the bottom left of the photo, made our way through the ruins, and finished about top center where all the buses are.


Despite being in ruins, Ephesus does have inhabitants who are not tourists.


I hadn't appreciated just how ruined the city of Ephesus is.  Evidently there's quite a lot of the city still buried under the hillside.


One of the things we quickly realized on this tour was that we weren't going to do much standing around and reading about the historical significance of the city.  We were, however, going to do lots of climbing on the rocks.  This is at the beginning of the tour in the Odeon (around the Basilica on the map), which is where the city council met.


Ali, our guide, did a good job with our group.  We would meet at a point, which he would explain.  Then he would tell us where we would meet again, usually after 10 or 15 minutes.  The next point would get us further through the city.  He kept this up for the tour's duration.  I think this stop was at the town hall right next to the Odeon.


I mentioned climbing on rocks?


Ephesus wasn't uncomfortably crowded during our tour, but it there were lots of people (and tour guides).  The tour guide solution for being seen by their group was to carry umbrellas.  Ali's was yellow.


Some of the streets have been restored quite well.


Others not so much.


Photo next to statue of famous person from Greek mythology.


There's clearly been a great deal of work put into restoring the ruins at Ephesus.  I didn't appreciate until we got there just how much of the city has not been restored.  Here is one example of the city literally emerging from the hillside.


In other places, the structures are being restored but need a little extra help to stand upright.


Toilets.  Where slaves had to sit for up to a half hour to warm the marble for their masters.  And where men would discuss business while they sat.  Hmm.


Here are a few photos that I took because I thought they were interesting, but for the life of me I can't remember why anymore.





Temple of Domitian.  This was a hit for the kids (our three girls and a friend they made on the Fun and Sun trip who was also on this tour).  Rocks to climb, caves to explore, what's not to like?


Domitian's Well or Heracles' Gate.  I'm not sure.


Clare and friend taking a break to sit on one of the many available stones.


Library of Celsus.  The front of the library has received the most intentional rebuilding effort.  Unlike many of the other ruins, it's more or less intact and rebuilt from ruins of the actual library (as opposed to being rebuilt from bits and pieces of ruins within the site).


View from the porch of the library, looking up the street toward where we started our tour.


Our final stop in Ephesus was the Amphitheater (Amphitheatre for my UK blog readers).  It seats 25,000 people, and continues to be used for live performances because its acoustics are so good.  The first seat is high enough off the ground to protect spectators from the wild beasts who fought gladiators.


Looking back from the Amphitheater along what's left of the marble road to the library.


Kristine in the Amphitheater.


This was pretty much the edge of the city.  We were through the Amphitheater and ready to walk down the path to our bus.  Recalcitrant three year old who refused to pose clearly wanted a change of pace.


We had a brief stop at a local pottery shop before lunch.  They gave us a demonstration of pottery making, and offered discounts on their finished goods.  We settled for a photo.



Our first stop after lunch was at the shrine for the home of the Virgin Mary.  Tradition has it that she moved to Ephesus around 40 AD with the Apostle John, and lived at this location for the remaining years of her life.


Passing through the shrine itself was pretty quick.  We joined a line that wasn't allowed to stop moving.  This meant we were in the shrine itself for about a minute.


We added three candles here after leaving the shrine.


And stopped briefly to look at all the prayers that have been tied to the nearby wall.  I was impressed by the variety of languages, and also by the creativity of the people who figured out how to tie their paper onto the existing collection.


View from the window of the bus as we left the shrine.  We drove up that road.  In a large bus.  With large buses going the opposite direction.  Yes, it involved a little bit of bus drivers playing chicken.  And yes, I breathed easier once we were off the mountain.


Selcuk, the modern city where Efes (Ephesus) used to be, has a population of 35,000.  Efes had a population of 250,000 at its peak.  That means this valley would have been full of houses and streets. Wow.


Our next stop was the Basilica of St John.  The basilica was built from 536 to 565 AD at the order of the Emperor Justinian, who also ordered the destruction of a small church on the site that had been built in honor of the alleged burial place of the Apostle John.  Like Ephesus, the basilica was in ruins.


Unlike Ephesus (possibly because it's a much smaller site), there's a full scale model of what the basilica could have looked like.


Clare was much more cheerful at this stop, for two reasons.  First, we spent considerably less time (about an hour) than we did at Ephesus (about three hours).  Second, we let her sit down and eat snacks.


Continuing the "Elise on a pedestal" photos.




View from the basilica looking at the grand fortress of Selcuk.  The flags were in honor of Turkish Independence Day, which was celebrated on the previous day.


Our last stop was the temple of Artemis.  Here's what's left of it.  Ali politely told us that if we wanted to see the rest of the temple, we'd have to visit the British and German museums where the pieces had been hauled off to at the beginning of the 20th century.


Tuesday 28 October 2014

Family Trip: Turkey (Sun and Fun)

This excursion has its impetus, like the original trip to Turkey, with Elise.  On the Sunday morning after we arrived, the hotel rep for First Choice gave a presentation about different activities available during the week.  Her description of Sun and Fun was that "you drive around the hills in morning and get all dusty, then spend the afternoon on a boat where you jump off the top deck to wash the dust off."  Kristine poked me and pointed to Elise, who had a huge smile of eager anticipation on her face.  I was a little on the fence about doing this excursion or not.  Elise's smile tipped the scales.

We had three Land Rovers with guests from hotels around Ozdere.  We were in the English-speaking one.  There was another one for the Germans, and a third for the French.  The main driver, who was in our vehicle, did an impressive job of being a tour guide in three languages.  Here we are part way up the first mountain on the way out of Ozdere.


The Land Rovers were evidently built for the Turkish military.  Once they've been used for at least ten years, the military sells them to travel agencies for excursions like this one.  Having spent so much of my adult life driving in vehicles that are increasingly digital, this view of the Land Rover was refreshing.


Although I don't enjoy them as much as my father does, the dirt roads were a treat.  This is a view out the back of our Land Rover looking at the one behind us.  The girls and I decided that while my dad would enjoy these roads, he would think they were not in bad enough shape to truly be fun.  Either that or they needed to be considerably muddier than they were.


One of our stops was at a gypsy camp.  It was an interesting mix of old and new technology.  The dwellings were a combination of stone and canvas, but they had a pickup truck and tractor.  It's evidently a standard stop on this excursion during the times of the year when they are around (neither our guide nor the First Choice rep told us exactly what their migration patterns are).  Elise got to practice her developing photo skills.


I got a kick out of the unique shapes of the horns on the goats.  These two fellows were having at it when we drove up.  Unfortunately they refused to cooperate with my desire for a fight on camera.


I was also interested in the hounds, which were decently sized.  It turns out they are a breed called Kangal, which is unique to Turkey (more on that here).  They guard the flocks from predators like wolves, but they don't actively herd them.  Hence these two guys lying down in the middle of the goats who are paying no attention to them.  Very not border collie-ish.


Our other stop on the mountain was at this little waterfall.


Obligatory family photo in beautiful location.


That eager smile of Elise's that I mentioned?  Here it is, turned into a yell of exhilaration as the driver took us at moderate speeds over bumpy bits in the road and through some standing puddles.


Our last stop of the morning was at a little village cafe.  The girls were starting to feel a bit weary by now.  Elise grabbed some alone time on the front / bonnet / hood of our Land Rover.


They cheered up a bit when our driver brought out a baby tortoise to handle (although note the not-so-satisifed little one in the background).



Kristine and I each sampled the Turkish coffee.  We got the proper tourist price of 4 euros per cup.


Mid-day weariness was reflected in trying to rest for the last bit of the drive off the mountain.


And then again when we got onto the boat.


The boat had a charcoal grill on the bow.  One of the crew members got the charcoal going as we left the harbor.  Part way into the cruise he put fish on the grill to make our lunch.  That's our hotel in the background.


The girls picked up energy through the afternoon once they had some food in their systems.  It helped that for parts of the trip we had other boats to watch.


I was a little ambivalent about swimming in the ocean since it was a mild day.  Thanks to Elise's persistence though, we decided to give it a go.  I discovered after jumping in off the ladder from the boat that the water was truly brisk.


A benefit of being in brisk ocean water off a boat instead of on the beach is that you get completely submerged.  This gives your body a much better chance of adjusting to the water.  Upon adjustment, being able to swim off the back of the boat turns out to be pretty fun.

Which means your expression can turn from agony (photo above) to a smile when your daughter jumps in after you.




Charis watched Elise and I, and decided she wanted in on the action as well.  She got to jump in when the boat made its final stop for the day before heading back to the harbor.