Ken's Letter to the Ephesians (Not)

This entry includes some miscellaneous stuff about our trip to Turkey.  I (Ken) am entering it long after the fact; because I just couldn't get to it while we were actually traveling.

The day after our wonderful dinner and overnight with Georgia in Izmir, Georgia helped us rent a car and we  headed for Selcuk.  First, we had to get gas; in Turkey cars come with tank empty, another clever way to extract $ from folks.  Given we speak and read no Turkish, and many Turks do not speak English, it was interesting to simultaneously find a gas station and keep track of where the tollway was that we needed to get on.

 

We knew the road had tolls that could ONLY be paid w automated system, not cash.  But the company assured us that car had a detection/payment system built in, and Georgia verified this.  We thought that that was all we needed to know until we got the 'entry' lanes and we saw at least two different types of lanes, both of which seemed to involve radar.  We were on what was the equivalent of a the entrance ramp of a freeway,  so we couldn't  just pull over and ask.  So, we chose one and went through.  At Selcuk we exited through the same lane type, and all hell broke loose--flashing yellow lights, whooping siren.  But it only lasted a few seconds and stopped.  Nobody appeared, and we decided that we were going to do our very best to...let the rental car company deal with it. :-)   
10 km before Selcuk, we stopped at fruit stand which was connected to a working fruit farm.  We bought pomegranate juice drinks for about $1.50.  Then talked with the owner, who showed us his trees and his dad's bees.  Then he showed us the  pomegranate press that he says his dad had made from auto parts.  By pumping a handle, it generates air pressure to do the pressing.  A thing of beauty.  

 

After a half hour of show-and-tell, he sold us about 12 oz of pomegranate juice for 5TL ($2.75), several TL cheaper than he quoted us earlier.  I guess he liked us.

At Ephesus, we enjoyed seeing the different ways that the masons added the "innies" and "outies" on the stone pieces--i.e. cavities or protrusions for alignment, securing against sliding, etc.  Often there was just one, but sometimes two or three, once a whole array.

Ephesus was pretty impressive.  Not in the way some of the big temples or public buildings, although there was some of that too, but in the extent of the town and how much of it is still standing or reconstructed.

 

Next day we wandered Selcuk, including the Basilica of St. John, built at the behest of Emperor Justinian over what was reputed to be the grave of St. John, which is still prominent there.  While in the area, we also saw some information that the Virgin Mary spent the last years of her life in the Ephesus-Selcuk area.

In fact, there is a house there which is supposedly her house, but we didn't see it--we had just walked too much the only day we had an opportunity.  I think it was pretty much a walk-by, "I was there" sort of place.

 

That night we turned the car in at our hotel in Kusadasi for our last night in Turkey, per our arrangement with the rental company, who will pick it up there.  We were happy that we did not get a knock on the door from them in the middle of the night, saying "you owe us for doing the tolls wrong!" :-) 

Next morning, we took the ferry back to Samos (back on Greek soil).  They seem to charge what the market can bear.  It was 40 Euros (~$53), which seemed steep for a 1.5 hour ferry ride.  Probably because it's the only ferry between Kusadasi and Samos.  

 

On Samos we were mostly lazy for three days.  We had a lovely hotel room at the Avlakia Hotel (middle of north shore), though we had to express some disappointment at the small size of the room they originally had for us before they said we could stay in this much larger room that was acually let out to a French woman on a yearly basis (but she was not there at the time--hurray).  On the shingle beach was a lovely shade tree.  We are not normally beach bunnies, but we enjoyed just hanging out on beach chairs under the tree, reading, and going for a short swim late afternoons.  We also visited the archaeological museum in Pythagorion (yes, the town is named after Pythagoras), and stopped into a music store, where I got to play a bit of Greek music with the owner's son.  We also drove into the hills to one of the mountain villages (pretty touristy), and our last night there we had a wonderful evening dinner at the house of Irene Banias, a friend of our friend Tatiana.  Irene's house is just a few meters from the sea near the northwest point of the island, so we got to watch the sun go down over the Mediterranean while having a lovely Greek meal.

 

Next day, we flew back to Athens, so we could do laundry, Kathleen could do a workshop, and we could get ready for our next adventures--Crete and Rhodos.