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Sunday November 25th, 2012: Kusadasi and Ephesus, Turkey
Bob: We had booked a ship's tour to ancient Ephesus, just 20 miles or so from the Turkish port of Kusadasi where the Crown Princess docked. I looked forward to seeing the partly-restored ruins of Ephesus again very much, particularly as we had booked the tour that included the "Terrace Houses", an ancient residential complex that had only been open for visitors since 2007 or so. Seeing the terrace house section required a separate admission ticket, and we had not been able to see it on our previous visit to Ephesus during Wanderung 19. The drive to Ephesus, which lies up the coast and a bit inland from Kusadasi, was quite short and I learned tidbits about modern Turkey (the post-Ataturk republic) along way. One curious thing was that gasoline was quite expensive, costing the equivalent of $10 a gallon, which might have helped explain the relative lack of traffic on the streets and highways. Both the scarcity of traffic and the well-behaved driving of the cars and motorcycles we did pass was a stark contrast to the traffic in Naples, Italy! Once at Ephesus we were dropped off at the "uphill" parking lot and slowly wended our down the ancient streets where the biblical Paul of Tarsus also walked. He was, of course, ultimately thrown out of the city for his preaching, but that's another story. The local legends say that St. John and Mary also came to Ephesus and died in the vicinity, but personally I'd take that with a grain of salt. It was interesting that the water pipes supplying Ephesus were ceramic pipes rather than the lead pipes of Herculaneum, which would have been a lot healthier in the long run. They also had lavatories with sewage disposal and separate water supplies that would have avoided many diseases. Unfortunately, the harbor silted up and became a swamp with malarial mosquitoes, ultimately depopulating Ephesus and contributing to its abandonment . |
Monika: We had been in Kusadasi before and seen the excavations in Ephesus. But I wanted to see them again and also see some new excavations that were called "Terrace Houses". So that was the tour we booked. Our group was small, only about 15 people. Our guide a Turkish woman from the border region with Syria, who now lived in the Kusadasi area. She was very knowledgeable and gave us a lot of history of the region while we were driving to Ephesus. Once there, she did not hurry us along, so we could take all the pictures we wanted. Although tourist season was almost over, it still was very crowded, since every tour from our ship and a Norwegean Cruise line ship seemed to go to Ephesus. But since we were not hurried along, we could wait for breaks in the throng of tourists when taking pictures. I finally understood the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian caps of columns. We passed the senate meeting place and a temple. We also saw a frieze of Nike, the winged goddess of victory. Our guide pointed out the swish in her clothes that is now the symbol of the athletic shoe company. Ah, the Greek gods are everywhere. We also stopped by an antique restroom for men, with benches with holes around the sides of a courtyard and musicians playing in the middle. |
Bob: The Terrace Houses were quite interesting and well worth the extra time we spent there. There were at least 3 or 4 separate townhouses going up the hill beside the main street, and each house had several different rooms. The largest room was a 1,000 square foot room with marble-covered walls that were partly restored, which required unbelievably complex jigsaw-puzzle like work. But the net result of that beautifully-veined marble was just exquisite and must have been astonishing back in the ancient days when it was intact. |
Monika: Before we came all the way down to the library, we stopped at an area with a plastic roof over it. These were the Terrace Houses and the roof was there to protect the mosaics and wall paintings inside. Terrace Houses were the town houses of the rich. They were three stories high with large rooms. We walked through three of them that had been partially cleaned and restored. In the first room, the marble room, we saw how the marble walls were assembled in the world's largest jigsaw puzzle. Thousands of pieces were still waiting to find their rightful place. |
Bob: I was also amazed that every single room of every single residence featured a different pattern of mosaic tiles set into the floor. Almost all of those mosaics were black and white, but I saw at least one that used two shades of ocher tiles in addition to the basic black and white tiles and others that used a full spectrum of colors. One tremendously colorful and intricate example of floor mosaics was about a meter wide by two meters long and featured some god like Poseidon in what may have been a seascape. It was great to look at but directly underneath the glass walkway we were on and devilishly hard to photograph! |
Monika: On the floors everywhere where beautiful mosaics. Most were abstract designs but one was a wonderful floor mosaic of a lion. |
Bob: The wall frescoes were all quite colorful and finely-detailed, and many of those seemed to be quite intact. I really enjoyed everything from the pictures of ducks and fish in the kitchen (!) to pictures of people, most likely the usual suspects of gods and goddesses. Our guide really took her time and explained things well, but I was so busy looking, looking everywhere in those houses and taking pictures of all the beautiful things that I didn't hear all of what she said, which was a bit frustrating---but as the Gentle Reader is probably aware, I can spend hours in deep contemplation of old things! |
Monika: On the walls were beautiful wall paintings. Altogether it was very interesting to see how the rich lived in the 1st century. I certainly enjoyed walking through the Terrace Houses and would highly recommend the tour. |
Bob: Exiting from the Terrace Houses we past the reconstructed front of the library, an extremely impressive facade. This time I also saw how far back the base of that building extended, and that library must have been absolutely HUGE as the foundations went back at least 150 yards or so. Just to the side of the library was a large colonnaded open area that was the Agora, or main shopping area of Ephesus. The columns, or remnants of columns in some cases, had been restored around much of the perimeter, making it easier to estimate its extent and how it may have looked back when Ephesus was in its heyday. |
Monika: While in the Terrace Houses I had not noticed how we had slowly ascended and now had to carefully walk back down outside to the most famous of Ephesian structures, the old library. It really is quite beautiful. From the library we walked through the agora, the marketplace, where you could still see the stores along the sides. Amphoras were standing around and signs that obviously indicated which store was which. |
Bob: At the end of the street was the main theater, which seated 10,000 when built by the Greeks, and was later expanded to seat 24,000 by the Romans. Our guide claimed, however, that the Romans had not pushed the Greeks out but rather taken over governance of the city and surrounding province while allowing the Greek language and culture to persist. The semi-circular theater is still used for performances up to the present day, so parts of it were cordoned off for reconstruction. Fortunately we were allowed to get far enough inside that I could at least get some decent panoramic pictures. |
Monika: After the agora, our guide pointed out the Great Theater and told us we had 30 minutes to look at the theater and walk to the bus, where there was a marketplace with the obligatory present-day merchants. However, this gave us plenty of time to actually climb up into the theater and take all the pictures we wanted. When we finally walked out of the ancient site, we did not have any time to worry about the present-day merchants, since we had to hurry to our bus. |
Bob: Wending our way through the bazaar outside the exit gates, we climbed back aboard the bus for the brief drive back to Kusadasi. We were supposed to then visit a rug factory and get the usual demonstration and sales pitch, but we had "been there, done that" during Wanderung 19 so we gave our guide and driver a tip and then cut directly over to the port entry to reboard the Crown Princess to have a belated lunch. We considered going out again that afternoon after I took a short nap, but we just did not have sufficient energy to do so, so we ended the day by writing our journal and reading our books. |
Monika: After a bus ride back into town, we were supposed to stop at a rug shop. Luckily the stop was only a block away from the port, so we excused ourselves since we had no intention of buying a rug. Back on ship we had lunch and then rested. When it was time for the ship to leave, I watched the last straggler coming back to the ship late under the applause from us on the promenade deck and then we watched the ship sail back into the sea while the sun was setting in the west and the moon was rising over Kusadasi. |
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