Ephesus and Cappadocia - Ruins and Travel

Day 15

Our day started with a ridiculous wake up time of 4 am. Our Transport picked us up at 4:40 am and we were off to the airport for a 6:30 flight to Izmir. We were hoping to catch a few zzz's while waiting for our flight, but no so. There were probably about 12 children, various ages, all totally awake and totally running around and screaming. Thanksfully though, they were not on our flight.
We arrived in Izmir and our driver whisked us away to meet up with our tour group for some sight seeing in Ephesus. The driver said 5 minutes and we will be there. Well, we are not sure what his "5 minutes" really means because 45 minutes later we ended up in a parking lot waiting for the tour bus.
There were already several people on the van for this tour. We hopped into the back seat and quickly learned that it would not be a pleasant, quiet drive around Ephesus. Basically, a five-year-old girl made it very difficult to enjoy most of the day. First off she had one volume, LOUD. She screamed everything. Did her parents ever tell her to quiet down, no. Second she had to have everything, and we mean everything, her way. If her mother was in the seat she wanted, mom moved, if her older brother or sister were in the way, they moved. Dad did not do much either in terms of letting his daughter know her behavior was awful. At every stop she would yell and run around and make it very difficult for our guide to concentrate. A the beginning of the tour she told our guide to be quiet and she did not want to follow him. She also stated that her mother was going to slap him. Did her parents admonish her at all? No. At one point at the end of the tour, our guide said, "Hey, maybe next time you leave her at home?" He was serious.
Okay, enough about the little brat, our first stop was the city of Ephesus. Our guide said we would spend 90 minutes at the site. We thought to ourselves, why, it is tiny and there is only one relic standing there. We entered the gates and quickly learned that the city stretches all the way down into a valley almost and continues for a while. We learned that this was the second site of Ephesus. The first was located by the sea and was a port, but some king wanted it moved so they moved it. The highlight was the theater and the library. It was a huge structure that was preserved well and very dominate. Most of the ruins here were just piles of rubble and did not stand the test of time. We made it through, all the while the little girl with the bowl hair cut was screaming and hitting her brother and sister.
Our second ruin was the House of the Virgin Mary. There are many stories that are told about how they believe this to be Mary's house. Popes JP II and Benedict have visited and left gifts. It was very nice and peaceful site.
Our last ruin was to see the Temple of Artemis. Temple is pushing it, basically it was one pillar. That's all that is left, one pillar with a bunch of storks nesting on top of it. The ruins here were not as perserved as we have seen in Greece, Rome and Egypt, but it was still a good day.
Now this trip should have only been a couple of hours, but when they add on a trip to a carpet factory that never ended, souvenir shops, a ceramics place, and lunch; the trip lasted until 4 pm.
We were very excited to get off the van and have a quiet evening. We checked into our hotel, the room would be ready in 15 minutes we were told. So what else are you going to do but grab a drink by the pool. We did and 50 minutes later, headed to our room. And the room still wasn't ready. We stood outside our room for another 5 minutes and then realized what a crap hole the hotel was. We didn't really care, we were only here for one night.
Our dinner was completely tasteless, except for the baklava and ice cream. And our waiter was really, really cute.

Day 16

We started out great, we were up and ready by 8:20 for an 8:30 pickup to the airport. We had a 10:30 flight back to Istanbul and then we are headed to Kayseri to see Cappadocia. After two phone calls to our travel agent and 45 minutes later, at 9:15, our driver finally shows up to drive us the one hour it takes to get to the airport. Let's just say he drove like a bat out of hell on a two-lane highway through the hills and mountains to get us to the airport at 10:10. We checked in for our flight at 10:15 and boarded our plane at 10:30. It is nice to know that not one of our flights in Turkey have been on time. Thank goodness for that. We are in Istanbul waiting connection. Hopefully will make it to Cappadocia region with no problems.

---

Part of trip: Egypt and Turkey

---