Izmir and Efes

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When we got on the bus, we realized that we had forgotten to stock up on food and water for the journey. We knew we would get water on the bus, and a little bit of food, but probably not enough to sustain us for the whole trip. After the first time they handed out water and snacks, we both tried to get some rest. Around 2:00, we pulled into a rest station where we could go to the bathroom and buy food. We both took advantage of the bathroom (and thank god I didn’t have to pay at this one), and debated whether or not we had time to buy food. Mikkel didn’t think so, so we went back to the bus. When we got on, we realized that there were still a lot of people missing, and I decided to go back and get something small that we could share (because we were both pretty hungry). We both checked our wallets and realized that we were also pretty short on cash. Between the 2 of us, we managed to put 2.5 lire together to get something small. I was really in the mood to have something with cheese in it, so I got some cheese flavored tortilla chips. As I was handing the money to the woman, I realized that we still didn’t have any water, and that these would make us pretty thirsty. We would just have to count on the water they gave us on the bus. I brought them back, and we finished the entire bag before going back to sleep. I don’t think either of us actually slept very much, but we pulled into the Izmir Otogar around 5:30 AM . . . 4 hours earlier than I was expecting us to. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t a 12 hour bus ride like we had originally thought. Mikkel was a little upset about this. When we got off the bus, we followed the instructions Gökhan had given us, and found the place where we could take a free shuttle to Üçyol. Since it was so early though, we had to wait around a little bit until the 1st shuttle of the day left at 6:00. We sat around and waited in their office for a bit. Mikkel was pretty silent the entire time and I couldn’t tell whether he was mad at me, or just tired. When 6:00 finally rolled around, we got on the shuttle, and it took us to where we needed to be.
Once we got to Üçyol, we were supposed to take a taxi to Gökhan’s parents’ shop. There was a man standing outside his taxi waving for us to come over, but we bypassed him to look for another. When there wasn’t any other one around, we got into his and gave him the address. We tried to look carefully while in the car to make sure we weren’t getting ripped off, and we were driving for quite a while until we finally got to the street the shop was on. He told us we were on the right street, and just kept driving. We tried looking for numbers, and didn’t see it, but told him to just stop and let us out, and we’d find the rest of our way from there. Instead, he made a U-turn, and started going the other way up the street. We tried to protest, but I guess he just pretended not to understand. Eventually, he came to a stop in front of the right place, and let us out. The taxi fare was 23 lire!!! We were both really upset. I tried to argue with him, but it was pointless . . . because he couldn’t understand us and we were tourists. All I had though was a 20 and a 1 lire coin, so I gave that to him, which he said would be fine. I thought, “good, it was going to have to be!” We gathered our bags, turned around, and realized that the shop was closed. I guess it made sense for 6:30 in the morning, but neither of us really knew what to do. Gökhan had given me a number to call, but I was almost sure it was the shop number. When we called, no one answered. We walked through the door immediately to the right of the shop, and saw that it led to a bunch of apartment buildings. We looked on the list of names at the call box to see if any of them said “Tolay”, but they didn’t. Feeling defeated and lost, we figured the only thing we could really do was sit and wait for the shop to open. We hoped this would be sometime around 8. While we waited, we played a few more games of Rummy. I won another one, which did not help Mikkel’s mood. I still couldn’t tell if he was angry, or just tired. At one point, a man came up to us and looked really suspicious. We tried to explain as best we could that we were waiting for the owners of Pardon Butik to open up their shop, and that we were travelers, and not trying to cause any harm. He said ok and continued on his way. We played a few more games, and then around 8:30, the man came back and told us to bring our stuff right inside the lobby and then follow him. We did so, and he took us around the back of the building, into a beauty salon and told us to sit down. He explained to us that the shop didn’t open until 9:00, but that we could wait here until it did. One of the hairstylists (all of whom were male, btw) came over and asked us if we wanted any coffee or anything to drink. Mikkel ordered a coffee, and I didn’t want to be difficult while they were being so hospitable, so I asked for the same. While we were waiting, Mikkel showed me how awesome he was becoming at shuffling.
Finally, at 9:00, the man from before came back to get us and led us to the shop, where Gökhan’s mother and another man, who at that point, I just assumed was Gökhan’s father, were just opening up. They both gave us hugs, and the man apologized for any confusion. Then they ushered us into the shop and told us to sit down. We talked with the man for a little while, and he told us a little bit about Izmir and himself and Gökhan’s family, and within a few minutes, someone came down with a tea caddy. We were both offered a glass of tea, with 2 sugar cubes on the side. We eagerly accepted it, and sat drinking our tea and chatting for a little while longer. When we finished, the same boy who brought the tea caddy showed us to the Tolay’s apartment. When we got there, Ilayda was there to greet us, and wearing a UD sweatshirt, which I assume was a present from Juliette!! She showed us to our room, where we dropped our stuff, and then followed her into the living room to meet Mr. Tolay. He looked EXACTLY like Gökhan, except just a little bit older. He was so excited to see us, and got up and gave us both hugs and a kiss on each cheek. Then he happily sat us down and showed us pieces from Gökhan and Juliette’s wedding video. Ilayda rolled her eyes and explained that she had already seen this a million times, but he’s so proud, he shows it to everyone. It was so cool to see some familiar faces in a foreign place, even if they were only on the TV screen. I also recognized Juliette’s friend Annaig in the video too! Anyway, once we finished watching, Ilayda asked me if I wanted to shower, which I was very grateful for. When I got out of the shower and went back to the room to get dressed for the day, Mikkel was lying on the bed, motionless. I asked him if he minded stepping out for a second so I could get changed, but he was completely unresponsive. I figured he was probably fast asleep and it was safe to get dressed without him waking up. When I finished getting ready, I woke him up and he asked if he had time to shower before going where ever we were going today. I said sure, go ahead. Ilayda asked if we wanted to go to Efes today, and without thinking, I said yes (even though we had kind of agreed to just stay around Izmir today). Mikkel gave me a look, but didn’t really say anything. Ilayda promised to help get us tickets.
When Mikkel finished getting ready, Ilayda took us down to the ticket office to buy us our bus tickets. She asked if we would be home in time for dinner, and we said yes. She said dinner would be between 8 and 9. We took the 1:00 bus to Efes, and Mikkel fell asleep on the way out. It was supposed to be about an hour bus ride, and I did my best to look for signs, pay attention to where we were, and listen for them to announce the stop for Efes, but I never heard anything or saw explicit signs. Finally, after it had been a little bit more than an hour, I asked one of the attendants when the stop for Efes was coming up. He looked a bit distraught and told me that it was about 10 meters back the other way. Whoops! I woke Mikkel up and told him what happened. He was a little bit upset, but assured me that it could have happened to anyone, and we would just get off at the main bus terminal and take a shuttle back. The attendant told us that we could take the local shuttle back to where we needed to go. When we got to the station, we found the spot where the shuttle left from, paid the guy, and once we determined that we still had ~ 15 minutes before the shuttle left, went for a bathroom break. When we finally got back onto the shuttle, we sat down and breathed a sigh of relief. By this time it was almost 2:45, and we counted on at least half an hour before we got where we wanted to go. The shuttle finally pulled out of the station, and stopped about 15 minutes further down the road, where a bunch of people got onto the shuttle. Then, the driver got off and the vehicle sat there for another 15 minutes just waiting for people. We both looked at each other and realized that this might be a lot longer than we had hoped. I started to feel really bad. When we finally got going again, that was the last long stop we made. We stopped a few more times on the way, but only to let people off. No one else got on. Finally, by 3:30, we finally made it to Efes.
I thought it was incredibly worth it! Efes is the Turkish name of the old Roman city, Ephesus. It’s one of the largest sites of Roman ruins in the entire former empire. One of the first things we came across was an old arena. You could even walk through the tunnel leading out to the main stage, where I imagined the lions probably could have been kept. It was so crazy to think of all the events that probably took place in that area. There were large groups of people who had fun testing the acoustics of the structure by singing in the center of the stage. Many of them were Japanese, and Mikkel wondered why there was such a large population of Japanese people coming through. After we left this, we wandered around aimlessly for a bit, trying to figure out where the other things were. Mikkel wasn’t sure there was anything beyond the arena, so we ventured off the marked path to investigate some of the structures we could see in the distance. We saw the Church of the Virgin Mary, which Mr. Tolay had told us about, and came across several other ruins. I noticed that Mikkel was finally starting to get a little bit excited about seeing these things, so that made me feel better. At one point, he called me over softly, and told me to be really quiet. He pointed to a huge lizard that he could see basking on a rock in the distance and told me to try to get a picture of it. It was cute just how excited he was about this. I snapped a few pictures before he realized that what he thought was a lizard was actually a rock. I did point out though that there was a lizard below the rock, so he wasn’t completely crazy.
The longer we were out in this area, the more we realized that we probably weren’t supposed to be, and that maybe we should start trying to work our way back. Our suspicions were confirmed when we had to step over a rope sectioning off the different areas. Whoops. We tried to figure out what to do next, and although Mikkel insisted that there was nothing beyond the arena, I asked if we could at least check. He begrudgingly agreed, and we continued walking. I’m very glad we did check, because it turns out that was where the majority of the ruins were! We saw the Library of Celcus, the Temple of Hadrian, Hercules’ Gate, and a water house among many other things! It was incredible! And although it was starting to get late, the sun was in exactly the right place in the sky to make things look that much more beautiful! It was so breathtaking! Mikkel let me walk around and take pictures while he saw what he wanted to see and then laid down on benches to wait for me. At one point, he pointed out that it seemed as if people were leaving and the park was closing. For some reason, this didn’t really click with me as being important, I was just thinking about how this would make it much easier to get pictures without a lot of people in the background. I kept wandering further and further into the ruins and found the seat of the senate and lots of other important looking structures. When I finally had my fill, it was 6:30, and Mikkel was a little annoyed. He said that he thought the park was definitely closed, and for some reason it still took a few minutes for reality to hit me. Then I realized . . . if the park was closed, and all the people were gone, that means there are no more busses running to and from Izmir! I was about to hit the panic button, when I remembered that I was the one who had gotten us into this, so I should probably stay calm. I asked what he thought we should do, and he said we could either take the cab waiting there with its driver calling out to us, or we could walk back out to the main road and try to catch another shuttle. He said he would prefer the latter option, because chances are the cab driver would just rip us off. On our walk back to the main road, we were both very quiet, and I was feeling really terrible about getting us into this situation. Finally, he broke the silence by telling me how irresponsible I had been the last few days and how annoying it was that I was being such a “turbo-traveler”, trying to squeeze in as much as I can into a short amount of time, and how selfish I was being. By the time we got most of the way out to the highway, we saw both the taxis we had passed on the way out drive by. This told us that we wouldn’t be able to go back to them if we weren’t able to catch a shuttle.
When we got to the main road and shuttle stop, we checked the times and confirmed that we had already missed the last shuttle. Mikkel let out a defeated sigh, and asked if I would be ok with trying to hitch hike back to the bus station, or even all the way to Izmir if we had to. I said that would be fine, as long as we were together. As we were walking along the highway, I just happened to look over at him and notice that tears were starting to form in his eyes. I felt absolutely terrible!! I couldn’t believe that I had gotten us into this predicament, and I felt even worse that I didn’t have enough experience to know the best way to get us out. To our great relief, we saw a tour bus driving down the road with a sign saying it was headed for Izmir. Luckily it was us, and started to pull over to let us on. We ran to catch up with it, got on, and paid the attendant for a ticket. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, before Mikkel broke the silence. “I’m sorry if I was a little bit harsh back there. I was just really tired and frustrated at the same time and it just came out.” I said not to worry about it, and that I probably deserved some of it. I then tried to explain that part of this was my inexperience at traveling on my own and that my “turbo-traveler” ways were mostly due to the fact that I’m an American, its much less likely that I will be able to return to these places, so I want to try to see as much as I can. After this, things seemed to be back to normal between us, and he asked to see my pictures from the day. To one of the pictures of him laying down on a bench in front of the ruins, he even commented “hey, who’s that hot guy right there?”
We both kept a very watchful eye on the time, and I started to get nervous that we weren’t going to make it in time for dinner. I called Ilayda to let her know that we may be a little bit late, and she sounded a bit annoyed, but she said it was ok. When we got back to Üçyol, we were both still a little wary of taking a taxi and getting ripped off, but it was much faster than walking, and I promised to pay the difference if he did rip us off. There was a lot of traffic on the street the Tolay’s shop was on, so we finally just told the taxi driver that we wanted to get out. Luckily, this guy was more honest. We paid him, and walked the rest of the way to the Tolay’s apartment. We got there just a little bit before 9, and they were impressed that we were able to find our way back to the apartment. Apparently they were expecting to have to send someone to pick us up from the shop. Shortly after we got in, we sat down for a dinner of fish with mussels and red wine. The fish was whole, and still on the bone. I had never eaten it like this before, but apparently I was the only one. They were all watching me struggle, and Ilayda asked me if I liked it. I said that I did, I thought it was very good, I just had never eaten it this way before, so I wasn’t sure what to do, and she just laughed and relayed the message to her mom and dad in Turkish. Mikkel also laughed and made fun of my inexperience. Mr. Tolay was very animated throughout the entire dinner and even though he didn’t speak much English, he still did his best to communicate through hand gestures.
Once we had gotten through the main course, Mrs. Tolay asked if we would like some cheese with our wine. I said yes a bit more enthusiastically than I meant to, and she laughed and said “Where do you think you are, France? We’re not Juliette’s parents!” But then she brought out a plate of cheese, as well as some sort of round, green fruit and strawberries with a plate of sugar to dip them in. The green things look interesting, so I ate a few. They were very hard and sour…it was an interesting taste. Unfortunately, I could feel my lip start to feel weird and tingly. I had a few more strawberries (which were delicious) and that made it feel better. Then I asked Mikkel what the green things were, and he said they were a different type of cherry, he just wasn’t sure what they were called. That explained why my lip started feeling tingly . . . I’m allergic to cherries. Finally, once we had all had our fill, they asked if we wanted to watch a movie. Of course, the only movies they had were in Turkish. We walked over to the sitting area to be polite, but I think we were both hoping to be able to go to bed soon. Then they brought out tea and crackers and offered some to us. We were both very happy to accept it. We sat there for a little while and talked, and Ilayda snuggled up to her mom who she hadn’t seen in 2 months, which made me a little bit homesick because I hadn’t seen my mom in 2 months either. Finally, because I could see how tired Mikkel looked, and I knew he wasn’t going to say anything before I did, I said that I was probably going to head to bed. Before going to sleep, I called my mom just to say hi, and ended up talking to Coleen for longer than I would have liked. But finally, I went to sleep.

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