Days 36-38 – Selçuk and Ephesus


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Middle East » Turkey » Aegean » Selçuk
July 17th 2011
Published: July 17th 2011
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Well, we’ve just “done” Ephesus and so I thought that I would write up the last few days before I become too confused.

Our trip from Pamakkule was uneventful to the extent that we both spent parts of it asleep. We were in a minibus and while they are air-conditioned they still seem a bit warmer than big coaches. The bus trip itself was less interesting, travelling along a major highway with little in the line of interesting scenery. On arrival we found our hotel easily, but our check-in didn’t go as smoothly as previously - the hotel owners did not have a record of our booking. Luckily, Deb was able to show them a copy on her laptop and so all turned out OK in the end. It was about lunchtime when we arrived, but by the time we got settled and went looking for something to eat all of the kebab/sandwich shops were cleaning off their grills. When we booked into our hotel we also booked a couple of tours, one to Ephesus and one to another 3 ruins locally called PMD. We elected not to go on either of these tours the next day as we hoped
Selcuk marketSelcuk marketSelcuk market

Note the baby on the back of one of the women. Many of the women at this market were sitting cross legged on their vegetable stands and shelling peas or a pink and cream bean.
to spend some of that day in the local Saturday market. Our hotel owner has connections in Ephesus and so we were also able to make sure that we didn’t visit on a day that a cruise boat was visiting.

Deb had read about the aqueduct that runs through Selçuk and which is home to nesting storks at this time of the year. We managed to find this a couple of blocks from our hotel and, sure enough, every pillar had a large nest on top occupied by a stork family with one or two large chicks. The chicks are just about fully grown now and don’t look that different to their parents. This area also had a few cafes with nice covered outdoor areas. In each of these, old men were playing cards and the “tile” game that we mentioned in a previous blog. We’ve now been told that the locals call this game “OK” and that it is similar to gin-rummy.

We continued our walk through this part of town and found a nice Turkish Delight shop. Turkish Delight here is more than the sweet pink jelly concoction that we see at home. We particularly like a version that is a firm, jelly-like base combined with pistachios and rolled in coconut. This shop also did a sweet that we liked the look of and so bought a sample to try. They were balls (golf ball size) of dried apricot, carrots and pistachios rolled in coconut. They were pretty good and almost sound like health food so each of us can probably afford to have a couple of these per day – they may be the sustenance for our next long bus trip. We know that we look like tourists but we do wonder just how naïve we look. Within a distance of about 100 metres we had 2 different men approach us and offer to sell us “ancient” coins. The creative story from the first salesman was particularly good and his treasures were authentically presented in a filthy piece of old rag.

Market Day was yesterday and the market was similar to the one that we visited in Datça, with about half of the market devoted to shoes and clothes and the other half devoted to fruit, veg and other food stuffs. In a couple of instances here the stall owners spoke a bit of English and were able to tell us what the strings of dried objects that we were looking at were. They were dried eggplant, zucchini and capsicum for stuffing with rice etc and saffron flower for putting in rice. After we’d had our fill of the market we caught one of small local buses up to a town (Tire) about 40 km away. We thought that this was to be a small village but it turned out to be a town of over 50,000 people. The town itself wasn’t very interesting but the bus trip was. The area around here lies in a broad valley and is devoted to farming. We saw peaches/nectarines, tomatoes, pomegranates, olives, and corn being grown and saw/smelled cow milking sheds complete with cows.

I’ve been meaning to write about what we can see of Turkish weddings. We saw one yesterday afternoon in Tire but have seen a number of others at other towns. Apart from obvious things like a couple getting married, a wedding here seems to be important for the guests. Firstly, it’s an excuse to dress up the bridal car in ribbons. That doesn’t sound that different to what we do but we do ribbons in a miniscule way. Here, the ribbons are much bigger and adorned with huge bows and flowers – the flower/bow bit can cover the bonnet of the car. Most cars that we’ve seen have been decorated in red and white (perhaps a Turkish patriotic thing) but yesterday we saw cars with pink and purple ribbons instead of the red. Once you’ve got the car decorated and the religious bit out of the way you then drive around town (blockies in Maryborough-speak) followed by all the guests in their cars, with all cars in the procession blowing their horns. In a couple of cases the bridal car has been preceded by a truck with a small band on the back, always with a drum. It’s quite raucous but obviously lots of fun.

Today we went on a tour to Ephesus and a couple of other attractions close to Selçuk. Our first stop was at Meryemana, or Mother Mary’s house. This is said to be the house where the Virgin Mary spent her last days. Apparently she came to Ephesus with the Apostle John - more about him later. As you can imagine, this is a special place for
Stone carving of the goddess Nike at EphesusStone carving of the goddess Nike at EphesusStone carving of the goddess Nike at Ephesus

This one's for Bo (Deb's late grandmother). She used to say to herself "You've just got to do it".
many and so a number of people were praying or sitting quietly in the house which is now a chapel. Outside, people were collecting water from a spring that is said to be holy water and others were posting wishes on a wishing wall.

Ephesus was stop 2. We started at the top and walked down through the city. The city had originally been built as a port and the ruins that we saw date from the time of about Alexander the Great. The problem, however, was that the harbour kept silting up and what used to be a harbour eventually became swamp. Malaria became a problem and helped to lead to the demise of the city. The city has now been about 20% excavated and we saw the ruins of a couple of agora (markets/shopping centres), a parliament building, old houses, various temples, public toilets, theatre and a huge library. The library was amazing. One room of the library had been excavated but the main feature of interest was the façade. This had been rebuilt mostly using the original stone (80% of the façade is from the original stones) and the detail in the sculptures and ornate decoration is impressive. After Ephesus and lunch the tour went to a museum and a couple of small sites in town. We left the tour in town at a site called the Basilica of St. John. This is mainly a ruin but it’s the ruin of the cathedral and basilica that were built over the tomb of St. John. The size of this was the most impressive thing to us. Initially a cathedral was built but then this was converted to an even more impressive basilica. I’m pretty certain that I read or heard somewhere that this was the biggest church in Turkey until Aya Sophia was built in Istanbul. I was very surprised at the lack of “specialness” of the tomb of St. John. St. John is said to have been Jesus’s favourite disciple and it was to him that Jesus entrusted the care of his mother as he was being crucified. The tomb is marked by just a smallish square of marble stones with a small inscription saying this is the tomb. There’s a good chance that we’d have missed it if it hadn’t been for the Asian tour group standing around having their photos taken.

Tomorrow we are off to the PMD ruins and after that a long bus trip to Çanakkale and the Gallipoli battlefields.


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