April 14

4-14: Today we were in Kusadasi, Turkey. What a beautiful town. We headed out this morning to go to the ruins at Ephesus, but Ginnie just felt she couldn’t make it so I went by myself. It was a wonderful thing to see - Greek and then Roman ruins. It used to be a coastal town but is now 5km from the sea. It is also important in early Christianity - Mary supposedly spent her last days here. Also, St. John is buried here. The city is on a hillside and inside the gates at the top were the Roman bathes - when a traveler arrived the first thing he was to do was bathe. The road was paved in marble - and the story has it that when Anthony and Cleopatra came here on their honeymoon they poured red wine on the marble - the first red carpet! The library was one of the largest in the ancient world - the building looks like a two story building but it was actually three stories and there were no stairs inside so they think that there was an elevator! And the public restroom - the one the ancient people used was amazing - a large room with carved holes around three sides of the room that had running water through a trench under them. Obviously no modesty here because it was unisex and they were one right next to the other! The archeologists estimate the size of the ancient cities by the size of their amphitheaters - in this case the amphitheater holds 25,000 therefore they estimate the population at 100,000 people! Many more people than live in Kusadasi today! Then the tour took us to a carpet store where we learned how the Turkish carpets were woven. Boy were they beautiful! They served us refreshments and I had a local beer - called Efes - it was pretty good. After the carpet demonstration we came back to the ship for lunch. After lunch Bill and Susan and I headed out on a quest for suitcases - yes we have bought too much JUNQUE to fit in the suitcases we came with! And this will be the last port where we could get a cheap suitcase. We were successful so now we will be able to get everything home! Tomorrow is Athens so this BLOG will probably not get posted until Sunday BUT I wanted to get it written. It was a great day even though it was cool and rainy.