Home»Italy > Greece > Paris - Day 15

We had a full day visiting Ephesus starting at 7.30 a.m. when we met our guide who escorted us to our own van with driver! This is going to be good and it was. Driving towards the site we learned much about the history of Turkey. We arrived before the hordes and many HAL buses. Salcyk escorted us through the gates and immediately we knew it was going to be worth our time visiting. As you can tell from the pictures many structures have been reconstructed or are still there in their original state. The site itself is enormous and the highlight for me was when we walked down to the stage in the amphitheatre where Paul had been booed off the stage. To think we were standing in the same spot as he had stood was awesome.

Among other details, when we saw the remains of the library which had once housed 200,000 books, we learned that because of competition with the library at Alexandria, parchment was invented here when the Egyptians cut off their supply of papyrus to the Ephesians.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the site, and as huge as it is, only 10% of it has been uncovered so far. Come back in another 50 years!  In fact with a population of more than 200,000 this was one of the largest cities of ancient (Roman) times.Our van and driver were waiting for us at the other end and as it was too early for lunch we stopped at a carpet factory run by the government, as people (women) are not pursuing it as a profitable way to make money and the art was dying. The government pays the women and after training they are allowed to take the looms home and work on the carpets part time.

By this time we had worked up an appetite and we were taken to a quiet restaurant called Bizim Ev Hanimeli for a home-style Turkish buffet - we were first there and all the dishes had not been touched and looked delicious and we enjoyed each one that we tried.Our last stop was the “traditional Turkish village” of Sirince.  It is a really pretty village high on a hillside that has become a series of tourist shops.  There were two bright spots though.  First a stop for true Turkish coffee made from what appeared to be a cake of ground coffee melted in tiny cups in a bed of hot sand – until it bubbled and boiled and was ready.  Delicious!  Second, an old gentleman carefully hand-painting replicas of an urn now in the British Museum.

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