Part 3 Ephesus, Kushadasi, Priene, Miletus and Didyma.
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The next day we drove to Ephesus. Ephesus is probably the largest and best restored ancient city in Turkey, and it has the tourist crowds to match. It was interesting, but not as fun as Pergamum, mainly because you weren't supposed to go into so many areas, and there were so many tourists. | | A helpful person on the Internet translated this for us. It says: ..... STO.STRO:S.. | ...PLATEIAS TAUTE:S | of this street | ..O ENTHEN EO:S TOU EU- | from this point as far as the | KTE:ROU OIKOU TOU AR- | prayer-house of the | CHANGELOU GABRI- | archangel | E:L EPI IO:ANNOU | Gabriel at John's | KAI LEONTIOU TO:N | and Leontias's the | LOGIO:TATO:N | most learned | SCHOLASTIKO:N | scholars | KAI PATERO:N | and fathers | |
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This looked like a huge birdbath. I really don't think it was, but I don't have any other ideas. | | Here's some of the tour buses at Ephesus. |
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An ancient road, lined with columns. | | This is the theater. Quite well preserved. |
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Another ancient road with columns. | | Supposedly this foot points the way to the red light district in Ephesus. |
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This is the Library of Celsus, all renovated. The statues in the walls are copies--originals are in Vienna. | | The public toilets. Very cozy and intimate. |
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We had a hard time figuring this one out, then asked somebody with a detailed guidebook. Turns out that this was something like the steam room in a bath. Hot water circulated between the stacks of bricks, upon which a marble floor was supported. | | Walking up the Curetes Way. |
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Lots of cool old Roman roads are still visible on the hillside. Too bad you can't walk up them! | | After Ephesus, we drove to Kusadasi. We stayed in what we thought at first was a great hotel, with a nice view of the water, but it turned out that they had no hot water. So that's why they wanted us to pay in advance! |
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That evening we walked around town. It had rained heavily just before, and I slipped and fell down a marble staircase. I stopped myself with my right hand. You can't really tell here, but the palm of my right hand swelled up tremendously. | | The next morning we changed hotels, and took a shower. We also washed clothes, which we'd been doing in hotel sinks the whole time. |
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Here's the view from our new hotel. You can see the harbor quite well. | | After spending some time looking for the supermarket, we found the outdoor market. I haven't seen flattened cabbages like this before. |
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Walnuts and grapes for sale. | | All kinds of peppers for sale. |
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We have the olive section here. | | All kinds of nuts and dried fruits. |
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Spices for sale. Oddly enough, although we saw spices for sale everywhere, most Turkish food we had didn't seem very spicy at all. | | The view from Pigeon Island (within walking distance of Kusadasi), which has a small stone fort on it. It was definitely the place for young couples to hang out--we saw about 4 of them there. |
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The stone fort on Pigeon Island was locked up, but we were able to poke the camera in a hole on the door, and take a picture of the inside. This is what it looked like--looks like storage for a restaurant. | | Kusadasi was a really touristy town. About 2 or 3 cruise ships stopped in every day, and the whole place was oriented towards servicing them. |
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Sunset from the hotel. | | Sunrise from the hotel the next morning. You can see one small and one huge cruise ship coming in, with Pigeon Island between them. |
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We toured 3 ancient sites today--Priene, Miletus, and Didyma. They're much less crowded than Ephesus, and thus much more fun. Priene was my favorite--it's set high up on a hill, with pine trees everywhere. | | This staircase has a gutter built in. |
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This column had some Greek inscriptions on it. I really wish I knew what it said! | | This was the Council Chamber, something like City Hall. As you can see, it was in superb condition. |
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Another view of the council chamber, with Mt. Mykale rising behind it. | | Eric and I, using the self timer on the camera to get some photos. |
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| | I imagine some citizens of Priene had problems with slipping on the stone steps as well. Look at the anti-slip grooves carved into the steps here! |
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An ancient road, with a covered gutter running down the side. | | Mt. Mykale, and the city walls. |
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You can see here how the trees contribute to the crumbling of the ruins. | | Gutters ran through houses as well. |
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Mt Mykale, with pieces of crumbled columns in the middle. We started a game here--to get from place to place, you had to step on pieces of ruins. We called the broken up fluted columns "gears". They look a lot like gears, don't they? | | More gears, looking down on the cotton fields in the distance. |
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The 5 standing columns of the Temple of Athena. | | The theater, with front seats reserved for VIPs. |
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...such as Eric! | | Another view of the theater. |
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Gutters were kind of a theme here. We thought this looked like the influx for a couple different pipes. | | The cotton harvest was in full swing when we were here. Here's a tractor loaded with bags of freshly picked cotton, on the road between Priene and Miletus. |
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This is the theater at Miletus. This was by a long shot the largest and most complex theater that we saw on our whole trip. | | The theater from inside. Notice the upper and lower walkways, some partially collapsed. |
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| | Here's the view from inside one of the theater walkways. |
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Behind the theater was a Byzantine fortress. The building style changed in Byzantine times, and more flat bricks were incorporated into structures. | | This was a bath, with hot water pipes running through the walls to keep the bath hot. |
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A tree growing among the ruins. | | The entrance to the Baths of Faustina |
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A close-up of the doorway to the Baths of Faustina. Eric and I theorized that the holes in the blocks were used to fasten marble slabs. | | In this section of the baths there were individual little rooms, where people could relax and bathe. |
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This is the swimming pool, complete with steps in the corners leading into the water. | | The last ancient city of the day was Didyma, which actually wasn't even a city at all, but a temple occupied by a famous oracle. These 2 columns aren't reconstructed, and have remained standing for 1500 years. |
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Inside the temple was the inner courtyard | | Some of the carvings that decorated the temple are still relatively intact. |
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These utility poles didn't have wires connected to them, nor were there any houses around. I think it's a part of the strange building habits in Turkey, where you see hundreds and hundreds of houses and condominiums that are half completed, but no longer being worked on. | | A ruined Byzantine monastary on Lake Bafa. We turned in here for the small village of Kapikiri, on the lake. |
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The first pomegranate tree I'd ever seen. | | In Kapikiri, we stayed at the Agora Pension. It was kind of what I'd imagined a small village Turkish hotel to be like--bathroom and shower downstairs, overgrown with grape vines, very rustic. Overall, it was very charming. |