Day 9: Kusadasai, Turkey

This day was a big improvement from Athens and probably our favorite port so far on the cruise.

It was also Jesse's BIRTHDAY!

We went on a tour to Epheseus, which is an ancient town about 20 minutes away from the port. It was estimated to be a town of 250,000 people - enormous for the time it existed, about 70 B.C. It has been almost completely buried by dirt and silt over the centuries, and they are gradually excavating it. The portion we saw seemed really big, but that's only 10% of the entire city! We saw one person working on excavating a section of a wall while we were walking.

There was a lot to see and learn, and it was also very humbling to realize how much "modern" technology they had 2,000 years ago - running water and plumbing, central heat, flushing toilets, indoor kitchens. No internet though, although they had a brothel so they really didn't need it. There was also a secret tunnel between the brothel and the library - draw your own conclusions. Our tour group got to go inside a separate excavation section where they have revealed and reconstructed several homes belonging to wealthy citizens. These were really impressive, and didn't feel at all like primitive caves - they had private courtyards, reflecting pools, hot water, and indoor toilets. We also had one of the archaeologists who is working on the site talk to our group about their latest find - skeletal remains from gladiators showing various combat wounds.

The library was a truly impressive building - they've painstakingly reassembled the facade, which was three stories high, from the stones found scattered around the area underground.

Next to the library was the theater, which is immense and holds 25,000 people. They still do modern performances here - Sting played here a few years ago, as did Diana Ross. However, they've discovered that the sound from the shows is actually starting to crack and damage some of the structures, so there is currently a moratorium until they can come up with a solution. After we saw the theater, we saw a fun skit in period costumes with some dancers and a gladiatorial combat - the kids would have loved this!

As we left Ephesus we saw the house of where the Virgin Mary is believed to have lived out her last years in hiding and under protection of locals. Our tour returned to the port area where we visited a Turkish rug company with a great demonstration of rug making which is now subsidized by the Turkish government in order to preserve this fading art. We would have loved to have bought a rug - but two kids and a dog may take the beauty of the all natural color and artwork out faster than than this long-time art is fading.

Before we left we enjoyed some apple tea and cheese bread - local favorites and extremely good!

After the tour we ventured out to the shopping district very close to the port area. Turkish vendors are a little more persistent than Italy and Greece, however they are also entertaining and friendly. Initially we chose to walk through the untraveled areas taking small backstreets and alleys to see children just coming home from school, riding their bicycles and playing. Lisa found a quaint store vendor selling gauze outfits with added crochet accents - so after trying on an outfit in the little back room of the store we bought an outfit for 'all white night' which was the theme of dinner that evening. Jesse followed suit with a very Mediterranean look (WOW - big step for Jesse!) and he was very proud that evening when we finally attended dinner in the dining room in the appropriate theme (note, we skipped 70s night a few evening before).

We ate lunch at an outdoor family run cafe where every Turkish waiter was inviting you in from the street with a huge smile and a persistent welcome. We enjoyed iskanda (beef w/ yogurt and spicy tomato sauce) and heya (garlic & dill yogurt w/ naan bread). Lisa had to have a picture with the cute waiter.

The evening ended with a cake for Jesse's 39th birthday in the dining room - with Happy Birthday sung by our waiters and friends at the table Tony, Tania, Luis and Maria. We were proud of Luis for singing for the first time ever in public - even though he broke out in a sweat after singing (according to his wife Maria who has told us they have a karaoke machine with over 2,000 songs at home that their kids play on - but Luis has never partaken in the activity himself).