April 12, Selchuk and Ephesus.

Today I walked over before breakfast to near the train station where I picked up a couple of the little donut-shaped rolls I like (hard, covered with sesame seeds) to take for lunch. I emptied out my big day pack so I could put water and a jacket in it, had a nice Turkish breakfast - feta cheese, olives, sliced tomato, orange, apple, carrot, and cucumber, bread, and a boiled egg. Then I walked to Ephesus - about a 20 minute walk along a really nice pedestrian / bike path that parallels the highway. It was a pleasant day, already warm enough when I got there that I took off my jacket and put it inside the pack.

The ruins are not as well preserved as the Lonely Planet description implies, but it is large enough that I found it easy to spend 5 hours there, and was glad I had brought some food and water. The accessible ruins are mainly spread out along a main street that runs from the crest of a hill down to a "harbor way," lined with pillars, that leads to what was once the harbor, but silted in to the point that it is now open fields, a good kilometer or more from the coast. To one side, near the lower entry where I entered, is the ruins of the Church of St. Mary - I returned here at the end of my visit to take a picture of the eastern end once the sun was high enough not to spoil the shot. Then I began the long walk uphill, beginning with the enormous amphitheater at the bottom of the hill. (There is another, smaller amphitheater near the top.) By now, the large tour groups were out in force, so in order to get decent photographs I had to spend a lot of time waiting for one group to move on, then grab a couple of photos before the next group came in. A very annoying habit of tour guides: With a very few exceptions they seem to like to stand, and position their listening flock, directly smack in the center of the attractions they are talking about - so independent visitors can not get near it much less get a photograph of it until they have finished their long-winded spiels. A few, more courteous, tour guides stand off to the side of the attraction to talk about it, then leave it to the group members to look at it and photograph it on their own.

Immediately after the amphitheater is the forum and the two story library, both very impressive. Moving up the hill is a series of fountains, a public bath, a huge public toilet (that had constantly running water for sanitation), and on the right side a large area of wealthy persons' houses that has been covered over to protect it from weather while a team of archaeologists pieces it back together. Admission to this was a separate and rather steep 15 TL, about $10 US, but after touring it I considered it well worth it: It was interesting to see the reconstruction project itself, and there were several really good floor mosaics and wall paintings.

I left Ephesus about 1:30, and instead of going straight back to Selcuk, I followed a sign to the "Grotto of the Seven Sleepers." this was fenced in and more or less closed, but I was able to get several interesting pictures. The basic story is seven young men who (in the Christian version) went into a mountain cave to pray during the time when the Romans were persecuting Christians, then awoke several decades later after the empire had adopted Christianity, and died praising God. There is a slightly different Muslim version. A church was built over the cave complex, and has since fallen into ruins, with the help of earthquakes.

Fortunately, I found a dirt road across the fields to the main highway so I did not have to walk all the way back to the entry of Ephesus, then back to Selcuk. I went back to the hotel, dumped my pack, then walked back to the road that led to the Temple of Artimis, once named one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, but now only a single large column standing in the middle of a marshy field outside of town, with a stork nest atop the column. It was worth visiting but required a lot of imagination.

On the way back to town, I followed the highway from Ephesus past the intersection and, as I had hoped, found a market area, with shops that sold fruit as well as other goods, and was able to pick up some bananas and oranges for breakfast and to take with me on the tour to Pamukkale.