June 2, Thursday. They got their wake-up call at 5:30AM because they needed to meet their pre-paid ($59 each) Excursion tour to “Ancient Ephesus” at 7:30AM. Since Turkey seemed to foreign and they didn’t have a clue about how to get from their arrival port at Kusadasi to Ephesus, they felt the splurge was worth it. At breakfast, LT had the pleasure of being almost the first person to enter Windjammer at 6:01AM. Another passenger was fussing over the smoked salmon, so he scooped up some scrambled eggs, two types of sausage, and one slice of bacon, plus a large glass of orange juice. He went back later for the salmon.
The three travelling Thomases assembled with all the other tour groups in the large Metropolitan Theater and sat with Group 3. They got their red #3 tags to stick on their shirts and followed a Royal Caribbean guide out to the bus, which then took them on a 20-kilometer ride to Ephesus. The Turkish guide’s name was Tahir—and he had spent time in Buffalo, New York, and Denmark. Tahir has been a guide for 30 years. He was knowledgeable and humorous and made the 3 hours pass quickly. They each got wireless receiver units and a single earphone so they could hear him on the bus and at the site.
They exited the bus at the top of the sight, and followed Tahir as he walked and talked down the ancient, the ruined columns and arches which marked the excavated streets. Ephesus used to be a port town, but the ocean silted the harbor up. So now, there is a long “Harbor” street that leads to what was once the harbor, but is now just a green valley. They saw Roman baths, shop sites, temples, and the small amphitheater where the “senate” would have met -- everything. Ephesus really is one of the most extensive and fully detailed restored ancient cities. 250,000 people used to live there. Columns still had Greek and Roman inscriptions on them. Every fifty yards or so, Tahir would stop us, congratulate us on being one of the first groups through the site—so it was cool and uncrowded—and explain what we were seeing. Tahir said only 15% of Ephesus has been excavated so far—so the site will get bigger.
The highlights of the tour were the two story Roman “Library of Celeus,” which had double-walls to keep the books and the readers cool. LT could decipher the Greek letters for “SOFIA” or wisdom on the columns outside the library. After exiting the library, they walked down the commercial agora, where shops would have been and found the entrance to the Roman theater. After they both had climbed up the steep steps of the theater, Eli took some pictures of LT against the backdrop of the stage and the surrounding mountains and seascape. Then she told him to go down on the stage “to test the acoustics,” so he did. Once at the stage center, LT began reciting Hamlet’s “Speak the speech, I pray, you, trippingly on the tongue.” He was amazed at how clear his own voice sounded and he could tell, by the reverberation of his words, that his voice was carrying across the seats perfectly. It was like hearing his own voice through a perfect microphone. He could even hear Eli, way up near the top, saying “Good, good” although her voice was much quieter.
According to Tahir, St. Paul lived in Ephesus for nearly two years, but it wasn’t until he decided to give a talk in the theater that the pagan merchants got nervous. They were afraid that if Paul succeeded in converting the citizens to Christianity, they would lose all the money they made selling artifacts about Diana Artemis. So when Paul began to speak in the theater, everyone began yelling “We worship Diana.” And Paul had to flee.
Then they walked down to a pre-arranged “stage” on Harbor Street, where 20 costumed “Romans” enacted the arrival of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. They had a pre-recorded soundtrack for trumpets, etc, a triumphal parade to a pair of thrones, a mock gladiator fight—Caesar gave a thumbs-up sign to spare the life of the losing fighter—and even dancing girls. It was a lot of fun. Even though it was only 9:30AM, it was getting hot. So everyone—perhaps 100 tourists—watched the performance from the shade of several tall pine trees. And they were all glad that the performance only lasted maybe 10 minutes.
The bus drove them back to a 20-minute presentation on Turkish carpets given at Matis—right across the street from the entrance to the port. The demonstration was impressive—though no prices were mentioned, perhaps $200,000 worth of hand-woven, cotton, wool, and silk carpets in floral and geometric patterns were unrolled and thrown down at the feet of the 30 tourists who were seated on three sides of a rectangle. The Matis employees served their “guests” apple tea and a nice roll with cream cheese inside. The spectators were shown how the colors in the rugs looked different depending on which end you were viewing—this must be because of the angle at which the knots are made. They resisted buying anything, and then walked through a gauntlet of salespeople offering leather and jewels until the reached the street. On the street, the entered the Grand Bazaar and were again accosted by various vendors, all speaking good English and all trying to get them to spend money on belts, purses, clothes, watches, carpets, etc. It got wearying very quickly, and after about 15 such encounters, Allie and LT left to return to the ship. Of course, returning to the ship meant running another gauntlet of vendors in the covered port areas leading to the ship’s gangway. But these vendors were slightly less aggressive and they soon reached the safety and calm of the ship.
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