ancient wonders and ruins

Hey everyone,

This is a continuation of my last post about my trip to Selcuk and Efes; I left off after the Efes Museum, so I'll pick up right there. Leaving the Efes Museum, Le Xuan and I started off down the road to Efes. The Temple of Artemis was on the way, so of course we stopped there. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, originally bigger than the Parthenon. Of course, there's not that much left now; we saw a single pillar, and myriad stone pieces lying around. The site of the temple was actually fairly marshy: there were a couple small ponds dotting the field, and when I looked into them, I could see pillar segments lining the bottom of them. The site was gorgeous, and full of geese, who apparently were pretty used to visitors, but not used to being spoiled by visitors: they waded right through the small crowd of visitors, honking indignantly.

From the Temple of Artemis, we continued on down the road for a couple kilometers to the turnoff for Efes. There was a tree-shaded pedestrian walkway alongside the road, which according to Lonely Planet was planted/planned by Dr. Sabri Yayla; we were very, very grateful to Dr. Yayla, as the weather was hotter than fresh lava, and sticky to boot. We made it to Efes, checking out some sporadic ruins just outside the gates bought our tickets, and entered behind a German tour group and before a Chinese tour group. Efes was, in a word, incredible. We walked down the ruins-lined path (apparently, it's called "Harbor Street"), stopped and chatted with some Turkish schoolkids, who played the "Where is Le Xuan from" game and lost, but who were pretty impressed that we spoke Turkish, and the first thing we saw was the Great Theatre. It was pretty great. We arrived just behind the aforementioned German tour group, just in time to hear their guide belt out a snippet of an opera tune to demonstrate the acoustics of the theatre, then had the whole 25000-seat theatre to ourselves for a bit before the Chinese tourists came in. From there, we ambled down the Sacred Way, another ruins-lined street, stopping to check out what looked uncannily like the ongoing excavation of a tomb, before arriving at the Library of Celsus. The Library of Celsus is definitely in contention for my favorite ruin in Turkey. It was incredibly beautiful, and so unbelievably detailed. It was built in 114 by Consul Tiberius Julius Aquila, and held 12,000 scrolls. The facade was pretty darn imposing: it had 4 statues of the Virtues (Arete Ennoia, Episteme, and Sophia) in niches behind the front pillars. One was headless, one was pretty whole but being restored, and the other two were almost completely whole. Their niches were very intricately carved, as well as the facade stretching above them. On the whole, the Library of Celsus was an impressive sight.

We left the Library of Celsus and ambled along to see some Roman communal toilets; they were mostly restored, but they had the distinction of being the most sit down toilets I've seen in Turkey, which I'm sure you all wanted to know. From there, we continued down another ruins-lined walk, the Curetes Way, which had much better ruins lining it than the prior two Ways: there were busts, statue fragment, and even whole statues, still on their pedestals. We saw the Temple of Hadrian, but didn't stop, as at that point the area looked like Disney World without the rides: hordes of tourists sallying forth; instead, Le Xuan and I passed the Fountain of Trojan, some shop ruins, and the Gate of Hercules, and continued on to Upper Efes, which was strangely almost empty of tourists. At the Efes Museum, there was a huuuuuge altar facade on display from the temple dedicated to Emperor Domitian; that temple was the first thing we saw in the upper part of Efes. It was preet cool seeing something in a museum, then seeing the spot it came from, and piecing together what it must've originally looked like; I don't think I've had that opportunity before.

At that point, we'd reached the other end of Efes, so we exited and rested our aching feet while pondering what to do next. We considered going to Meryemana, the house where Mary (yes, the Mary, Jesus' mother) lived her later years and passed away, but it was over 7 kilometers away, and the taxi fare we were quoted was too high to bargain to a decent level. I did do a little shopping, and was able to argue down the price of a belly dance scarf (sooo not traditional, and sooo touristy, but fun nonetheless) over half price, which was still overvalued, but a decent bargaining effort on my part. We then struck off towards the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers, which apparently is the Turkish version of Rip Van Winkle: During the 3rd century, 7 Christians fled Efes and hid out in a cave about 3/4 kilometers away. Unfortunately for them, Emperor Decius had them followed, and their trackers sealed off the cave. Flash forward 200 years, and an earthquake broke the wall sealing the cave, and woke the sleepers, who walked back into town looking for food and found that everyone they knew was dead; the sleepers concluded they'd undergone a resurrection of some sort, and when they eventually died, they were buried in the same cave. They had a cult following for a while. The grotto itself was very pretty, but we arrived as it was closing, so although we were able to climb around the grotto, and to peek in and see the remains of the 7 Sleepers' tombs.

From there, we walked the 4ish kilometers back to Selcuk, and took an ice cream/orange juice break at a cafe, where we were immediately surrounded by schoolkids from Izmir on a field trip, who played the "Where is Le Xuan from" game (of course...) and lost; I'm pretty sure they came up with every single remotely Asian nation other than Vietnam. After that, we walked through downtown Selcuk; the whole town was turned out for the evening bazaar, which was fascinating; we saw quite a few gypsies, which was a first for me. We headed over to the otogar, where the touts assumed we were tourists (which we...kind of were, I guess, but I feel like somewhat of a hybrid tourist, since I'm a legal resident of Turkey for the time being) and quoted us inflated prices for a bus to Ankara from Selcuk; we ignored that and hopped
a bus to Izmir, where we got tickets to Ankara and were on our way back home, 24 hours after we'd embarked upon our marathon day trip. 'Twas a great time, but I was very glad to get back to ODTU, grab a hot shower, and crawl into bed.

I've kept busy since my trip to Selcuk and Efes: I just finished my finals today, I'm packing this weekend, and I'm getting ready to return back to the States on Monday. I also found time to take a trip to Trabzon, and along the Black Sea coast to Bat'umi, in Georgia. I didn't get to spend nearly as much time in Georgia as I'd've liked, as I had to return to Ankara for my second set of finals, but I had a great time nonetheless and a trip writeup and photos will
be forthcoming.

'Til then, take care,
and hope y'all are doing well,
-R