April 15th
Another excellent weekend. It began Friday night, I packed bag with a
few clothes and a bathing suit jumped on the bus with many other exchange and
Erasmus students and we headed south. Once out of the city our bus took a ferry
across the Sea of Marmara. We all had a beer or two and we were back on the road
for the rest of the night. With a rough bus sleep we arrived in Selçuk, a small
town tourist town, which I will remember as having orange trees growing all
along the roadsides, and a man walking a camel down the road. It is touristy
town because it is a pilgrimage site, a shrine to the Virgin Mary. It is
believed and accepted by the Catholic Church that this is where she lived and
died. It is very beautiful, with a fountain and a reconstruction of her modest
dwelling that has been converted into an alter.
We boarded the bus and travelled 7km down the road to Ephesus. The
reason why I came on this trip to begin with. Ephesus is a Greek Ruin dating to
the 10 century BC, and was taken over by the Romans around 100BC. Apparently,
its one of the seven wonder of the world. To me it looked like a massive
puzzle, ruins everywhere, broken columns and piles of stone everywhere. The
archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the great temple of Artemis, and
the amphitheaters. But the remains residential areas, market areas and other
public buildings are scattered throughout the site, in ruins. This was a
magnificent site, but unfortunately our organizers only gave us two hours for
the whole site, which anyone could easily spend an entire day at.
Our next adventure was a boat ride. Actually it was a pirate ship.
Turkey has very small boat tour operations all over the place…real party boats.
They take out all the guts of these boats and replace them with bars on the
inside, and cushions and speakers on the outside. We were the first tour of the
year for our specific boat and the crew was psyched to have us. Unfortunately
with our long sleepless night most of us just lied on the cushions relaxing,
instead of drinking their expensive booze and dancing in bikinis. However that
our exhaustion did not stop anyone from jumping in the water once we got to a
secluded area. The jump from the top of the boat must have been at least 4
meters, and it felt awesome. My first swim in the Aegean Sea… possibly my first
swim not in the Atlantic Ocean.
Our next stop was in the town of Kusadasi, where we had hotel
reservations. The view from our hotel room was amazing, looked like a typical
resort destination. Everyone gathered in their hotel rooms for predrinking activities
and the like, before heading off to the bars.
