Ephesus trip

April 15^th

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.

The next day we all woke up early and again exhausted and headed off to Pamukkelle. The drive was long, about two hours. And the visit was also short, only two hours, which certainly was not enough time to see both the Greek ruins and the calcium carbonate formations. But what I did see was very beautiful. After the visit we made our long drive back to Istanbul, and arrived at around the 3 in the morning.