This morning, we woke to the most amazing view, seeing all the way to Greece. Breakfast was served in the hotel which was easy, and then the bus departed at 9:30am, so it was a chilled morning.
View from the room
From the top of the hotel
We headed to Ephasus, which is an ancient city of ruins now. I was excited to visit Ephasus for the role it plays in the bible! It was much bigger than I thought, spanning a massive site. Burak gave us a tour of the first half, taking us through the older history of the city. The toilets were the coolest, because they were made of stone, in the winter time they were actually heated up! What smart people. The second half, we were given to explore ourselves. Kathleen and I stuck together and came across the massive amphitheatre. It was so cool to climb and at the top, you had an incredible view. On our way out, there were more ruins, but in more ruiny form: there were no standing columns, they had all been broken or lay horizontal.
Ruins in Ephesus
Small theatre
View from the top of the small theatre
Mosaic floor
Latrines
Turkish tour guide, Burak
The library
Dale and Brant
Larger theatre
View from halfway up
Large amphitheatre
Looking down at the library
The library
Inside the theatre
Busing back into Kusadasi
Lunch view
After returning back home, we had free time for the rest of the day. A group of us headed into town to grab some lunch (I had an amazing chicken salad), and then explored the backstreets of the town and market sections. This was the coolest thing I've come across so far! Streets so small and packed full of things with people trying to get you to buy them, but not in a pushy way. They had broken English, but knew things like numbers and how to have a basic conversation with you. The people were so genuinely thankful if you bought stuff off of them. We were even given pins as a gift with the Turkish traditional blue eye to ward off evil by one man who we bought things from. After exhausting ourselves, we bought some icecream and headed back to the hotel.
The others were planning on meeting at the pool a little while later, but I wanted to explore the beach a bit more and some more of the town. I left the hotel and walked along the water, heading for the beach. The sand was more like broken shells and pebbles. I didn't go swimming, but it was nice to be in the sun. As I was walking back into town, I found some postcards and decided to buy them as I'd been putting it off for a while. I thought it would be too hard to buy postage stamps, but gave it a go anyway. Using broken Turkish and the guy using broken English, he managed to tell me that the post office was 200m up the road, past the school. I headed in that direction, asking other people on the street for further clarification. I eventually made it, about 700m later, and walked inside. From the outside, it was a big, official looking building. Once inside, it was a bit of a free for all! I thought I was standing in a line to buy stamps, but people just kept standing in front of me, so I eventually just pushed my way to the front and pointed to the place on my post cards where the stamp should go and said Australia. He sold me two types of stamps, the local ones and the international ones. I just put them both on the cards. He didn't speak English so when he told me the price, I had no idea what he was saying. A guy translated for me which was nice.
While walking back I picked up some Turkish baked goods which I hastily ate and were amazing! I decided to head back into the market section, discovering other streets to explore, I went into one store with some cool jewellery and, after buying a ring, the woman gave me another pin to ward off evil. They're collecting on the purse I bought. As I was leaving, I noticed a small supermarket across the road. I hate being a tourist in places, I love doing local type things so I went in and just had a bit of a walk around. Everything was super cheap! I ended up with some snacks for the bus tomorrow.
It makes me feel super uncomfortable and a little bit culturally insensitive not having any knowledge of the Turkish language. Most can speak basic English, I can only say hello in Turkish. I almost feel slack when buying things that I can't even understand when they tell me how much things are. It's the first time I've travelled to a country ever where I don't have any prior knowledge of the language at all. I'll know for next time to do a bit of research before I travel.
I headed home for some post card writing and room chilling before the hotel buffet dinner and exploring the city nightlife!
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