Kusadasi Turkey

April 25, 2010 - Sunday -

There is much to do from this port – the incredibly preserved ancient city of Ephesus, the House of the Virgin Mary and shopping.

We hired a driver with some Australian friends and headed south to the ruins of Priene, Miletus and Didyma. All three of these ruins had harbors and the water has receded now approx. 3-5 miles inland. I really could not imagine how they could be equal to Ephesus but indeed they were! We had a great full day of touring.

The furthest south is Didyma, about an hour’s drive away. You come upon it so suddenly and it is striking with 120 giant columns rising out of the hole of excavations. It is home to an oracle that rivaled its Delphi counterpart and was probably only second in importance because Delphi was nearer to Athens. An oracle did not speak to average people – a priest served as an interpreter. A sacred spring bubbled from the ground and from there the priest and oracle found their answers. According to the legend, Apollo favored the region so he built the Temple of Apollo at the end of the 8th century BC. It was destroyed by the Persians in 494 BC and was rebuilt in 334 BC. When Christianity spread into the region, a church was built near the site of the Temple. One marble block is regarded as the biggest architectural component in the world; it weighs 70 tons and is surrounded by 124 columns standing in two rows on a stepped platform. There were several marble heads of Medusa, the woman with the snake hair.

Next was Miletos, founded as a Mycenaean colony in 2000 BC. It had four harbors and was connected by a 13 mile sacred marble road from Didyma. It became an important center for trade, culture, art and science from the 7th century BC. There is an open air Temple of Delphinius with a 15,000 seat amphitheatre and the well-preserved Faustina Baths (constructed for the wife of Emperor Marcus Aurelius) with a training and wrestling school. There are the remains of a market and church and two other temples.

Priene has a steep climb up and steep walk down as it is perched high on the craggy slopes of Mt. Mykale. This was an important city around 300 BC when the League of Ionian Cities held congresses and festivals here. The most impressive is the Temple of Athena, the epitome of an Ionian temple. Five columns have been re-erected and all around lie the sections of other columns, like giant stone wheels, arranged so neatly as if you could just pull up these pieces to create another column. The theatre is one of the best preserved examples of the Hellenistic period with seating for 6500 people. Some of the seats in the front rows have names finely carved names of the VIPs. They have found coins from 500 BC and the city was built on a grid-plan.

We enjoyed a short stop at a local store for drinks and Q-tips! The people are lovely in the small villages. In the touristy areas, they may seem aggressive but they are making a living with their crafts – carpets, weavings, art, postcards, leather and furs.

I was exhausted from the last few days and went to bed after a buffet dinner and slept for almost 11 hours. The entertainer sounded great but I could not get there-- Mark O’Malley from the UK, a singer extraordinaire.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain