Ephesus

We had a short flight to Izmir at 7pm and took a short taxi ride to the DoubleTree. They had a restaurant next door so we got pizzas and went to bed.

Wednesday morning our tour guide Ozge met us at the hotel. I had prebooked a tour through a reliable company on trip advisor and as in the past, this worked out well. To our pleasant surprise, we ended up also having a separate driver, and our tour guide went through the exhibits and sites with us. We first toured the House of the Virgin Mary. Then we walked around Ephesus for a couple hours, including the Terrace Houses. Next we quickly stopped by the Temple of Artemis, which is mostly ruins. They took us for lunch at a little farm shop place. It was a nice, quiet, delicious outside lunch. We then watched how silk yarn is extracted and spun up, which was kind of cool. We were then shown a bunch of rugs and talked about the historical importance. We had no interest in buying an expensive hand knot rug, but Kacey did talk them into selling some silk yarn (something they hadn't done before). We got on the road to the Archaeological Museum and spent some time in this little museum. We ended our day at St. John's Basilica (which was pretty big) and the castle on the hill. We saw John's tomb and enjoyed the views from the castle. Our driver then offered to drop us downtown Izmir (instead of our hotel outside of town) to see the city and eat dinner. We walked along the water, saw fishermen, and then ate at Deniz Seafood restaurant. The food was ok but the place was full of men in suits eating multiple courses, while we had walked through ruins all day. We took a taxi back out to the airport hotel and got to bed so we could wake up early for our 5:50am flight to Athens.

Ephesus was a great site to visit and I feel fortunate that we were able to work it in. Getting in and out quickly can be difficult to work out, but it is possible.

House of the Virgin Mary

Library of Celsus

Fishermen of Izmir