Turkey, Part 2

CATS

No, Cats is not a site along the tour, but there were cats everywhere!  At all the outdoor sites, in the outdoor pavilion restaurants (and occasionally at inside restaurants as well). They were all wild, but so used to being around people that none were skittish.  And they all looked very comfortable wherever they settled - on all of these ancient ruins - and all looked well fed.  There must be a lot of cat lovers in Turkey.
 

EPHESUS AND THE CHURCHES OF MARY AND JOHN

Ephesus was located in different places throughout the centuries, from 12th c. BCE to 2nd c. CE, though of course the sites were close to each other, determined by the movement of the river and the harbor and disease and war.  Most of what we can see now is from the third incarnation of Ephesus.  Alexander the Great, Augustus, and following emperors of Rome left their marks.  Hadrian was a favorite who built the baths and showered the city with favors. Apparently, they loved Hadrian.  (When it came to Roman emperors, he wasn't as bad as a few others we could mention ...)

Frankly, it's hard to process all of this - many centuries of building, various governing empires, developing architectural styles, cultural upheavals.  It goes from pre-archaic to early Christian, all in the same place, spanning about 1000 years.  Boggles the mind.  Mine, anyway.  Just think, we in the USofA have been a country for a bit over 200 years, "discovered" less than 200 years before that.  We are barely past adolesence.

The steps between the seats at the theater.  Here you can see the lions' paws that designated seats for the privileged.  

 A pi?  This was a puzzle.

 Reconstructed archway.

 And another reconstruction.

The library from a distance.  This was such a lovely place, originally built as a mausoleum. 

It was a big city.  It needed facilities. And here, the latrines! Really! Can't quite imaging going potty with about 20 other folks, but those were different times.

 I love this shot.  Columns and entablature, with a pomegranate growing uninvited.

The theater. There are ongoing excavations here, of course, and hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, so it stays pretty clean and free of encroaching weeds.

These are the remains of the Church of Mary who was brought here by John after the death of Jesus and was said to have died and been buried here.  The church was amazingly large but earthquakes and time will reduce anything to rubble. 

As we left the museum area, there were shops selling everything including what you are not supposed to sell!  Genuine fake Hollister, Lacoste, Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton were to be had too for nothing close to prices for the genuine thing.

We didn't buy any genuine fake watches but there was a man selling figs in paper cones he'd fashioned himself, fresh and juicy and big, one euro in a bag that had 6 figs.  What a deal!  We ate two right away, shared with our tour guide and then had two the next morning for breakfast with feta and honey.  So good! Ever so much better than a fake watch.

After Ephesus we visited the Church of St. John where the disciple was buried.  Here's a baptismal font - walk in, walk out!

And then a mosque.  It was not so special as mosques go, but it gave our tour guide a chance to talk about the culture of the mosque and the rituals of Muslims.  Funny was the description of the five-time daily prayers and what they do - turning, bending, kneeling, reaching.  He said, hey, after 20 minutes five times a day, who needs a fitness studio????  I have to say, you don't see a lot of fat Muslims ....

Of course, as in all ancient sites, local folks used the materials at hand - in this case the old temples and towns that had been abandoned and destroyed by nature or man - to build the new.  So, artifacts from Ephesus show up in much later constructions - here you can see a piece of a column used as a brick in the "new" building.

 Busy day!  After a late lunch we made another stop, a small Greek village in the mountains that is a bazaar, the whole town. Goods hanging from the trees!

 

 

The main street had plastic sheeting over it, I suppose to protect shoppers from rain, but perhaps too to protect them from falling house parts.  

 The place needs some renovation.....

We stopped for a wine-tasting, some of which where not too bad, but none to our taste.  Most were from local products like mulberry, and other fruits.  Not our thing.  But they had jams and pressed local olive oil.  THAT we can use!

 

APHRODISIAS

Another ancient site.  It was first dedicated to Aphrodite, hence the name.  The entrance to the temple is so impressive, even though what is behind it these days is only a grassy field and random stones beyond.

This view shows it's not all so pretty - chain link fencing that separates areas, some of it in poor shape.

The stadium.  Wow - it could seat 30,000 spectators.  That's a lot of marble.

Here's the same stadium in a picture from Wikipedia.  Clearly, no one has done the weeding in a long while.  It doesn't take long for nature to take over again.

The theater seats 8,000 and you really can stand on the stage and speak rather normally and be heard in the upper seats.  Amazing. Wish I had had nerve enough to belt out a song.

In one of the "rooms" behind the stage, they had placed a number of the steer sculptures together.  The steer was a symbol for Zeus/Jupiter for the theater. 

Other shots of the agora and temple.

The museum displayed so many pieces that had been recovered from the site.  I have mixed feelings about these pieces - wouldn't it be so much more interesting for the visitors to see these pieces where they were originally placed?  Wouldn't that make the experience for the visitors so much more realistic?  

Afterwards a quick picture stop at Pamukkale, a natural wonder.  There are many hot mineral springs in the area and this is the culmination of bubbling up and flowing down.  It was known to the Romans and an ancient city was built above the "Cotton Castle."  Very strange.

Our hotel that night was near a warm springs and we had a chance to soak in the hot salty water.  Our guide told us that one session in the springs will take ten years off your life, so don't be shocked when you see us again and we look so young!

DAY THE LAST

First stop, a rug factory. 

The reason this trip was so cheap is that various businesses pay to have us stop by in the hopes they can sell us something.  So, a rug manufacturer, a jeweler, a leather shop.

Loved the rug place!  They had demonstrations of rug making, silk harvesting, and answered lots of questions about the process.  And I do love these rugs. The women were artisans, could work faster than our eyes could follow their hands.

We headed back to where we started from - Antalya - but first there were stops along the way.  This place, well just wow.  Loved the decor! 

But they had a window full of Turkish delight.  I'd been waiting and waiting to find it not packaged. Finally!

Then we had to visit the jewelry place and the leather place. Not so nice.  The jewelry place was so over the top with tacky and the leather place so over the top with pressure, but we resisted.

The next pause, just above the city of Antalya, we had fresh melon, supplied by our driver Juma.  He could speak close to zero German, but he smiled and nodded a lot when we talked to him.  

Antalya is way too big for me.  I would guess from my short observation that 80% of the population live in high rise apartments but there is a charming old city, large public parks and some wonderful vistas. 

There were plenty of minarets to see, lots of calls to prayer to hear (strange and compelling), so much to eat and smell, and lots of sunshine. By the end of the trip the group was a real group, and that was nice.  We exchanged email addresses and promised to post pictures to Drop Box. It was a good trip.