We arrived in Athens early the next morning. We had signed up for a tour that would take us to Athens’ famous acropolis and drive us around town a bit. The port where we docked was called Piraeus, and was about seven miles (or was in km?) from Athens. Right away, we noticed that Athens was extremely crowded and that the traffic was pretty crazy. Athens’ traffic and pollution problems are legendary, and it took us all of two seconds to understand why.
The acropolis (literally, “high city”) is on top of hill in the center of Athens. It was the site of many different temples, only two of which are still standing in any significant way: the Parthenon, a temple for the goddess Athena, and the Erechtheion, another temple. Another structure that is left is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an amphitheater that was built in the second century AD. It was refurbished in the 20th century and is still regularly used for performances. It would be interesting to see a concert or play in a place like that:
The Parthenon and Erechtheion were interesting to see, but by this time, I don’t think we were all that impressed by marble columns and statues any more. We’d seen lots of them in other places, and since those other places had more of their historical context and feel remaining, they were more interesting. Athens is fairly modernized, so the sights of the acropolis seem rather out of place. Regardless, their size (especially the Parthenon) was impressive.
Walking up into the acropolis:
The Temple of Hephaestus, in the Athenian Agora, below the Acropolis. This was as close as we got, unfortunately. I would like to have gotten a closer look, since it’s one of the few temples in Greece that still has its original roof and structure, relatively undamaged:
The Parthenon. Unfortunately, no one is allowed inside:
The back of the Parthenon:
The Erechtheion:
The Erechtheion’s Porch of the Maidens:
The acropolis provides excellent views of all sides of Athens. Too bad there’s not much to see:
The rest of our visit to Athens consisted of a visit to a small shop with handcrafted souvenirs and stuff, and a stop by the Olympic stadium where the first modern Olympic games and the 2004 Olympic games were held.
We saw some Greek soldiers dressed in traditional garb in front of a monument. Too bad I can’t remember what that monument was or why they were dressed that way:
Driving around town, we quickly realized that there wasn’t anything we could do in Athens that we couldn’t do in another city, or that we hadn’t done already. We were given the opportunity to leave the tour group and find our own way back to the ship, but decided not to bother, and just went back to the ship when we were done with our tour. Athens just wasn’t that interesting. In fact, it was my least favorite stop during the entire vacation. I’m glad we saw the acropolis and what it had to offer, but I wouldn’t go back to Athens. Every other place we visited in Greece was much nicer and more interesting. This would be our last day in Greece, and it’s unfortunate that we would go out with more of a whimper than a bang.
We arrived in Kusadasi early the next morning. Kusadasi is a port town on the Mediterranean, some five miles from the ancient city of Ephesus (which most of you will recognize from the New Testament Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians). Ephesus used to be one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean, but its importance gradually declined as its harbor filled with silt and the ocean receded. In any case, it’s pretty crazy to think that the world’s oceans have receded so much over the last 2000 years.
As was the case with all historical things we saw on our cruise, our visit to Ephesus required us to be in a tour group. Our group left the ship first thing in the morning, and we were bussed to Ephesus to look around. As we walked into town, this is the first thing we saw:
I believe I mentioned this before, but I love these ancient amphitheaters. I can’t really explain why, but I just do. Perhaps it’s something about walking and sitting where actors, orators and famous people used to entertain the crowds. Plus, the idea of an amphitheater is simple, and yet, it works (acoustically speaking). In any case, as large as this amphitheater seemed to be, it wasn’t the main amphitheater of Ephesus. More on that in a bit.
Ephesus was a fascinating place. There was a lot more to see there than I was expecting, and even though we saw a lot, we were told that the entire city is nowhere near being completely excavated.
Ephesus was, sadly, not exactly free of tourists:
The Library of Celsus, one of the largest libraries in antiquity (and one of my favorite things in Ephesus):
Walking toward the opposite end of town:
An advertisement for a brothel (the foot directs sailors coming in on ships to walk in a certain direction):
The small structure on top of this hill was a prison. John (the apostle, John the Beloved) was imprisoned here for a time:
The main amphitheater, my favorite thing in Ephesus. This is where the apostle Paul used to preach to the Ephesians:
It was really hot in Ephesus, but I really enjoyed our visit to the old city. I wish we could have spent more time there and that there had been fewer people there, but oh well. You can’t make a lot of demands when you’re in a tour group and it’s the busy season. Speaking of tour groups, it was at the end of our visit to the old city that our tour guide got really upset because two people didn’t show up for the tour bus on time. We waited an extra 20 minutes for these two people, but they never showed up, so we left without them. Our guide claimed that in 25 years of being a tour guide, this had never happened to him before. We later found out that the two people who didn’t show up were native French speakers who didn’t understand English very well. Why anyone who didn’t speak English would just wander off on their own is beyond me. Anyway, by this time, I had gotten really sick of tour guides and tour groups. The previous two days in Istanbul had really worn me down, and the missing Francophone incident had only made things worse. So, it was at this point that I started making weird faces at the tour guide from the back of the bus and cheering and yelling really loudly when he’d try to get the group excited. He couldn’t tell where all the ruckus was coming from until Becca (a.k.a. Benedict Arnold) pointed me out, but regardless, he found all the noisemaking strangely entertaining. He would later ask me to do more of it when we were eating lunch.
Our next stop was the Basilica of St. John. Those of you who are LDS won’t believe this, but Catholics believe that this church was built on the grave of the apostle John. The church was built in the 6th century AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, and destroyed some 200 years later. St. John’s grave is marked:
Fortification in front of the church:
The basilica’s baptistry:
The castle on the hill was built by Crusaders:
This lone column is all that remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (destroyed around 400 AD). It was not far from the basilica:
The basilica was pretty interesting, despite the fact that it had been destroyed. Seeing things like the baptistry gives you a better sense for what the practices of the early church were versus what they’ve become in the Catholic church today.
Our next stop was the museum of antiquities, which had some interesting stuff in it from Ephesus. Again, I’m not a huge fan of seeing stuff in museums, but in this case, I had at least visited the place from which most of the items were taken.
Parts of a statue (this thing was huge) of the Roman Emperor Domitian (it was Domitian that exiled the apostle John to the Greek island of Patmos):
Statue of the Ephesian version of Artemis:
Our next stop was the home of the Virgin Mary. Catholics believe that the apostle John moved Mary to Ephesus later in her life, and that she was assumed to heaven from her home in Ephesus (I had never heard this before our visit, so I imagine this is where the term “our lady of the assumption” or “nuestra senora de la asuncion” comes from). This home was small and located on top of a mountain quite a ways from Ephesus, supposedly so that Mary could be protected from persecution by anti-Christian mobs.
I didn’t hear an explanation of what this was, but I believe it may have been used as a baptistry outside Mary’s home in later times:
House of the Virgin Mary:
This is apparently a very holy site for Catholics, and a place of pilgrimage, so there were many people praying inside the home, lighting candles outside, and getting holy water from the…um…holy water faucets below the home. We were given a small container to put some water in, but didn’t bother since the place held no special significance for us.
We were taken to lunch after this, and this was probably my favorite meal that we had in Turkey. It was an outdoor buffet, with many different Turkish salads, a couple kinds of meat (including kefte (sp?), Turkish meatballs), some fried bread thingies that rocked, saffron rice, baklava and other desserts. I wish I knew what the names of all the different foods were. Anyway, we sat at a table with another couple from our tour group. The husband was a Canadian soldier (medic, actually) on three weeks leave from Afghanistan. He didn’t give too many details of his work in Afghanistan, other than to say that the goings-on there kept him really busy.
After lunch, we were taken back to Kusadasi and given free time to do whatever. Becca was intent on getting some cashmere scarves, so we walked through the local market and found a place where she liked a couple. $25 for two cashmere scarves wasn’t too shabby.
I wasn’t expecting much from Kusadasi/Ephesus, so I was pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be one of my favorite stops on our cruise, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history, especially early Christian history.
