Cruise Recap, part 3: Port2 - Kusadasi, Turkey

Kusadasi is a resort town that is the jumping off point for Ephesus, the best preserved classical city in the Eastern Mediterranean and one of Turkey’s biggest tourist attractions. Every cruise review I read mentioned Ephesus was an amazing place and a must-do/see excursion. Initially, I wasn’t sold on it though (I figured we were seeing enough ruins in Athens and Egypt), but in the end, I bought into all the hype and we purchased tickets for one of the ship’s excursions to this ancient site.

The port in Kusadasi is right at the center of old town but Ephesus is about 45 minutes away from the city. We hopped into an air conditioned bus and headed out early, along with probably several hundred other passengers from our ship. The number of tour buses leaving to go to Kusadasi was astonishing. I think they were only outdone by the number of buses used on our Egypt excursion.
I’ve read you can do Ephesus on your own (take a taxi or bus to the site), but it is imperative to hire a guide once there or else you will not know what you are viewing. We thought of going this route so as to not deal with crowds of people in a tour, but in the end, I’m happy we did the ship’s excursion because Ephesus is very large (and only 15% of it has been excavated!) and there are no signs anywhere to indicate what you are looking at. Our guide spoke English fairly well and was mostly good, albeit dry, and gave us a lot of insight into the buildings/ruins we were looking at.

Ephesus was first founded around 2000 B.C. and was once the capital of Asia Minor. The Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, resided here but has since been almost completely destroyed with only one column is left standing. It is also reportedly where the Virgin Mary and Apostle John spend their last days. The main attractions now are the Celcuis Library (mostly restored, picture top right) and the Theater (thought to be the largest theater in the ancient world). Scott and I got a kick out of the public latrine – it was funny to think how ancient greeks and romans would sit side by side to discuss politics while doing their business. In the pic to the left, the marble pieces are original, while the concrete pieces are new pieces put in to finish the puzzle for us tourists.

After the tour, we were bussed back to old town Kusadasi and ushered into a rug gallery to learn about the art of rugmaking. It was mainly a sales pitch but we did learn a lot and got to see a demonstration of how they make the rugs. I must also admit the rugs we saw were gorgeous. We were very tempted to buy one!

After rug shopping, we walked around town and stopped by a little hole in the wall placed called Avlu for lunch. It resembled a cafeteria in that the dishes were all prepared and I just pointed at which ones I wanted to try. The food wasn’t in those warming trays you see at Panda Express though – they were in huge round vats. I felt like I was at a spice market, only I was buying prepared stews instead of dried herbs! We have no idea what Turkish food is so it was a bit of an adventure. I selected something that resembled shwarma- it was lamb meat sliced from one of those rotating meat roasters, but then placed atop pita bread and all of it smothered in a tomato sauce. I also got some sort of meatball stew (tasty!) and okra. Scott topped it off with the locally brewed Efes beer. Now that we are home, I looked up this restaurant and it is a recommended one on TripAdvisor and Frommers!

We both agreed we liked Turkey and wouldn’t mind returning to explore more. Ephesus was only okay though. It is definitely interesting because walking around the ruins really gives you an idea of how the ancient city must have been like, but I feel cheated that many of the “ruins” are reconstructions. Certain areas, like the main boulevard, are original but the library and theater are mostly reconstructed. I am left wondering how much of it is fake and how much real? How do archeologists know this is what the ancient site really looked like? For all I know, they could be making it up that this was the Temple of Artemis when it was actually the Temple of Medusa!