A Grand Bazaar

Kusadasi, Turkey, November 1, 2011

We have often found in our travels that the places we have enjoyed the most were the least thought of destinations; places where we have little knowledge of the destination going in and absolutely no preconceived ideas of what to expect. Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia immediately come to mind. Our visit today to Kusadasi, Turkey falls into that category. Our ship docked at the pier directly in front of the town center at 7:00 this morning. The sun was just rising over the hills that surround Kusadasi. It was a stunning view. We spent the morning at Ephesus but more on that later. After our tour we walked about the city. We were constantly passing by small groups of men surrounding a backgammon board. Two of the men were playing, the others either kibitzing or possibly waiting to see if they had bet on the correct player. As several shopkeepers pointed out to us, the middle of November is the end of the cruise season in the Eastern Mediterranean and many of the shops will close until the beginning of next year’s cruise season in the spring. So it was a slow pace. Some of the merchants just nodded as you passed by, others half-heartedly tried to lure you into their store and others showed almost desperation in their attempt to sell you something. Such was the case at a leather goods store that we stopped in front of. Tim pointed out an attractive leather ladies coat to Lynda and immediately regretted it. The owner was all over us in flash, and before you could say “Kusadasi, Turkey” had us on the second floor with Lynda trying on the coat. As proof of his need to sell the coat, the price started at $1080 and the sale was completed at $260. We imagine that the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul was like this. If you can learn to ignore the hawkers than it is great fun walking through the Bazaar.

Two thousand years ago Ephesus, along with Rome and Alexandria were the three most important cities in the world. At that time Ephesus was located on a river on the coast of the Aegean Sea. Two thousand years later it is located about three and a half miles from the sea. By the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. its glory days were long gone. About 20% of Ephesus has been reconstructed by archeologists. Probably the most interesting and impressive building was the façade of the library. At its zenith, the library contained over 12,000 scrolls and was the third largest library in the world. Tim is convinced that Stevium Jobacus’ invention of an application that allowed one to download a scroll to one’s kindlium spelled the end of the library. Actually, of more interest to the reader of this blog is the fact that the library contained a secret tunnel that led to the brothel across the street from the library. Only men were allowed in the library and you are left to your imagination regarding husbands telling their wives they would be spending the evening reading a real page turner of a scroll down at the library and to not wait up! The Grand Theatre has also been reconstructed. It seats 24,000 people and in its day hosted plays and town meetings. It has been used more recently to host concerts by musicians as varied as Elton John and Luciano Pavoratti. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, after a concert by Sting it was discovered that there was a noticeable shifting of the stones so now only classical concerts are allowed. Of interest to those of you with an off-beat sense of what is important, we also toured the public toilets. These public toilets consisted of long slabs of marble with 42 holes cut in them to allow men to take care of their business. As there were only 16 of us in our tour group we suggested a group picture with us sitting on the toilets would be fun. Our tour leader did not concur.

From the Ephesus site we went to the Ephesus Archeological Museum. It was a small museum but had an impressive array of items that had been found at the Ephesus dig. Unfortunately, the tour ended at a rug shop back in Kusadasi. The five minute demonstration of how silk is obtained from a silk worm cocoon was fascinating but the rest was just a sales pitch. Poor guy had to move 4000 rugs in the next two weeks before he closed for the season so there were deep discounts available. We felt like we were watching an American commercial live. The rest of the day was spent relaxing on the ship.

After a lovely meal in the Italian Restaurant on board we took in our first floor show. The show featured a male singer from London who had starred in many West End productions. He was backed by a live quartet, grandiosely called “The Silver Wind Orchestra”. It was actually a pretty entertaining evening although it is hard to get use to an English singer, backed by four Philipino's singing and playing great American standards.

Tomorrow we will be on the Island of Rhodes, Greece. See you then.