On Thursday,  we flew south to see the ancient Roman ruins of Ephesus.  These ruins were discovered in 1865 by the Brits building a railroad.   Some say that it is even a greater discovery than Pompeii.   At its height, 250,000 people lived here in this once coastal town (the ocean is now over 4 km away). The  outdoor theater held almost 25,000 citizens for concerts, plays & other cultural events.  In recent years, Elton John, Sting, The Three Tenors and others have performed here.  The archeologists are still in the early stages of discovery at Ephesus.  It will continue for years as funds are available.

We then went to the home where the Virgin Mary lived out here later years after Jesus was crucified.   The home is now a small chapel and a shrine for the Muslims.  They recognize Jesus as a prophet and therefore the home of his mother is a shrine.  It was a very moving experience for us to go into the chapel and say a prayer.    As you exit the chapel, there is also a wall for Muslims to place their wishes and prayers (written on small cloths) . The spring water from the fountain  outside the chapel is also supposed to have healing powers.  It was quite a serene and spiritual place.

The tour then took us to the typical carpet & leather shops.  We only agreed to go because we had so much time before our plane back to Istanbul. This is so often the problem with tours. They try to make a day out of 1/2 day of material. This was a private tour and, if it was local, we would have returned to our hotel. Unfortunately, they scheduled the plane 6 hours after we were “done”. It was particularly annoying as we had been picked up at 5:00 AM for the 7:00 AM flight.

In summary, it was interesting but the timing of it all really degraded the total experience.