Ephesus and the rug

 Hey all

I just am including a couple of photos from our sea day as the morning of it we sailed by this mountain that is home to twenty monasteries. It is also in control of the monks and their consul. Only 10 passes a day are given out to non orthodox Christian and 100 a day to Greek Orthodox. All must be men as women are not permit on the Mount Athos in Greece. You may not set foot on the mount without express premission 

I have included a few pictures of monasteries we could see as we sailed by

The monks spend most of the day in prayer and the rest taking care of the monastery 

As you can see they are large and I believe self sufficient 

Here is a picture of the mount as we were leaving he peninsula it sits on

Then the next day found us in Turkey

Pictures from the ship

And out balcony

I will state here that I made a mistake this day of doing our laundry in the morning instead of going into town. It all looked so modern, I just did not see a point. Our tour to the ruins of Ephesus was scheduled for the afternoon and said there would be time to shop after.

This was right near where we boarded our bus, you see a corner of a part of the bazaar. Which the bazaar could not be seen from our ship

There were some other builds from the empires still in use

We drove buy this park, what does not show in this photo was the right side looked like a cemetery while left of the walkway looked like a children’s playground 

On our way to the ruins we passed a lot of pine trees. I guess fire is a major threat as well as earthquakes 

We also saw this old mosque 

They also grow a lot of mandarin oranges and olives around this area

Okay this just struck me as off. This is one of the many small shops right outside the upper gates to the ruins. We were starting at the upper gates and walking through until the lower gates, which also had a bunch of shops right outside of the lower gate when we got there.

This is right after we got through the gates, I guess there are a bunch of dogs and cats that make the ruins their home 

This is the upper Roman bathhouse ruins. When people who came here from outside, they had to wash in the baths before they could enter the city. They believed the cleanliness is next to Godliness theory. Also malaria was a problem and they thought it was from dirty and bad air.

This hill is one of the ones where the aqua ducts brought fresh water to the city. At it’s height this town house a quarter of a million people

A picture of some of the clay pipes the have found that were part of the aqua duct system

This is a door into one of what would have been a meeting room

Entrance to the main council chambers

Some pictures of some of the uncovered ruins of one of the many temples and monuments 

The walk from the upper (land side gate) and the lower (seaport gate) is about a mile and a have. The roadways were paved in marble slabs

This was all under dirt and has been an active archaeological site for over one hundred years

Temple to the Greek and Roman cultures that lived here. Alexander the Great first occupied this city, them the Roman under Augustus and Mark Anthony 

One of the current residents of the city at the ruins of the main bathhouse 

Toilets were on the lower level of the bath houses and not very private. Before the Christians, bathroom were unisex

One of the problems they have found when excavating the ruins, is that the elements are not kind to frescoes and mosaics and some of the other finds. So they have to cover the areas they are working on. This is very expensive, so the progress is slow. So far they believe they have uncovered only 20% of the city. Just the things on the main thoroughfare

This is what was left of the third largest library in that world at the time. The library at Alexandra being the largest

It housed over 12000 scrolls

This is the lower gate to the city

This is the remains of the stadium/colosseum

It seated 25,000 people and it is still used today for concerts and such

At the area that would have been the harbor in the time of the city, they put on a little dramatization of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra visiting the city

On the way back to the ship and bazaar area we passed this statue of pigeons which are the bird emblems of the port city of Kasadasi where our ship was moored

As we reached the bazaar our guide lead us to a rug shop in the bazaar to see a rug making demonstration and of course to see their products.

After they showed us an array of the rugs the have and served us drinks, we took a closer look at a couple

This is the same silk and cotton rug just turn to face the opposite way. The rugs are all hand tied and this one took someone, usually women who do the rug making in their homes, six year to complete. There are 680 knots per square inch in this rug. Dale and I purchased this rug. They have you sign the back in permanent marker so you know when you receive it that it is the same rug.

Unfortunately this process took over an hour leaving us with ten minutes to get back aboard the ship before the gangplank was raised, which meant we were not able to look at anything else in the fascinating bazaar, which is one of my regrets for this trip. The owner of the rug shop sent a guide with us to lead us through so we would make it in time, which was nice. I just wish we could have tied up the buying of the rug faster.

This was the last view of turkey as our ship was pulling away from the harbor and the guide tugboat 

The old port fortress we passed by as we left the Bay Area

The rest of the evening was dinner and relaxing in our room as nothing going on in the ship caught my interest.