Our next port of call is Kusadasi, Turkey...adding a fourth country to our list so far! We disembark and enter the country under a stormy sky. We walk past the bazaar and its eager salesmen (yes, they seem to all be men), load our buses, and head out into the countryside to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. Running another gauntlet of oh-so-persuasive street hawkers, past the "Genuine Fake Watches" shop, we enter the Roman ruins of Ephesus. The polished marble of the main processional road gleams when the sun finally comes out, and the pillars and statues and brickwork suggest a bustling and grand city in its day. Temples, very public latrines, incredible stone mosaic floors, stone sarcophagi, one of the largest theaters of the ancient world and the mighty library of Celsus are all on display in the small fraction of Ephesus that has been uncovered so far. What other treasures lie underground to be found by future archaeological excavations? And how does a city become buried anyway? Slowly? Or all at once in a massive landslide in an earthquake?
We pass through the gates once more, past the street vendors hawking fake ancient coins, bags of silkworm cocoons and raunchy male anatomy figurines...and board our bus for a tour of a carpet factory. The tour begins with demonstrations of traditional wool dying, silk extraction from boiling cocooons, and masterful weaving of mind-bogglingly intricate and beautiful carpets. Small glasses of apple tea are passed around to all of us, then out come the carpets of wool and silk, large and small, tribal and arabesque, expensive, very expensive, and prohibitively expensive...and all works of hand-made art! Eyes swimming with color and geometry, we hop back on our bus, back to the port, and on to our ship, to set sail for several more of Greece's 6,000 or so islands...
We pass through the gates once more, past the street vendors hawking fake ancient coins, bags of silkworm cocoons and raunchy male anatomy figurines...and board our bus for a tour of a carpet factory. The tour begins with demonstrations of traditional wool dying, silk extraction from boiling cocooons, and masterful weaving of mind-bogglingly intricate and beautiful carpets. Small glasses of apple tea are passed around to all of us, then out come the carpets of wool and silk, large and small, tribal and arabesque, expensive, very expensive, and prohibitively expensive...and all works of hand-made art! Eyes swimming with color and geometry, we hop back on our bus, back to the port, and on to our ship, to set sail for several more of Greece's 6,000 or so islands...