Kusadasi

Kusadasi is the gateway to Turkey, a smallish port but capable of holding two cruise ships simultaneously as today showed when the American owned m.v. Amsterdam arrived at the same time as us – we docked within minutes of each other and that kept the immigration people busy when we all tried to exit and get on our coaches at the same time.  But the day dawned clear and bright with sunshine all the way, we had breakfast in the open air, strolled down to get our boarding stickers and onto number 12 coach where we met up with our guide Kahn.  He was very good throughout the whole process and we each had a little receiver and earpiece so that we could keep in touch with him as he gave his detailed speeches. Actually our first visit was not to the ruins themselves but to the place where the Virgin Mary is supposed to have gone to live when Saint Paul took her there some 12 years after Jesus died.  By our reckoning she must have been into her late 50’s by then so it would have been an incredible journey.

 If you have never seen the ruins at Ephesus then you should go as they are far more impressive than anything that we saw in Greece, it is a good day out, most of the walking is on the flat (not too many steps although the marble slabs can be a bit slippery – I would not want to go there after a rainstorm or come to that in the height of the tourist season when it must be over bearably hot.  But we learned a lot about the Romans who built the place and this time it was all real life stuff and not lots of Greek gods and goddesses that we have never heard about.  We took lots and lots of pictures and even had some taken by a professional that we bought from him at the end of the tour, I will post some, but as you can probably tell Blogspot is not a good place to post photos unless you have lots of time on your hands and at 25p per minute I can't afford that luxury.  Not far from the ruins is the museum where you can get up close and personal with a lot of the statues dug up from the ruins and this is a nice way of rounding off the stay but for us it was a bit too short as we were on a time schedule to get to our luncheon place.  We could have happily spent more time in the museum.

Lunch was excellent, lots of hot meats for those that wanted it and plenty of salad with cheeses for those who didn’t – they also had a very nice lentil soup and to finish a selection of desserts that put pounds on just looking at them.  We were ordered by Kahn to have two slices of baklava although some of us couldn’t resist trying several of the other desserts as well.

Our final stop was back in Kusadasi where Kahn took us to a very large store that sold handmade Turkish rugs, leather goods and silver jewellery.  We managed to resist all the owner’s pleadings although I was very tempted by a nice silk rug that we could probably have got for less than €1000.  Hilary would have liked a wall hanging rug, while I see no point in those – for me rugs go on the floor and are to be used – even after 47 years together we still can’t agree on some things…

Left to our own devices we wandered through the small shops begging us to buy and we did succumb at one shop where we got several boxes of Turkish Delight in different flavours and of course the compulsory fridge magnet.  Where I lost my will power was a shop selling genuine fake Ralph Lauren polo shirts so I bought two… for followers of the RTW blog you will remember that during that cruise I ended up with 15 new short sleeved shirts, so two so far is very good.  Do I need them? No.  Did I want them? Yes.  Why? – I don’t have any with that logo or in those colours, case closed.

Just before I post you should know that Ted is leading a life of his own, especially in the evenings when we come back from dinner.  We have posted a couple of his pictures and today I have included last night’s where he was found with my reading glasses on sitting upright on the bed and doing the Sudoku.  I think that Agnelo our cabin steward is having fun with him.

We skipped the magician in the theatre last night to see a Jim Broadbent film, another strange one that takes place over the four seasons and is about the life of a geologist and counsellor and the friends that they have.  Not quite as strange as the one about the babies born for spare parts, but still pretty baffling.  Unsure tonight as to what to do, the main star is a lady singer and we are uncertain as to whether to see her or not; the film is Toy Story 3 and we have already done that in 3D.  Might just go to bed early and get ready for trekking around Rhodes for 4 hours tomorrow….  Goodnight all.