Kusadasi - heat, clear oceans, adventures to Ephesus

Grand Theatre, Ephesus
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Tuesday 12^th June Samos – Kusadasi

Managed to get a couple of hours kip over the 6 hour trip before arriving to the disbelief of the world, Jo was awake before sunrise and not in a foul mood. To our delight we found a boat leaving for Turkey at 8.30am in the morning so had a nice stroll around the harbour, which resembled Oriental Parade in Wellington. We then got sucked into buying tickets on a boat excursion in Southern Turkey for 3 nights, 4 days and have been wondering why we agreed to this as it was not something we planned to do.. although we did only have minimal plans in the first place. Arrived in Kusadasi, a beautiful clean port town with prices to match the rich tourists budgets and similar to that in London. In the evening we arranged bus tickets for a trip to Pammukale followed by buses down to Fetihye. Had another special dinner – salami, bread, tomatoes and tzakziki.

Curetes Street, Ephesus
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Wednesday 13^th June Kusadasi (Ephesus)

Woke up to soaring temperatures in our lovely 4 star hotel room with sea views, which cost next to nothing. Had a quick breakfast and then located the mini bus transport service to Ephesus. The transport service is amazing, for 3 LR (1.50 EUR), airconditioned mini buses regularly arriving and departing wherever you need to go, stopping anywhere you please i.e. Side of an extremely busy motorway without hazard lights, p.s. Mum don't worry. We then made the short walk down to the entrance which was full of tourist buses that had transferred people from the cruise ships. On entering Ephesus the first structure you see is the magnificent Grand Theatre, which held 25,000 people and is still in pretty good condition, compared to the rest of the ruins in Ephesus. A bit of background on Ephesus... the first bit of information on Ephesus comes from around 2000 B.C, it is a large city and has been under many rulers and became the capital and most important commercial centre for the province of Asia. Now what stands today is the ruins from centuries old roads, monuments, library, stadiums and bathing houses etc. It took us a few hours to walk around in seering heat, but was well worth it and is one of our favourite sites (on par with Pompeii for different reasons). We then ran across a 4 lane motorway to catch our shuttle bus back to Kusadasi.