Our last day in Selcuk. I'm really looking forward to getting back to Istanbul, but I will miss this place. I can definitely see coming back here and renting a place for a couple of weeks.... But that travel to-do list isn't getting shorter on this trip, is it!
We had a late start today. We let the kids have a late night last night - they watched one of the pirated DVDs from the collection here. It was funny how much it felt like home - Beth asleep and the three kids watching a movie well into the night.
There were a couple of things in and out of town that we could check out today, so we set off driving towards Ephesus to check out the seven sleepers caves. The legend of the seven sleepers permeates Christian and Islamic legends - you can read about it from the link, but essentially it involves people escaping from religious persecution, hiding and then going to sleep in some caves, and waking up hundreds of years later. It's interesting that it crosses over religions, and shows you how closely linked (historically) the bible and Koran are.
We left the cave and got to a t-junction....left to Selcuk, right to the house of the Virgin Mary. Surprisingly, Papa had recommended seeing the house and gave it an "interesting" rating. Now, that was a little like an Encyclopedia Briticanica salesperson saying to go look up something on Wikipedia, so of course we were curious.
The story goes that once Jesus was crucified, John the Apostle "took care of" his mother Mary. Since John lived in Ephesus, it was believed that Mary lived nearby. Yada yada yada, they located the ruins of a house on the top of a hill and called it Mary's house. So, based on Papas recommendation, we shelled out the 50 lira to get in (thank Jesus.... or John I guess that the kids were free!) and parked.
The wall of prayers was kind of cool.... It reminded me of the Hiroshima peace memorial.
The actual "house" was a chapel the was built in the last hundred years that replicates the style and size of the house they thought she lived in. It was a little underwhelming.
The grounds were nice and it was a very peaceful place to walk around, so we decided we would not send a bill to Papa for our entrance fees and time. We drove back down the twisting road to Selcuk. We had to drop off a bunch of stuff we were sending home at the Moonlight gift shop where our new friend Julia worked. It was a lot of stuff!
Julia recommended we eat at the little bistro next door, so we tried it. The moussakka, a local specialty and the Izmir Kofte that was made with tomato sauce, potatoes and onions was really good. The old man who served us added to the feeling that this was genuine, local food.
We decided to drop the kids off at "home" for a nap (remember the late night last night!) while we took to the streets to explore more of Selcuk. Just in front of our place, across the street was the site of the once spectacular Temple of Artemis. It was considered one of the seven ancient wonders of the world and an important adjunct to the city of Ephesus, however nothing remains of it today other than a tribute column assembled from pieces of many different columns found when they excavated the site.
Walking North a few minutes brought us to the really big Isa Bey Mosque. I always find the Mosques that have inner courtyards so beautiful.
It was Friday today, so for the first time we got to see a sermon in a mosque, rather than just seeing people praying. Watching the sermon for a bit, it struck me how similar a scene it was to the Sunday sermons in Christian churches.
We climbed up the cobbled street in front of the mosque to the gates of the Basilica of St. John, a huge church, now mostly in ruins, built in honour of John the Apostle. We got a good view of the mosque below.
Through the ruins of the basillica and up another slope was the old castle that overlooks Selcuk. It was built a long time ago, then repurposed and renovated by the Ottoman Empire when they conquered the country. I loved the huge flags draped down the front walls flanking the picture of Ataturk, the first elected leader of the republic.
There's not much inside the castle walls, but it did provide a pretty cool view of the city below.
We walked down the hill back to the cobbled street and down into the heart of Selcuk. It was one of those nice, weird moments not having the kids with us for so long. I wanted a haircut so Beth dropped me off at one of the many "berbers" in town and went over to Julia's shop to check on the stuff we had to ship.
When I got in the barber's chair, I thought... Hmmm.... Beth alone in a jewellery shop for half an hour...what could go wrong? Dude.... Hurry up - just buzz it all off!
By the time I got back to Julia's shop, the damage was done. Beth had a big smile and a small bag full of god knows what. Oh well, at least she was happy, but that turned out to be one expensive haircut! However, the real extent of our shopping wasn't revealed until Julia packaged up and weighed the things we had to send home - 30 kilograms of stuff! My god those Turksish towels are heavy. We tried taking some of our old clothes out of the mix to make it lighter, but it didn't really change anything. Well at least we could send this package directly to our house - Banka and Gram no longer have space at their house for packages!
We got home almost three hours after we left. The kids were safe and sound watching I, Robot on the biggish screen. They looked like they'd just woken up. Apparently after we left, Robin jumped into bed with Abby and they had a two hour nap - well done!
For dinner, we headed over to a bar called Cabare which was owned and run by Menekse's brother. We were sure the food wouldn't be anything special (it was really just western bar food), but we wanted to support her as she'd been so good to us. Sure enough, she was there to serve us when we arrived, so we had a good meal there and said our goodbyes. Apparently, there are quite a few foreigner owned places in Selcuk - we saw many people coming in and out of Julia's shop today and Menekse sounded pretty busy with the property management side of things. It would be a nice little place to have a home away from home.
We had some TV to catch up with at home - "uncle" Alex has been feeding us with Survivor and Amazing Race. Our race continues tomorrow when we drop off the car and fly back to Istanbul for the end of Turkey and the start of Europe!
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