track our trek

from istanbul, we took an overnight bus to selcuk...a far cry from the overnight bus in laos, this one came w/ a steward who served coffee and tea & gave us sweet smelling kologna (lymicol) to clean our hands...not bad! we checked into the hotel artemis (not jimmy's artemis guesthouse which is mentioned in the lonely planet.) we were assured that jimmy's was the fake hotel artemis & stole the name...we're pretty sure our hotel was the fake one...but no worries, the room was clean and comfy. we napped for a few hours, then woke up and walked around the saturday market. selcuk is a charming little town, popular mostly b/c of its proximity to ephesus... a huge ancient roman city a few km away. we also visited the church of st. john...it is believed that st. john and the virgin mary lived out their last days together in ephesus, and the church of st. john houses st. john's tomb! the timeline at the church was a bit confusing...claiming that st. john died here at the age of 100 after writing his gospel in 95-97 a.d....hmmm....that would have made him a 3-year old disciple, wouldn't it? still fascinating to think of it! and startling to think of turkey's history as part of the roman empire so long ago...
we spent a day walking through ephesus...a city that had a population of some 200,000! it is overwhelming to imagine what the place was like when it was a living city, and even more amazing to imagine the work archeaologists have done to excavate and restore parts of it!
on our last day we joined a tour to visit 3 more ancient cities, priene, miletos and didyma...fascinating to hear the stories behind the pagan temples, like priene's temple of athena, goddess of wisdom & intelligence...in miletos, we visited the huge temple of apollo, which was never completed, but which scholars argue should have been one of the wonders of the ancient world...and to hear about things like the first central heating system that was invented so many hundreds of years ago...in the 5th century b.c. using hot water in ceramic pipes under floors! imagine!