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We headed to the coast yesterday to Selcuk — known for the ancient city of Ephesus. Our hotel has a pool! I’ve been dreaming about a pool since Istanbul. It’s been scorching hot! We spent several hours at a jewelry shop in town. Unfortuntely, I discovered that I have very expensive taste. Everything I picked out ended up being over $150! So I ended up playing with the resident kitty, while the other girls shopped. Poor me! :(
This morning we left for Efesus fairly early to beat the tourists (cruise ships and tour buses all stop here, so it can get packed quickly!), but we were the only ones there. S said that had never happened before! End of season luxury, I guess. A local guide took us through the site. I love having the full explanation at huge sites like this. What an amazing city. My favorite site so far. The library was massive and the latrines quite funny. She said that the saying “ladies first” was because of the Romans had their wives come warm up the cold marble before they had to use the toilet, lol. A good joke, anyway! After a few hours we headed to the exits and did some shopping. I wasn’t planning on buying anything because I knew they would be outrageous prices for tourists, but I found a really cool silver cuff bracelet with lupis stone on it. And it’s end of season and it was his first sale of the day (which is good luck!) so I was able to talk him waaaay down. He kept chuckling, because apparently I have an eye for old jewelry.
After a quick peek at the Sleeping Tombs, we had Gozleme — a fried pastry with filling (similar to a crepe). I had banana and chocolate. So good! We walked back to town through an orchard and past the remains of the Temple of Artemis (7th wonder of the world). I had a nice swim this afternoon in the pool.
This evening we drove to Sirince to try the local fruit wines. Pomegranate and mulberry were my favorite, but not really my kind of thing… too sweet! So then we drove (don’t worry, we weren’t actually driving, it was a taxi!) back to Selcuk and had dinner in town. I had a mezze platter with grape leaves, baba ganoush, yogurt, stuffed veggies, and a beer. The waiter was like “ooh, la, la… beer! ;) Best mezze I’ve had so far in Turkey.