Magda, Apartments Sámos

... We walked up to 2 kilometres in the complex and passed several temples, the treasury and a couple of amphitheatres.

Finally we ran the gauntlet of the souvenir shops at the exit to get to the bus which took us back to Kusadasi which has a population of 60,000 which swells to one million in summer. Remind us never to venture here then! There we were tempted to go to see a demonstration of silk winding and carpet weaving at a carpet shop. It's hard to cedit that a silk worm ...

... both sides and marble pavements made a dazzling first impression. The Temples of Hadrian, Library of Celsus and the Great Theater were some of my favorites. We also saw the Temple of Artemis...one lonely column remains there. While there we also strolled a street on which Cleopatra and Mark Anthony spent their honeymoon!! As with the other ruins..feral cats everywhere. People actually brought cat food ...

... a fight. If the loser fought well according to the crowd or judges, they were allowed to live.
We saw the old library (only for men of course), the brothel, the baths, the political theatre, and the hospital. We learned that there was a huge earthquake at one time and that many people died (they think it happened during the night because in one area that they are still excavating they found many remains of people in the houses). As a ...

... eastern neighbor are the cradle of humanity, Here there are artifacts and sites that date back to 5000 BC. We visted ancient Ephesus
which is one of the greatist archeological excavations in the world. This is the home to the Great Theater where St. Paul preached. All of this has been really fasinating. Kusadasi is in southwestern turkey and is islamic, but as the interperter said yesterday the people here are "open" while ...

... and he had booked us somewhere on the front at a bargain price again well done Beebs.

We spent the day doing what many Greeks do nothing much, had a mooch around the shops and Ian spotted a language school so he is now printing his CV off to go and hand it into them. We went for lots of chocolate milk drinks another thing I am addicted to cold chocolate milk with crushed ice its fit and Ian love Frappe ...

... trip so not done too bad. As the waves where nearly 5 foot high it was impossible to swim on this part of the beach but Ian had saw that there was another part of the beach around the harbour where you could swim so we headed there and went for a lovely swim together.

Manchester united where playing Manchester City and we saw that one of the bars next to the harbour had it on so off we went for a few beers ...

... than anywhere. But apart from this no issues with such a lovely place. To prove this we met a lovely girl on the ferry from Turkey who had lived in England for 12 years working had a brill conversation with her about the differences between Turkish and English men!

Got the local bus to a place called Kokkari with no accomodation again and asked where the toursit office was in a little jewelery shop they said that it was down the road but it ...

... little tide here and the waves are gentle little ripples that simply kiss the shore (how poetic is that!!). Although the storms must happen - there's a bunch of wrecks out there to prove it.... Headed south along the coast as the guys at Hotel Bella said we should go to the National Park for some good beaches. First we had to pass through the port town of Kusudasi, which is where most of the Med cruise ships stop for their day at Ephesus. Only 2 ...

... 9 adults in the car...3 of us in the back where luggage would have been! I could feel the suspension sink under all that weight! We all agreed it would have been all right and not so harrowing if Mel had not driven like maniac and careened around the hill bends! No one realized she was such bad driver, so Alex, Fi and I were lucky to have been sitting backwards. Small adventures, yay! We arrived back at the hotel in one piece and unloaded safely. One of my best days travelling!!!

... bus to Selçuk? Thinking back hard there was only one person apart from myself who knew where I intended to go today and that was a taxi driver I had a half conversation with. Did he phone and say look out for a confused Englishman or are there greater powers at work? As I say I have had three similar occurences on this trip. It is at times almost as though I am taking part in an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. Good choice I think. At first appearance Selçuk looks a fantastic ...