Welcome Majesty Adakule Kusadasi

... with beautiful minarets. Homer was born here. Our guide was a woman named Itek. Unfortunately for her, and us, she was nervous, must have been new at this, and she could barely speak English clearly. But she managed to give us lots of good info as we drove to Ephesus. Turkey is a huge agricultural producer for Europe. We saw peaches, cotton, olive, horse, sheep, corn, greenhouses, tobacco, pistachios, and apple trees. The land is extraordinary, hilly and ...

... harbour became silted over seemed out of sync with the rest of Europe in its time of immersion in the Dark Ages. So much knowledge was lost or suppressed at that time by those who contributed nothing to the rational and wonderful development of the world. The civilisations that created places such as Ephesus and the Acropolis were so advanced and their writings and thoughts were burned in the large libraries they had created by the pagan ignorant and the Christian destroyers. How ...

... to Ephisus and took them from the ruins. Still, what has been rebuilt is incredible. I think it would have been very interesting to live in that town during its day.<br>After the carpet demonstration, where we learned that it takes 2 girls 2 years to make an 8x10 carpet, we headed back to the ship for some lunch and a rest. Then we left the ship again and headed to a nearby beach where we rented some beach chairs and hung out for a few hours.

... Arabic delight. <br>I asked our leader to show us a good shop to buy the best. We had to walk a bit outside the market and he took us to a shop where we bought our BAKLAVA for less money but of the best quality. I think it comes from ATEP which is the best Baklava in Turkey. <br><br>I also asked him to show me a nice shop to get the spices I like, and he took us there. The shop was really very interesting. I took photos, and I was impressed. The price I got was excellent. <br><br><br><br><br>

... the carpet salesmen (whose name was "Ali Baba"....no kidding!!) use a relatively soft sales approach. Even the guy selling fake watches had a sign over his store proclaiming "Genuine Fake Watches"...who says there's no honesty in advertising!; · The baklava here is delicious, dare I say even better than what we had in Greece...we were told that baklava was actually invented in Turkey, not Greece...I'll stick with that version lest I appear on a ...

We are now in Kusadasi. Temperatures around 23¢ªC, and dry. We are enjoying. Most people come here to visit Ephesus, but yet another set of ruins was not on our agenda, Yes we are sometimes culturally bereft, but Kusadasi also has a lovely relatively small shopping area. What we were not anticipating was the number of cruise ships they can fit in here. 2 of the sailing variety, one a bit bigger than us ...

... in Leeds. We look forward to returning to Samos in May and exploring more of the Island. Two Chickens and a Falcon arrive in Turkey. For the non-yotties among you, our boat is A westerly Falcon, thus the wee ornithological play on words in the title. We departed Samos at the crack of 9.15 on Monday morning to travel the 20 miles to Kusadasi on the Turkish coast. Our arrival at 13.30 meant that we had now traversed the Mediterranean ...

... a big deal in its day. You can read the link for more info. We spent a couple of hours wandering around in the ruins imagining life 2000 or more years ago. On the way out of Ephesus we stopped at the 'Grotto of the seven sleepers'. This was clearly not on the tour group map as there was no one else there but is only about 500m from the main gate to Ephesus. We all agreed that we preferred this small site to Ephesus, but ...

... After that was another lame carpet demo, and none of us could work up any enthousiasm. Mostly because we were hella tired from the early morning in Patmos and the tons of walking we had to do. Jen and I left early and just wandered around the port area, and found Pigeon Island which we thought would be somemore castle ruins, but instead turned out to be a picturesque romantic couple hangout ...

... absolutely no idea how she managed. My skin is feeling fabulous now after a two different treatments - I had a turkish bath which was quite an experience - I could handle lying down on the hot marble floor (like a sauna) but I didn't like being scrubbed (felt like sandpaper and I was surprised I had any skin left) or massaged (very rough!) and when you miss behaved (giggled or flinched) you were ...