Ephesus, Pamukkale and Aphrodisias

Trip Start Jul 13, 2006
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Trip End Jul 06, 2007


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Friday, September 15, 2006

We spent a day walking through the ruins of Ephesus, trying to imagine the place with toga wearing Romans. The library is fantastic, but one of the most interesting buildings is the latrine. Apparently in winter the marble slabs would become quite cold to the touch, so in the streets you might hear a person of wealth say to his slave - "I feel a movement coming on, Thelonius would you be a good chap and go sit on my favourite spot, you know the one by Pythagoran's square or near some hypotenuse."
We went up the mountain through hundreds of charred trees from a recent forest fire to see the house where Mother Mary spent her last few years. Incredibly or perhaps miraculously the raging fire stopped just one metre from her house.
We also checked out Pamukkale which is quite an amazing site with the brilliant white hillside created by the hotsprings. We all had a blast damming up the creeks and forcing the water over the side.
We also stopped in on the ruins of Aprodisias which has an amazing stadium that could seat 30,000 toga clad fans of athletic games (running and javelin as well as gladiators.
There is of course a Roman bath at the top. I have a theory that the reason the Romans conquered so much of the world was that they were searching out the best hot pools so they could just have a really good soak. Had Hadrian caught a whiff of the Upper Hot Springs in Banff, the prairies might also be littered with aquaducts, amphitheatres and Roman baths.
The Ottomans (based out of Turkey during the 1,500's and beyond) ruled most of the Middle East, North Africa and up to the Ukraine were (my theory) just engaged in a very agressive campaign to sell their foot stools to new markets.
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