An ancient city, a small village, and a creepy man
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
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104
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Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Selcuk,
Turkey
Saturday, December 29, 2007
When I eventually woke up that afternoon, I took a minibus to Sirince, a small Greek village on the side of a mountain about a half-hour from Selcuk. I had been told that it's a really cute village, which it was, but there wasn't much there and it's become pretty touristy. The main street where the minibus drops you off is lined with little shops filled with tourist crap. There were a couple of old churches and a bunch of cute houses, but after an hour I was done exploring and ready to head back to Selcuk.
That evening I found out that I was sharing a dorm room with a creepy British man, along with an American guy and a Malaysian guy. The British man was in his late 40s, gay, a loud snorer, and a naked sleeper. That morning he had gotten out of bed completely naked and tried to start a conversation with the American guy who immediately grabbed his stuff and retreated to the bathroom. He also had a tendency to butt into every conversation taking place anywhere in the hostel. In order to escape him that evening, I went with the two other guys to a pastry shop in town to eat baklava and play backgammon (a very popular game in cafes and parks all over Turkey), thankfully returning after creepy man had gone to bed.
I spent my first real day in Selcuk visiting Ephesus, the reason I had even stopped there. Ephesus is a really cool set of ruins of an ancient Ionian city. It's pretty well intact and massively huge as far as ruined cities go. Although my hostel had given me a little Ephesus guide book to bring with me, I decided to stalk a tour group to get a bit more information. The guide was really good and very nice - when he gave the group a break to wander I went up to him to thank him for letting me listen in. Rather than describing Ephesus, just take a look at my pictures. I took enough of them that I should have at least 20,000 words covered.
On the walk back into town I stopped to see what's left of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There is only one column still standing from the original 120+ columns, but you can still see how vast the area that it covered once was. Most of the Temple was destroyed many years ago when the marble was taken to Istanbul to use in constructing the Aya Sofia.
