This morning began with a hot* shower before enjoying the massive breakfast spread that was included in our hotel stay. The usual cheeses and vegetables we were used to in Ankara were available, but there were also plenty of other pastries and concoctions. I had some nice croissants and fresh fruit. I still don't know what they're called, but they're like golf ball sized oranges.
* (It's my very first Pozterisk!) When I say hot, I mean it in the fullest sense. The shower here could get hot enough to burn your flesh, which is about what I have at home. I haven't had a truly hot shower in about a week and it was great. Nearly every time I take a hot shower at home I think about how blessed I am to be able to do that any time I want to.
After breakfast, I took a moment to snap a shot of the view from our hotel room:
We were leaving at 8:30am, and around 8:20 Jon decides to run out and get some quit shots and video footage at the beach. I figured I should tag along, and we were blessed to see this rainbow over the Aegean Sea:
From there we headed straight to the ancient city of Ephesus, which obviously has tons of Biblical significance. Our tour guide told us that the third greatest library of the ancient world was once in Ephesus. Here's a shot from a distance:
I got tons of video there, but my battery died before the end of the day. While we were in Ephesus, we read the story of the riot in Acts 19 while standing in the amphitheater. That was pretty cool. From there we made a quick stop by the Temple of Artemis (who is also mentioned in Acts 19), but there wasn't much to see. There's one standing column and a whole lot of ruins. Not so great anymore, eh Artie?
From there we went and visited St. John's church, which was very large. It's in ruins now, but there was still a large area to roam and explore. We found a really cool baptistry, but somehow I managed not to get a picture of it. I know I have video, maybe I can pull a still from there. After that we spent about an hour at the Ephesus museum, which had a lot of artifacts, including several from the ancient city we'd visited earlier. (I had no idea, but Ephesus is massive. We were told 250,000 people lived there at its height.) The original statue of Artemis was there, as well as a giant head and arm of the Emperor Domitian.
Somewhere in there we stopped for lunch at this tiny little Turkish cafe. I'm not sure you could find a more authentic place than that. Kelly got to sit down with the ladies and help make some food, which was sort of like a quesadilla. Dave insisted that we all have ayran (a drink that is half water, half yogurt, plus salt) ... and even though it wasn't the best thing I've ever had, it really wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I finished mine without any trouble.
Tomorrow we're driving back up to Izmir, which will include a visit to the ancient site of Smyrna.
Jenny requested a shout out to her favorite country, so as a bonus here is a picture I took from the castle in Ankara with my camera pointed directly south:
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