Days 12-13: Selcuk

Lucky the day before had been so good, because the next was awfully boring. We got a bus from Kayakoy to the Fetiye bus station, and then sat on a public bus for 4.5 hours. It wasn’t too bad a trip since they provided drinks and sweets. Jen informed us before the trip that Toby and I were to be considered married from now on, as unrelated men and women aren’t allowed to sit together. Cheapest wedding ever. Mobile phones are also banned on the bus since apparently they interfere with the braking system. That made all of us laugh; I have no idea why they can’t just say it’s for the comfort of our passengers, but anyway. The bus dropped us off at a crazy bus station full of people yelling, and then we got onto a local minibus called a ‘dolmish’ which means stuffed, because they just keep picking people up as long as they’ll fit. That wasn’t much fun either. Finally we got to Selcuk, and our dust-free hotel that made me very happy. The owner’s name was Diamond, but there was no tea and cake on offer unfortunately. Jen took us into town but there wasn’t much to see. There was the ancient Artimus column in a field (what’s left of one of the 7 ancient wonders), the Isa Bey mosque which was very different to others we’d seen, being high and square, and lots of storks in nests. After the walk we all split up for dinner; Toby and I ended up having pide in a little place. It was delicious and cheap (9 lira for both of us). We ate ice cream by the pool back at the hotel and had another early night.

The next morning started early (and cold) with breakfast on the open terrace and a 7.45am bus ride out to Ephesus. Our guide’s name was Nile and he was quite the eccentric character; he was very short and probably in his 70s, and he was always pointing to something saying, ‘Good photo, take a photo,’ and then running off to the next spot to wait for us. The highlights of Ephesus for me was the magnificent library which has been 97% restored (or something) and which we got to see without anybody else around as we were there so early, and the terrace houses which are under a massive glass roof being paid for by the Austrians (who else) and are in the process of being restored. We were lucky to be there so early; by the time we left around 11am the place was overrun by about 100 cruise ship groups. We had a 20 minute walk along the road to the cave of 7 sleepers and the best gozleme ever. We got to see the women making it which was great; they had a whole production line (or circle rather) of rolling out the pastry, then folding it over the filling like a package and cooking it over a hot plate on the fire. Cheese and spinach was the winner again. The cave itself wasn’t particularly inspiring, especially since you couldn’t really tell which cave The Cave was.

We were taken back to the hotel by minibus and then had a free afternoon, so Toby and I rested (as usual) and then went to the Ephesus museum, via the ‘gym’ on a footpath by the Artimus field which was very funny and a lawsuit waiting to happen. The museum was great and only cost 2 lira. One of the first things we saw was a rock in a glass case next to a letter from a Dutch man saying he’d taken it from Ephesus in the 1970s but now being older and wiser he felt very guilty about it, so please accept it back along with his apologies. It was very sweet. The museum’s current exhibition was based on gladiators since they’d excavated a gladiator cemetery nearby. There were some nice graphic diagrams showing cause of death and some depressing statistics about life expectancy. The stuff about crowd pardons was good; current reality TV contestants don’t know how easy they have it with today’s audiences. There was also some interesting philosophical musings on the nature of sport and its relationship to society and individuals, including a statement from someone who thought the only other situation in a person’s life that was similar to the glory of sport was sex. I guess that was written by someone who didn’t dread PE in high school.

After the museum we headed to a shop in town run by a friend of Jen’s called Julia, thinking to buy some little presents for people. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon (and a stupid amount of money) in the shop, having tea and trying on scarves and chatting with Julia. When she heard we’d been together 5 years and still weren’t married, she told me it was silly women tried to be so equal and yet waited for a man to propose to them, and hey wouldn’t it be great if I just proposed to Toby right now, in her shop? I guess that would have made a good story for her to tell people but instead we just bought lots of stuff. We’d planned to visit St John’s Basilica after the shop but we were exhausted so instead we went back to the hotel to rest before meeting the rest of the group at 5 for our excursion to Sirince, a little village reached after a rather hair-raising mountain drive in a minibus. The main purpose was to taste the fruit wines the region is famous for, so we did that first with mulberry and pomegranate being the favourites although they were all basically crowd-pleasers. Then we went through the markets to a jewellery shop run by the silversmith who made some of the jewellery for the movie Troy. There was a framed picture of Brad wearing one of his amulets. It was a nice little shop with lots of interesting things and he did well out of our group who bought quite a bit; even Toby got himself a Brad-like evil eye pendant. After stocking up on fruit wine we were taken back to town and had a birthday dinner for one of the men on the tour at a restaurant near the hotel. The house speciality was a rather odd concoction of shredded fried potato, yoghurt and a spicy meat stew on top. It was delicious, even if it was strange. Jen bought a cake which no one thought they’d be able to fit in, but it was quite a light chocolate cream sponge and a banana filling that went down a treat.