My second most favorite place we’ve visited in the entire world (after Linlithgow Palace in Scotland) is Ephesus. We visited during a one day stop in the Turkish port of Kusadasi on our Holy Land cruise we took with my parents and sister. Honeybun was three and Sugarplum was 15 months and both of them had a great day and Honeybun still talks about what we saw that day.
We started the day by disembarking the ship and meeting our tour guide (we had pre-arranged a private tour since we had a larger group). After messing with the girls’ car seats and nearly heading back to the ship in frustration when I couldn’t get Honeybun’s secure (I finally got it in!) we headed off on our visit.
Our first stop was at Mother Mary’s House. It is believed that the Virgin Mary was taken to this house by John after Jesus’ crucifixion and she lived out her life there. The house is small and visiting is a quick in, look around, and shuffle out. But even as a non-religious person, it was amazing to see and be in the place where such an important historical figure might have lived thousands of years ago.
We then headed to the ancient city of Ephesus which has been largely uncovered and walking the streets now it is so easy to imagine what the city was like in it’s heyday. The visit starts with a bunch of pillars and pieces just laying around and my initial feeling was “ok, more ruins. This is nice.” But then as you keep walking down the path, the city literally opens up in front of you and it is breathtakingly amazing:
Many of the buildings have been excavated and rebuilt and the stories are easy to see. The bathrooms where politicians used to (apparently) have discussions, the houses where the upper class lived and the houses where the lower class lived and of course the Library of Celsus. It was all so real and miraculous. When we were there, I could see the people all that time ago going about their day and living their lives in this important and now miraculous city.
After Ephesus we stopped by a rug weaving place wi here we were shown how the thread is made from silk worms and Honeybun was invited to help weave a rug (and hubby got sucked into buying a very expensive—but beautiful—rug!) We then had some free time to wander around the port city of Kusadasi before having to reboard the ship.
