Kusadasi, Turkey

Pronounced Kush-AH-dah-say, was interesting but probably my least favorite. We took a tour bus to Ephesus, which is an ancient city built by the Romans. It was found when some men where building a road and unearthed some of the ruins. Since then they have excavated a portion of the site, but there are huge mounds all over just waiting to be excavated. They say an estimated 14% of Ephesus has been uncovered. The large library is the largest piece they reconstructed over many years. The city was destroyed when earthquakes and mud slides caused the city to become uninhabitable, and it was relocated several times. We had to travel by bus quite a ways to get to it, and apparently at one time it was a sea port city, so the topography has changed significantly since then. The asterisk looking symbol is a secret symbol that early christians used to indicate their secret meeting places. You can see the symbol carved into stones in quite a few places around the ruins.








The woman flying above is the goddess "Nike" see the swoosh! Just behind us was a huge ampitheater that could hold approx. 20,000 people. Our tour guide was telling us that the romans had hot and cold running water of sorts with huge public baths and central heating. they used large terracotta pipes that ran through furnace rooms and then through their houses to heat the water and their homes. They used fountains to cool the air around the city during the hot summers. After wandering through the ruins for a few hours I really wished there were some fountains still in operation. We were sweltering.

After the tour of the ruins they took us to a Turkish rug shop where we got to see how they still remove the strands of silk from the cocoons and how the Turkish women make their silk rugs by hand tying each individual strand from very complicated designs. They go so fast you can hardly believe it. Then they use special scissors to trim the ends to form the desired length of pile. The rugs average 600 knots per square inch, although the finer silk rugs can have as many as 2,000 knots per square inch. They took us into a show room and brought in red wine, coke, tea, and turkish pastries to eat while we watched them roll out $40,000 rugs right in front of us. I never realized why their rugs were so expensive until I saw how they were made. The $40,000 rug took two girls four years to make. I still can't believe they let us breathe in there let alone eat about six inches away from them. Besides the rugs the shopping in Kusadasi was much less expensive than other places, but the shopowners were much more pushy and aggressive. They would literally call out to you on the street to come into their shops, and they loved to haggle. Our tour guide said it is practically insulting to them if you don't haggle. All the tags and signs show a much higher price because it is simply a starting point for bargaining. There were fake designer purses, belts, sunglasses, and t-shirts galore. So if you want Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton plastered all over yourself you'd be in heaven. Although the quality was not so great. And in my opinion if you have to wear Dolce and Gabba like it's a billboard, you're probably wearing it wrong. They had far more fakes on one street than in all of Italy and it is apparently legal there because unlike in Italy the vendors don't gather their stuff up and book it when they see a cop. Also the pharmacy will give you about anything you want prescription or not, even Viagra. Which was prominently displayed for 15 Euros. Not that we partook (although we had the whole next day at sea! (J.K.)).
Word to the wise however do not even bother with their ice cream, it was absoloutley terrible. It has probably ruined me forever on kiwi ice cream. Not that it is readily available anywhere, but still, YUCK! It had to have been made from goats milk or something funky. Also if your curious about Turkish Delights (referenced in Narnia) not too tasty either. It reminded me of some crap me and my sisters found in my grandma's closet when we were little, or a fruit cake that someone forgot about for a few years. Not to bash theTurks cuisine they have fabulous kabobs, and their apple tea is very good too if we had more time we probably would have found more yummy stuff.