Ephesus

It has been quite interesting reading the parts of Acts where Paul visits different Mediterranean cities at the same time as we are visiting them. We read Acts 19 the day we went to Ephesus, and it added much to the tour seeing the streets Paul would have walked on. We saw the square where the tradesmen rioted against Paul because he put a dent in their idol sales, and the massive amphitheater where he may have preached. The amphitheater is very cool - first, because it's HUGE (25,000 capacity), and second, because it has perfect acoustics. Julia stood at the stage at the bottom and I stood at the back, 20 plus meters up, and I could hear her gentle speaking perfectly

 

We arrived at the port of Kusadasi, which was a twenty minute tour bus drive from the ancient city of Ephesus. This was one of the few places we've visited without archaelogical machinery and scaffolding all over the place. This was because all restoration and excavation in Turkey is stopped for tourist season, which was great! According to our tour guide Ephesus was the biggest city of its time except Tokyo! I guess this means it was bigger than Rome!

 

It was amazing to see a large part of the city (actually only 15% of the 1st century city) restored so you could actually see what the city would have looked like. It was easy to get an idea for how the city would have looked and what life would have been like. As the Bible mentions it was a very worldly city - an advertisement can still be seen beckoning arriving sailors from the harbour to the city's brothel. The city had many slaves like Rome, and they were even made to sit on the marble toilets to keep them warm for the rich people.

 

After coming back to the port we decided to go to the beach - bad idea. The beach was absolutely packed, so we had to go into the water one at a time, one person guarding our stuff. Since we didn't have any shade and it was almost 40 degrees out, when we weren't in the water, we cooked. We lasted about 20 minutes. We ended our time in Ephesus getting famous Turkish coffee and becoming Facebook friends with our nice Intermediate Hist/Geo teacher waitress (Turks are VERY friendly).

 

- Andy