Ephesus 14 Oct

Back down to village of Inciralti to buy bread and cheese and so lunch. Decide to go to Ephesus after lunch. About 80km and didn't leave till about 2:30. Get there about 4pm but, of course, there's a hill behind it where the sun sets almost immediately so photos may not be so good. Rather poorly excavated and restored but very interesting. How fascinating if one of the places could be fully restored and a colony of 'Ephesians' installed.

The main street of Ephesus, going up to the ancient amphitheatre has some interesting ruins. Some houses at the top are riddled with tunnels under ground. Some quite large ones which one can walk in upright, unless this was a large intricate public building, these can hardly have been used for central heating, unless it was very "central". As Brian said these people were extremely civilised, rather more so than the current occupants of the country. We walk back down by a different route overlooking the town and back to the great theatre. This is very fine, particularly the stage which is a three-storey affair in tiers. Though it's difficult to tell exactly what it was like. Underneath there is one central entrance to the stage and all sorts of little rooms down below (dressing rooms?).

At this point the guard, or whoever he was, came and chased us out. I suspect to be awkward rather than anything else, we went out by a different, longer way round. As we drove away we noticed the stadium, which we'd been looking for. It was in a poor state of preservation. And we glanced at the temple of Artemis which was built in a hollow - a heap of rubble. There is also the famous Church of St John here and the Virgin Mary is supposed to have spent her last days here. These last three are nearer the present town of Selcuk than to Ephesus itself.

We set off back to Izmir, the plan being to drive through the night in an Ankara direction. But it was already 7pm by the time we got to Izmir, and my nearly collecting a three-wheeler (that was an alarming incident) decided us that we were too tired to continue and we resolved to go to the pideria of Sunday night and back to the campsite. We hoped that we might not have to pay for the campsite, but here we were foiled next morning by the guard who came and demanded a passport.