Thursday began in a conversation between Suzanne and the hotel's parrot followed by my breakfast and Suzanne's as I decided to take pictures around the breakfast room and Suzanne captured me and then did the same before we headed off to Ephesus. Once at Ephesus, we were greeted by this excellent sign which amused Suzanne as she made her way to connect with Rashid, our guide but I had one more picture to take before we entered the ruin which at first looked like many ruins we have seen in the past with broken columns across vast areas.

and the occasional capstone as we were called upon to use our imagination to see what we were seeing and how the ancients might have lived here but then Rashid pointed out this symbolism which exists even today and derives letters from the wheel to represent the Greek Orthodoxy and we went back to columns along a main road

before entering a small auditorium with the promise that there was a much larger auditorium to come

and the crowd of people gave the sense that there might be a real performance here today but this path led me and this path led Suzanne away, so we weren't going to be the performers even as we moved further down the road of columns and began to get a first grasp of what it is that makes Ephesus so remarkable

including statues built to rulers and long roads and hooks in the sidewalk all set against a backdrop of the region. As we marched on and saw more momentos Rashid pointed our symbolism and we made our way along the path beginning to realize that while we are used to seeing the occasional spectacle left from an ancient city, what we were seeing here was the whole city (or, at least a large fraction of it) and that we could easily begin to put together what life was like in the city. There were streets where the merchants were, locations where the houses were, ...

and the original plumbing was in the ground. Indeed we later saw similar plumbing in the ground in a more modern city. And so we moved on taking pictures too numerous to document of one building after another and beginning to grasp the vastness of the city we were in

until scenes such as this made us realize that we were seeing a whole city and not just a few isolated (and remarkable) ruins. Even with a focus on the local it was hard to ignore the scale of the scale as the first view of the library came into focus but there was still a lot of city to explore before we got there though the library continued to be an icon in the distance as we explored among the columns and statues and made our way along the roads

until we paused to admire this mosaic floor preserved for 2000 years

and the buildings aligning the road

often with remarkable friezes

and archways that defined spaces

and decorations that looked remarkably swastika-like even way back then and this led us to the public latrine where this was a typical seat among a row of seats and so I tried it and then Suzanne and Rashid did before we recorded the path that the plumbing took and made our way

towards the remarkable library

where Suzanne posed with Sophia (wisdom) and this sign told us what we already knew as we explored

and noted who had done the reconstruction as the columns impressed and Suzanne noted my presence even as we found some of the original text and captured more photos

before finding our way down the steps to the place where there was a menorah carved into the steps and then we made our way down the path under the library and along the columns

until we reached the large auditorium where we entered and first captured its vastness as I noted on the stage that Suzanne was performing and then recorded her walk across the stage

and the vastness of the seating as she made her way to where I Was sitting and we took this photo of ourselves and then headed in our directions

so that Suzanne could find her way back to the stage where I now was. As we exited the town, there were more columns and no smoking signs as the path was set to lead us to these milestones and then a full map of the region along with another of the genuine fake watch signs put us back in the car for further exploration

and our next stop was the Temple of Diana (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) which looked like this back in the day but is now 1 column with a pelican roosted on top in the midst of a military area. Nonetheless we explored the area and made our way to the column which is now along a swamp and made our way to capture the pieces we could see before letting our imaginations do the rest of the work

before leaving through this field of daisies.

Our next stops were in Selcuk where we were given tours of local merchants, no doubt to encourage us to support the local economy. We began with lunch at the place where rugs are made with a host of foods including this spinach pie with very delicate pastry and these foods which assured we would over eat before the karpuz came. Our demonstration of how rugs are made including a piece on the silkworm from which silk strands are taken to weave the rugs nd then we saw the wool used and the various dyes before we were given a demonstration of many many rugs we could think of buying

with a belief (theirs not ours) that Suzanne was starting to focus in on the rug she would buy

which was one of these few two of which could be ours for $4000 and with a final picture we took their business card and headed to the museum in the town where we began with these backgammon tables and then saw statues some erotic but most being busts and then mosaics not to mention scenes followed by statues in toto and in pieces

and a pedant and a sundial as we made our way to the sarcophagy

leading to these murals that showed the history of the region starting with its founding by Amazons and working through the Greeks and the Romans and then we were back to museum fare, much of it quite impressive when you realize that the city we saw in the morning which felt fairly complete gave rise to all of these pieces and many many more still to be unearthed.

I particularly liked the mosaic floors which now seem to entertain cats on hots days

and then there was a variety of statuary

and inscriptions

as we made our way about

pausing for some backgammon tables and some ancient coins before passing one more piece and a bath tub and then making our way out to see some of the history recorded in text before heading to the leather and ceramic shops where at the latter of these we had a demonstration of the construction of a pot and got an explanation of the wine flasks used in ancient times where it was designed so that as you poured wine for your guest, you also bowed to your guest (the large ring fitting over your shoulder) thereby making wine a social sign of respect. After the busy day, we were back to the airport where our flight was an hour late but dinner was still served in a great rush and we were eventually back in Istanbul at a different hotel.