From Ephesus to Fethiye

Saturday June 11

We made a sleep in deal with the girls, if they rallied yesterday evening to visit Ephesus then we would let them sleep in this morning. They kept their end of the deal, we pretty much kept ours, but we still had to wake them up.

We had a light breakfast and chatted with the 10 year old son of the guesthouse host who practiced his English by trying to pronounce our names.  He did well, Patti was Perry, but the others were fine. Turns out John is a name used in Turkey and especially in the region of Ephesus as it is believed that he spent his last days here. There is a church a hundred meters away from our stay constructed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian that once stood in Johns honor. 

It is said that at one time it was the 7th largest church in the world. This model in the foreground was assembled by a man from Ohio where the Middle West meets the Middle East. 

While there is not much remaining of this church there is still a baptistry which might serve as some evidence in the perennial dunking, dipping, or sprinkling debate.

I found a few cool capitals, these sit at the top of columns.

I found this, which may have been part of this churches alter.

Tara found a turtle which apparently is the grounds keeper who could not keep up.

From here we climbed in the car and drove 4 hours to just outside Fethiye to a ferry launch at Calis Beach. Driving in other countries is always an interesting mix of don't get a traffic violation and don't hit anyone or anything. In Turkey the speed limits seem to only be posted just prior to designated town crosswalk indicating a need to slow down.  Never being sure what the max speed was I did my best to find and follow the Goldilock cars, not too slow and not too fast. 

Sometimes it seemed that I was going so slow, even though I was at what I thought to be the posted speed limit. Turkey has seen an average monetary inflation of over 70% since January 1 and it seems vehicular speed has also seen it's share of inflation.

Once at Calis beach we hopped on a water taxi to a small island where Patti booked us a stay at a large house in which we are the only visitors. Izmir is the premier beach town and another 4 hours away, Fethiye is another hotspot, but our island is nice and cool. We plan to go to the big city beach in Fethiye at some point.

There is a public beach on the island and we have our own as well, I think the kids are preferrirng ours. On the property there are a few terraced levels for hanging out on the way down to the water and pier where the ferry picks us up and drops us off right at our beachstep.

After a swim we showered up and made some dinner. Riley was pleased with the on demand water heater as she now knew no limits to her showering ultra-marathon. Unfortunately for me, it quit working after I had completely soaped up. Turns out we tripped a breaker, I guess there is a shower limit, poor Riley (or me?).

While the kids made dinner Patti and I took a stroll on the island to see what we could see. We are realizing that in a country so rich in history you cannot help but to be amongst it. Turns our this island was home to a Roman settlement, a Byzantine era church and later a 15th century military post. Some of the well formed stone from the church is used in this fortress wall.

Along a path we found this mosaic and a hole near it which appeared to be a cistern. We also found other patches of mosaic here and there. Pretty interesting that this history is just out in the wild like this.

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