Kusadasi & Ephesus

What can I tell you about Ephesus. Here are some of the best-preserved ruins of ancient Rome. Great slabs of marble everywhere, including some of the streets. It must, in its time, have been a truly remarkable city. The guide tells our group that it was a seaport back then, but today the sea is a long distance away from Ephesus. We are led through the usual points of interest: the baths, the public toilets, the brothel sign, the magnificent façade of the Library of Celsius, and finally the amphitheater.

By this hour of the morning the sun is beating down mercilessly on the sweating polyglot tourists with their layers of sunscreen and wide-brimmed headcoverings. There is no shade except in the shadows cast by the columns — Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, whatever — or the occasional marble arch or lintel. Tour groups of twenty or thirty people gather around their guides, absorbing historical anecdotes in a half-dozen languages, and drinking bottled water. Each guide waves a plastic sign with a number to lead his or her group onward to the next station. Sometimes two or three groups are within earshot of each other, causing some confusion.

The Turkish tourism authorities have, in this writer's opinion, not yet attained the sophistication of their Greek counterparts in their efforts to promote tourism. There was a long wait to get through the electrically-operated turnstiles at the site, due to a power failure. They had to get an emergency generator started up to allow the throngs into the place. Each tourist was given one ticket, which served for admission but, more important, as the prepaid pass to the restrooms at the conclusion of the tour. Marble-lined W.C.s manned by unshaven old men with a bad attitude.

Kusadasi is a shopper's town. In Turkey they will try to sell you a carpet every chance they get. It seems everybody has a brother or uncle or cousin who owns a carpet factory, who can offer you a handmade carpet of the highest quality at a fraction of what you might have to pay at home. A visit to a carpet showroom is mandatory at the end of a Turkish tour. And if not carpets, then leather goods, or jewelry.

As I said, Kusadasi is a shopper's town.