Friday morning, our group packed up, ate breakfast, and left in our bus for the ride to Kayseri, the local airport. From Kayseri, we flew to Istanbul, and quickly transferred to a flight to Izmir. In Izmir we once again boarded a bus and drove to the town of Selcuk where we had lunch, mezes and kebabs. Mezes is the Turkish word referring to the delicious array of appetizers preceding a main course. Since it was so late, our tour guides decided to adopt Plan B, and postpone the visit to Ephesus until the following morning. The weather in this part of Turkey is much warmer than Istanbul or Cappadocia, and I was grateful not to do extensive sight-seeing in the heat, and especially after so many hours of airplane and bus rides. We drove to our hotel of one night, a luxurious place called the La Vista Hotel. Luxurious it might be, but there were a couple of problems. We couldn't get into our room with the card key, so Larry went downstairs to ask for another one. The new one didn't work either, so once again, we asked for help. This time they gave us an actual key and promised to remove the metal plate hiding the actual keyhole. After dinner we came back to the room, and still couldn't gain entry. Finally, the metal plate was removed, and we entered the room with the metal key, only to find that we couldn't operate the lights, because we'd given back the nonfunctioning key card. Well, that said, the room was pretty nice, with a beautiful view of the Aegean Sea.
We had a nice dinner outside on the patio, overlooking the Aegean, and a belly dancer, too!
Saturday morning, at 6 AM, an annoying beep began somewhere, woke us up and sent us scurrrying to our electronic devices to see if one of them was responsible, but the beep was from somewhere else, and persisted for fifteen minutes or so.
But for the good and exciting news, we had a wonderful visit to Ephesus, and ancient city on a hill in picturesque ruins. The weather was fine, not too hot, and the crowds were manageable. I took lots of pictures which I'll try to post later when I have more reliable internet access.
We drove many hours to the port where the A. Candan was waiting for us. Larry and I got probably the best room on the gulet, with a little sitting area as well as a big, comfortable bed. I'm thinking the next few days will be the best part of the trip. It's beautiful on the water, surrounded by islands, the weather is very comfortable, and I even went swimming off the boat this morning. We're going to go on a hike on shore this afternoon (in about an hour). `
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