Breakfast was copious and similar to the fancy place in the
big city except for no breakfast cereal.

The driver came to pick us up right on time for our trip to
Ephesus (Efes). Turns out the van just took us to the travel
agency in downtown Selcuk (15 minutes), where we waited for
a bunch of other diasporaed tourists, and we coalesced into
a group that would fill a vehicle. As lili and I both tend
to be prompt, we were among the first there and had to chill
for a considerable time. Eventually our cute, well-educated
guide, who, in contrast to most of the people we met, spoke
excellent English, fetched us and combined us with a motley
group of Anglophones from England and Australia.

Our first stop, which was not advertised as far as I know,
was The House of the Virgin Mary, a newly developed place
of pilgrimage, now sanctioned by the Holy See, where Mary is
supposed to have spent her last days. Apparently a German
nun had had dreams about the place, and as normal most
people colored her insane, but a journalist heard about her
and wrote a novel on the subject, which somehow caught the
eye of some Catholic priests who went and investigated this
place and found the ruins of a 1st century house just as
described by the visions as transmitted by the novel. And
so a rapid reconstruction was effected, and voila, instant
holy shrine and tourist destination.

It wasn't bad, actually.

There's a weeping wall whose waters are said to be holy
(as well as potable); its natural exudations are now aided
by modern plumbing, and one can fill any vessels one has
handy with this elixir at no cost.

Then to the archeological site of Ephesus, which at one time
was one of the most important Mediterranean ports and the
site of one of the great libraries of classical antiquity.

Toward the beginning of the tour a rather athletic-looking
girl named Sandy became ill, and being the only male nearby
able to carry a burden, I did so. The guide and I stayed
with the patient until the ambulance came (the sight of same
made the girl perk up and say she didn't need any help, but
we loaded her on anyhow), and then we caught up with the
rest of the group.

It's like a museum, only in the bright sunlight, with
examples of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine architecture; and
on this gorgeous day it was hugely crowded, especially near
the library of Celsus and the street leading to it: it gave
us an idea what a city of 200,000 strong would have felt
like on market day in year zero or so. Highly worthwhile.

We returned to Selcuk for lunch buffet at a tourist trap;
there were enough buses in the lot that the guide said, oh,
let's wait at the lokoum shop, one of my favorite places.
How transparent is that. I refrained from eating samples or
otherwise encouraging the natives, preferring to stay close
to the entrance and laugh at the strange aphrodisiac
offerings, packaged in jars shaped like satyrs, essentially
pagan godlet figures with their long-standing fallacies.
A few of us got some stuff at about 4x what one might pay
at the bazaar, but whatever.

Eventually we got to lunch, which was okay, but the wine
at TL5 a glass was utterly horrid - reminded me of the stuff
we'd had with gvdIAD in Frascati early this year (when in
Frascati, do as the Frascatoons do and drink WHITE WINE).

And then to the leather factory fashion show, where most of
abused the hosts' hospitality by drinking our apple tea
(why do all these places serve apple tea, a rather silly
concoction that has little or nothing to do with apples?),
laughing at the models doing the show, and sneaking out the
back door and sunning ourselves on the porch while our
co-victims wandered through the store being encouraged to
buy jackets and stuff. At some point the manager came out
and made some pointed remarks about how the economy has
been bad everywhere (he placed the blame on W) but worst
in the UK, a zinger that we shrugged off, even those of us
who were actually from there. Eventually he gave up and
just chatted for a while.

Next stop, the Ephesus Museum, which might not have been
worth the trip, because it recapitulated what we had already
seen in situ - but there were a couple impressive statues of
the goddess Artemis (who, the guide told us, was adorned
with necklaces of bull testicles: not the many-breasted
figure she is reputed to be in the textbooks), some very
nice narrative carvings (orthostats, a word I learned later
at the Archaeology Museum in Istanbul), and assorted small
excavation finds.

And finally the Artemis temple, once one of the seven
wonders of the world and now a pathetic ruin, with one
haphazardly reconstructed column and assorted pieces of
scrap marble lying about, the touts (selling postcards
and fake antique coins) being of a lower and more
downtrodden order than usual.

We were given the option of another artisan tour, but that
was soundly voted down, so we got back to town a bit early.