Ancient Ruins of Ephesus, Turkey

For our trip to Ephesus,* the Professor hired a private guide for. Melissa ( Melis Basaloglu - her Turkish name means Sweet)was a charming young woman and full of information. We did not choose to go see the home/church where Mary and John supposedly lived their last years after leaving Nazareth following the death of Jesus. Melissa did take us to see one statue though. Probably she could not understand our disinterest in seeing the ruins of the Church built in honor of Mary. Because we chose to miss that part of the usual tour, we had the city of Ephesus* pretty much to ourselves for awhile. It was lovely. Of course, my mind is like a sieve and I remember so little that she told us. The names just came and went. The library was built in honor of a man named Celsus. Apparently there was a discrete tunnel under the road to the brothel across the street if you did not want to read. Please also note the community toilets for the upper class men. And I do mean community. Ugh. I like MY privacy.







I think we enjoyed this morning more than most of our other days. We paid extra to go see the enclosed ruins of the houses climbing up the hillside. They were "completed" and enclosed in 1999. Melissa told us that she was so frightened when she first went there as a child. The metal stairs connect plexiglas platforms so that you can see through the flooring to the ruins below. I didn't think to take a picture of the see-through floors.

It meant a lot to us to see the amphitheatre where Paul spoke to the Ephesians.
By 300 AD Ephesus was a city of about 125,000 people. At that time it was actually a port city on the Aegean. Since then the river has dried up and silt at first turned the port into a swamp and now it is a valley filled with grass and trees.

We docked at a port called Kusadasi and drove for about 20 minute to Ephesus. Kusadasi, Turkey is in the area of Anatolya with the largest city being Izrim.

Later in the afternoon we went shopping in the bazaar. Looking was much more fun than buying. But since my flip flops had died on our last day in San Diego, I replaced those with some leather ones. We'll see how they are. :) The theory is that they were handmade in the area.

The bazaar was large with shops lining several small streets close to the port. While we were shopping we heard a loud pop sound. A moment later a man ran past us with a policeman in pursuit. Following him was another man yelling angrily. It took no time for two more policemen to materialize and in no time the suspect had been captured. All of the people involved were dark haired and could have been Greek. We have no idea what was happening and no idea if the loud pop we heard was a gun being discharged. I am not at all disappointed that we were not in a position to know the answers to any of our questions.









We visited this area on Thursday, October 27th.

* Both of these links have great pictures and information about Ephesus. One has a virtual tour.

People in Italy

Firenze Novoli

There is nothing exciting about the Italian name of New Florence. It is exactly what it says it is. A relatively new suburb of Florence. We arrived in Florence about mid day on Thursday, October 21st. The Hilton Garden Inn was a comfortable and luxurious (for us) hotel to stay in. It was a short distance from both the airport and the railway station where we had to take a train to Rome. The 22 bus came by just a block away every 15 minutes and took us into the heart of Florence.

In the picture above, we are in a very North American supermarket. We have only a few stores like this within metro distance of us in Helsinki. None within walking distance, so it was great fun to actually find shoe polish in the same store where the apples and bananas were sold.

The Hilton is next to the new building of the university. The building is surrounded by a large park where people go to walk their dogs or just to walk themselves or with their small children.
It really is a beautiful setting.

The upside of staying in New Florence was the comfort of the hotel and the closeness to means of transportation. The downside was that after sightseeing for four hours, we were ready to go back to our hotel and rest. Since it was a bus ride to the city, we went back to the hotel and never left to return to the city in the evening.

Florence in Two Days

Some time last spring the Professor started talking about going on a Mediterrean cruise. There was one he was interested in and it would be a great way to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. The end of October when the University of Helsinki had an autumn break seemed like the perfect time to take our first cruise.

I have had lots of time to read about our ports of call and about Florence and Rome which we would visit before and after our cruise. Lots of time. If I had done my reading in advance. I would have known about the wonderful paintings by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Santa Maria Novella church. Of course, I did not; so, now that I am home and reading about many of the buildings that we saw, I am discovering that I missed out on seeing wonderful treasures.
The line of people to go into the basilica or Duomo was always extremely long but there were no people rushing to visit the inside of either of the other two churches that we saw.

The reality was that two days is really not enough time for Florence. We did not have the extra two or three hours to wander in the Uffizi Gallery or to stand in the long line to purchase tickets at the Accademia Gallery.

The Professor had done an excellent job of scheduling travel and booking rooms but I definitely needed to do reading about what we would see so that I would have known that we definitely needed to make time to visit particular sights. Will I do the studying in advance that I need to do before we go some place else? Probably not. I am an ostriche with my head in the sand. Any challenge or change in my life is threatening and I avoid thinking about it as much as possible. My impossible attitude has definitely made me the loser this time.

I hope that you enjoy the pictures.

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. The Duomo, as it was ordinarily called, was begun in 1296 and completed in 1436. The exterior of the basilica is faced with marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white.

The cathedral complex, located in Piazza del Duomo, includes the Baptistery and Giotto's Campanile. The basilica is one of Italy's largest churches, and until development of new structural materials in the modern era, the dome was the largest in the world. It remains the largest brick dome ever constructed. Today it still remains as one of the largest basilicas in the world. There are only about three cathedrals that are larger than it is.



Giotto's bell tower (campanile)


Baptistry of John the Baptist - dates from the 11th century, with three sets of amazing bronze doors.


Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated just across from the main railway station which shares its name. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church. The church, the adjoining cloister, and chapterhouse contain a store of art treasures and funerary monuments.







The birth of Mary painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio.



The Church of San Lorenzo
When we first saw this ancient church in Florence we immediately thought of the Alamo. It is not impressive from the outside, but it's probably the oldest religious structure in Florence. They say it was probably founded before year 400 AD.




The Ponte Vecchio - The Old Bridge looks from the outside as if it were still crowded with the crammed blacksmith and butcher shops of the medieval period, but it's all glittery gold and tourist baubles today. Spared from bombing in WWII, it used to be built of wood but a rebuild in the 1300's made it mostly stone.



Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio
Florence's most famous square is Piazza della Signoria, the heart of the historic center and a free open-air sculpture exhibit. The Loggia della Signoria holds some important statues including a copy of Michelangelo's David. The piazza has been Florence's political center since the middle ages and Florence's town hall, the medieval Palazzo Vecchio, sits on the piazza.
Crown of thorns




Copy of David. The original is in the Accademia Gallery.

Places I Missed in Turku

I have a few confessions to make. I cannot read a map. If I look at a map, I need to turn it around so that it is oriented exactly as I am standing in order for there to be any hope that I will find my way home.

I would never go anywhere if it was not for Earl. I would sit in my little house and read books and eat bon bons. And let's face it, without Earl and his Fulbright I would never have come to Helsinki.

In Turku, we never had a chance to go see anything together. I have already confessed that I fell asleep on Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning before leaving for more meetings, Earl told me to go sightseeing or neither of us would see any of Turku. He showed me where I was on the map and where the market square was. He left me to fend for myself and some how I did not get lost. However, I found that it was too far to walk to the castle.

I never did see the exterior let alone the interior of the Sibelius museum. Nor did I see the Museum of Art or the Jewish Synagog. My one regret is that I never got to a harbor to see any part of the scattered archipelago between the sea and Turku.