Ephesus and Kusadasi, Turkey

I have been eagerly waiting to write this post! Ephesus and Kusadasi, Turkey was my favorite stop of the whole trip! :) I love seeing the ruins and history of Ephesus and also experiencing the culture of Turkey! I definitely want to go back :D

Enjoy,

Grace Anne

Sarah and Sam Dana. Such sweet siblings :)

We were all listening intently to our tour guide.

They have only uncovered %10 of Ephesus. But that %10 is big!

Our tour guide was really cool! He was an archaeologist who had worked at some sites at Ephesus. He knew really interesting information about the city!

Our guide told us that this was the "original" Ephesus cat! :P

This was kind of funny! You can see the raised up hair on the cats back! But I think I would be like that too if some dog was barking at me!

The architecture was incredible!

These are houses and the sidewalk. Look closely at this sidewalk, it is all mosaic!

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Ephesus' public bathrooms. Yes, bathrooms. I think the picture pretty much describes everything. The trough on the floor is where water would be flowing so the people could warm their feet. If you were sitting down and..well, ya know; you'd have musicians playing for you. Yeah it was definitely different way back then. :P

Now may I welcome you to Ephesus' Library! This structure was gorgeous! I loved it so much :)

Sarah Dana and I in front of the library :)

I thought this looked really neat.

One of the column's from the library.

This is the theater which Paul was brought to. (Read the story in Acts 19 : 23-41). Wow. I'll tell you right now I had shivers. When we went into the theater we started to sing Amazing Grace. It was gorgeous! The acoustics were amazing and everyone stopped to listen :) Praise the Lord! We stood where Paul would have stood. Amazing.

From Ephesus we went to our port city, Kusadasi. Our tour guide was so awesome! He took us to this amazing rug store. Now we didn't just look at rugs! They owners of the store took us back to a room and showed us how they made silk. WOW! It was so cool!

Gorgeous colors!

Everyone was so intrigued as they showed us the process!

They then took us back to another room that was full of carpets! It took my breath away!

There was a lady there making a carpet. I would definitely not have the patience to make carpets. It takes about three years to make a normal bathroom sized carpet.

Ahh! I love the colors! :D

As if they hadn't done enough, the men then gave us food and drinks...for free! They offered Turkish bear, wine and coffee. An apple tea and coke. (Everywhere we went they always offered coke!)

I, of course, got the Turkish coffee. :O It was THE best coffee I had ever tasted! Seriously!

Look at this carpet!

After serving us our drinks they started to role out carpet after carpet after carpet. They put on this little show! It was so cool! The hospitality of the Turkish people was so great to see :)

As if my day wasn't already amazing there were homemade donuts! I believe it was some kind of holiday in Turkey that day. There was this family on the side of the street, under some trees making and giving away donuts. We tried to offer them money to pay for it but the refused to take it. The donuts were SO good!!!

We all enjoyed them :)

We walked around and looked into some shops. They were selling amazingly gorgeous things.

The colors make me happy :)

Burger Kind in Turkey anyone?

There was just color everywhere!

Shopping street. These people know how to get a costumer and they will go far to get them.

I wouldn't mind having lunch there! :P

The time the Clark's had come (before us) they had gotten haircuts at this barber shop in Kusadasi. So all the men in our group decided they wanted one. Wow! They did some pretty crazy stuff. :D It was fun to watch :)

The barber shop. I hadn't seen that they did women haircut's or I so would have gotten one!

We ended our incredibly awesome day at Starbucks. Guess what I got?

Bingo! A Turkish coffee!! Don't worry, I didn't drink all three of those :P

It was sooooo goooooood!! :D

Turkey was my favorite spot! I loved everything I learned! I loved all the stories we made. I loved all of the colors. I loved the peoples kindness and hospitality. And I love the coffee! :) I most definitely want to go back! :)