Friday, February 20

After an overnight journey that weaved its way through numerous Greek islands and around a Turkish peninsula, we arrived in the port of Izmir. The weather was rainy, but the landscape lovely. Our tour took us to the early Greco-Roman city of Ephesus, which was a bigger deal than we expected. A coastal town, Ephesus was built on a sloping piece of land and included statue-lined streets, houses, shops, a library (with bordello across the street) and a 25,000-seat amphitheater.

The site was never forgotten, and therefore didn’t need to be “discovered.” But it did need to be excavated, because the river that silted up (moving the coastline further away and killing the town) also buried some of the ruins. Time did the rest of the work. The ruins have to be dug out, like those at Pompeii – only here they’re not digging through lava. This was an older settlement, too. You can tell because of the presence of Greek lettering, not just Latin.

Anyway, the place was a pleasant surprise in that it was bigger and more beautiful than we had imagined. The weather, unfortunately, was chilly and rainy the whole time, and we were soaked to the bone by the time we left. Our guide had it worst, though. Having navigated all the slippery marble streets without incident, she later fell on a gravel path and really banged up her knee. I gave her some Advil (which I’m always packin’).

Educated, liberated, modern Nunya was an awesome guide. She didn’t hesitate to share her opinions of how Turkey has been getting the shaft from the E.U. She made the persuasive argument that the E.U. repeatedly rejecting Turkey only encourages terrorists by “proving” that the West is anti-Muslim. She believes that the true Turkey is secular, and is disgusted to see the rise of extremism. She believes that joining the E.U. would help quell it. When the microphone was off, I asked her about the Kurds. Her views were less progressive on this topic, but I appreciated her honesty.

Next stop was a rug factory, which – despite being a sales pitch – provided good demonstrations of how silk is collected, rugs are made, and how handsome Turkish men can unroll rugs with a flourish. Hello, Akbar.

They gave us a yummy snack at the rug factory – a filo dough “cigar” with marscapone cheese inside. We got one each, plus a glass of wine. This was lunch. Otherwise, we got our money’s worth, though, because this was one of the cheaper tours, and it lasted far longer than the promised 4 hours.

But by the time we got back to the port we were hungry, so we popped into a nearby restaurant for some local food. Fancy and delicious lamb dishes were served immediately, and we sampled the local beer. We ate quickly because we were in a hurry, and because we were totally rav.

Next we scampered over to a grocery store to spend the rest of our Lira before sailing. We found some Turkish Delight to bring home with us, and I also bought some snacks as souvenirs.

Within minutes we were back on our balcony, Mark chomping on a Cuban cigar he bought in Greece. We didn’t have long before trivia time, so he sucked hard on that thing and again we ran off having consumed something way too quickly.

We lost trivia by one point (again!) so we were annoyed, but also getting quite tired and a little queasy. Maybe it had all been too much today.

It was another 24 hours before I emerged from our cabin. And I got off easy.