Category: Adventures

Are you allowed to pun on blogs? The Meander River runs through Ephesus [or Efes in Turkish] and completely changed the course of Ephesus in history.

Imagine a city of pearl marble shining out to sea and you could sail right up to it, the sun rays dancing off the buildings and roads as you approached. A chariot would have pulled up to the wharf and taken you up past the amphitheatre for 25,000 people,  past the library with its exquisite marble edifice, up to the temple of Artemis, where you could offer a sacrifice to the goddess and give thanks for your safe return home.

Ephesus was settled before the Bronze age, with Neolithic remains dating back to 6,000 years BC and it grew and retracted until circa 614 AD when both a large earthquake hit and destroyed many buildings and the Meander River silted up the port. Today the city of Ephesus is five kilometres inland from the Aegean Sea. Ephesus did survive after this time but it was much smaller settlement.

Religion has always been important here. The Hellenic gods, particularly Artemis were worshipped. St John came to Ephesus and helped to bring Christianity here. He is said to have written some of the Revelations here. There is debate that he brought Mary, Mother of Jesus to Ephesus and that she was assumed into heaven from here. Jesus and Mary are also sacred to Muslims, so Efes is important to them too. Our guide, Haldun, while showing us Hadrian’s Temple told us the Romans had temples to their gods and their emperors.  They could determine who was Christian because Christians would not sacrifice at the Roman temples, so they were sent to the amphitheatre to fight with the lions instead.

An early visit to library of Celsus is a memory I have captured in a photo. I have always been in awe of its grandeur.  It held thousands of scrolls made of parchment and the building faces east so it was able to capture morning light. Egypt became very jealous of the library and decided to suspend supply of papyrus, but the clever Ephesians developed parchment, which was much more durable and longer lasting.

 

We were with a group of about nine people with the wonderful guide Haldun, who gave us so much information but also made the history come alive.  I warn you, he does test you to make sure you are paying attention.

 

 

Many of you know that I lived in Izmir, Turkey for just under three years in the mid 60’s. My brother, Tony and I went to an American/International school and my sister, Linda, was born there.

Izmir is the third largest city of Turkey, in 1965 at just under 800,000 people and now about 3 million people. So things weren’t the same, the growth was both  exponential and hard to fathom. Surprisingly I could still find my neighbourhood and I could almost find my way to school except the old two story building was now a nine story commercial building.

Now stop trying to do the math and figuring out how old I am, just read the story, which is dedicated to my sister, Linda.

As much as Izmir has grown, our neighbourhood, Alsancak has had only minor changes. Our street has two striking visual differences, our wide boulevard has palm trees on a big median strip now. There were no stores on the boulevard then, now there are masses of stores at street level. It’s very Double Bay. It is on the southern shore of the gulf of Izmir, a giant harbour. We lived one street back from the harbour and Birinci Kordon or the esplanade. The Kordon seems much wider as if they have reclaimed some of the harbour.

This quarter, Alsancak, both now and then was home to upper middle class Turkish people and it was always a lovely place to live. It looks to me, that they have added to the Kordon to add parkland, bike paths and parking by putting it over the harbour. Izmir was a very European city then and still is today.

We had a car but much of our day to day travel was in a horse and carriage. Today they seem to be mainly for tourists but the horses are still lovely.

The bread sellers would come up our street, with a huge tray of bread balanced on their head.They would call out the types of bread they had, “bread man, bread man, get your fresh bread” .  We had a basket on a very long string that Raphon* or my mother would put money into the basket and lower to the bread man, who would take the money and put in the correct bread. There was a bit of calling out in the neighbourhood.

This is an apartment just around the corner that looks like the one we lived in. The actual buildings we lived in have been retrofitted for earthquakes and when they did that, they added more floors to the buildings.

There is quite of bit of parkland and public space in the city. The harbour is a long semicircle and in the 60’s, there was no sea wall and the water was also filthy, Linda’s Dad got a call to see if he would join a search and rescue, when a taxi went into the harbour on a stormy night during a gale.  This is fine weather but you can see there is no wall or barrier here now and that is what most of the harbour was like in 1965.

He was one of the scuba team that braved the gale and hepatitis to go down on a few occasions and bring back the bodies, including one of his colleagues.

There are two sights that I remember from Izmir. The clocktower built in Ottoman Rococo.

and a wonderful statue of Ataturk at the end of our street. Ataturk created the modern secular Turkey you find today. Freedom of religion is practiced.  Now women are allowed to wear scarves but they didn’t in the sixties.

*Raphon was Linda’s nanny.

 

We are in Fethiye, waiting to see if Beneteau is going to arrange warranty work for us. It is very hot. I would say August in Southern Turkey is not for the heat averse. We now fully regret our mocking laughs at yachts with air conditioning. Last night we had a block of ice in front of a fan, tonight we will try wet sheets in front of the bucket of ice. Yes,yes, I know our life is so glamorous.

Ok enough of the chat, we went to a small but perfectly appointed museum, with air conditioning, in Fethiye yesterday. Most of the finds, are from the Lycian, Hellenistic and Roman periods and there are beautiful and fascinating pieces in this tiny museum. The lovely extra seems to be the photos on the wall of where these antiquities have come from and drawings showing you how they used the various altar stones. Imagination injections as it were. I will rely heavily on the museum notes, because they give the details in italics. If you are coming to Fethiye, be sure to visit.

 

Back in the ancient times of the Greeks, the Lycians were a small city state federation between Fethiye and Antalya. They were matriarchal. Herodotos noted: “They have customs that resemble no one else’s. They use their mother’s name instead of their father’s. If one Lycian asks another from whom he is descended, he gives the name of his mother. And if a citizen woman should cohabit with a slave, the children are considered of free birth; but if a citizen man, even the foremost of them, has a foreign wife or mistress, the children are without honour“.

I love a reference I saw on lycianturkey.com, that the Lycians most resemble the Swiss, hard-working, wealthy peace-loving nation, but fierce if attacked. It does give you a sense of who they were.

The Lycians had their own language and one of the most exciting finds in this area of Turkey has been the trilingual stele from Letoon.  Each of three sides had inscriptions in Greek, Lycian and Aramaic.  It was the Rosetta stone for the Lycian language, allowing scholars to interpret the Lycian inscriptions.  It also shows that Lycia was a melting pot of merchants and traders, a cross-road between East and West.

As to what important message was carved into a monument like this? They were creating an altar and setting up a new cult to the mythological King Kaunos and Artemis and who the new administrator was.  You thought I was going say taxes, didn’t you?

The angel is appropriate as my cousin Carol De Angelo is celebrating her Golden Jubilee as a Sister of Charity. Our love and congratulations to you, Carol.

Happy birthday to Nancy O’Brien, Sean Waters and Blake Johnson. Hope it is a good day for everyone.

 

The dreadful heat pushed us into port and the wonderful thought of an air conditioned room.  No one had slept well for about three nights, but Fethiye promised to bring us bliss: air conditioning, cool drinks and a lovely pool with shade umbrellas.

On Tuesday, our energy recovered, we decided to  take a taxi to see more Lycian tombs. We saw an air conditioned cab and he took us up the hill to see first the castle, a very ruined site that may have been used by the Crusaders and then up to the Lycian Tombs. The tombs are at the high point of any given towns so the souls have an easy journey to the heavens.

The biggest tomb belonged to the once rich or famous Amyntas or Aminthas, because there was an inscription to identity him. This tomb is circa 4th century BC and is carved from the local rock in the shape of a temple portico. It is about the equivalent of 6 or 7 flights of stairs to reach the tomb, which is intact except for damage mainly caused by rain seepage and graffiti.

Then we went to the Fethiye Tuesday markets, vibrant with food, grains, spices and  cheese. The stall holders are men and woman with the gift of chat and cheek. They are entertainment which has stayed the course of time.

There is also a market full of clothing and hand bags, mainly fakes. But to Blue and James, the most important market was the fish market.  Fethiye has an interesting take on seafood.  You go to the bustling fish, fruit and vegetable market and purchase the seafood of your choice then go to the nearby restaurants for them to cook the fish in consultation with your preferred method. Talk about expert advice, they will even go with you to purchase the fish.

This is not the place to come for a quiet evening, no romance here.  The noise levels are stratospheric, the TV soccer is playing over the head of the Anatolian musicians.  It is a long time between courses but that is ok because we are able to speak to the Turkish friends on the next table.  In fact, despite Ivan’s best advice, they talked the poor Aussie innocents into trying Raki.  Shot for shot, laugh for laugh, we had made new friends. Sherefe!

 

 

We left the gorgeous D Marin in Gocek, after a lovely dinner at The Breezes, which ended with Rene begging a young woman to model one of Nat’s gorgeous evening vests. You will see a photo of the vest later. All of you with children know that as parents, godparents or aunts & uncles, we will nurture our young charges and help further their careers and creative endeavors, but not many do as much to assist as Rene does to help Nat. This includes taking an impossibly small sample vest around the world, talk James and Blue into sailing close to glamorous gulets, super yachts and modern ribs for fashion shots.  She also accosts young woman in restaurants, who are so small they might actually be fairies or elves, to try on said glamorous top.

Back to all the bays, we left Gocek to go to the beautiful area called 12 Islands en route to Fethiye. There is Ruin Bay, Tomb Bay, Wall Bay with the lovely Wall Bay cafe, 22 Fathom Cove and Deep Bay, which had lovely moorings, and Cleopatra’s Beach with Baths.

Having shopped at the wonderful Gourmet Garage, we had a rib eye roast and lamb cutlets to barbecue so we were off to bays so deep, we could only just set an anchor and then tie our sterns to the shore. In Deep Bay, on moorings, we could  open the swimming platform and jump in every 30 minutes or so because the temperatures were 40 plus. You can’t barbecue until after 8PM, because the wasps love meat.  We have found a solution: take Turkish coffee and set it alight in a small ashtray or tin can and the acrid smoke sends most of the wasps away.  For the one or two that linger, we use the Malcolm Levy approach and employ the electrified tennis racquet.

We stayed one night on the pontoon at Wall Bay Cafe, which had Anatolian musicians and a beautiful outlook under the pine trees and stars.  The food was lovely and simple, there was a cooling breeze and yachts and gulets with lights on shining all around Wall Bay and the nearby bays.

The heat has been dramatic, we have tried sleeping in the cockpit and on floors. We think we will make our way to Fethiye and a nice hotel with a pool and air conditioning.

A few people have asked what we do with Richard, if he starts stressing too much. We don’t want you to worry, we take Richard out to buy Turkish cotton shirts. Rene and I don’t mind because the shops are air conditioned and Blue now has quite a collection. Still we have a naughty corner, if he gets too out of control.