Libby Duffy: In the Footsteps of the Apostle Paul and John the Evangelist

Wow. If overwhelmed was the word of yesterday, today’s word is Awe. This afternoon, we docked in Kusadasi, a port town in Turkey and took the cruise line’s expedition to the ancient city of Ephesus, which was first settled nearly 4000 years ago.

(us prior to disembarking in Turkey)

Our tour guide, George, is a history teacher in a nearby city during the school year and leads the tours of the excavations during the three summer months.

(George, our tour guide, who sang "follow the yellow umbrella!" to us)

It was HOT – around 102 or so, but not the 125 that they had two weeks ago, thank goodness. George was fantastic, as he was, of course, knowledgeable about what we were seeing, but also because he could answer many questions and did a great job of herding all of us like a group of high school students! We disembarked to find our first very aggressive vendors hawking their wares, but we just paid 50c and gained access to the restroom, and waited for the tour to begin. The pashminas were very beautiful, but as we are watching our pennies, we didn’t purchase one.

As we entered the ancient city, we could see pieces and parts of ancient buildings on the ground all around us. Ephesus has a complicated history, the area has been inhabited for several thousand years as a city, and therefore the architecture is not only of several different periods, but several different styles, as different societies established themselves there.

The Apostle Paul lived here in Ephesus for a period of 5 years trying to teach the new religion from his workshop located there, and St. John spent the last years of his life here, also writing part of the New Testament here. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is, of course, famous as one of the books of the Bible.

Apparently, the silversmiths in Ephesus did not like Paul, as he preached against the pagan religion and the leaving of icons and statues for the goddess Diana, whose temple was located right outside of the city, was what created the demand for their skills. They lost sales if people converted to Christianity and therefore, Paul was not popular.

Incindentally, the temple was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. The smiths encouraged Paul to leave, in part by imprisonment, (which would probably work for me!) and he did move on to another area of Turkey, but wrote the Letter to the Ephesians after he had moved away.

To literally walk along the same marble streets that both the Apostle Paul and St. John had walked upon was truly amazing.

(the marble road)

The library has been assembled from many little pieces and parts and is breathtaking.

(Holle in front of the Library)

Following our tour, we were set upon by vendors outside the gate and went straight to our tour bus to avoid pursuit. We had intended to spend some time shopping in the Bazaar in Turkey, but the attacking merchants were like nothing we had ever seen, and since we were not looking to purchase leather, furs or gold, we gave up, had some gelato and returned to the ship.

You can only be called beautiful by so many men before it gets a little boring ;-) Our favorite ploy was “are you sisters?” We kept walking and one of the other shopkeepers said “no, they are BROTHERS, dummy.” Ah, well, it must work for them or they wouldn’t try it, but we found nothing that we were looking for and decided some air conditioning was more appealing.