Would it kill someone to leave a comment?: Greek Isles Cruise Day 2 (June 20, 2015)

A beautiful sunny day, hot (90) but breezy (mostly).

We arrived in Turkey in the morning. It is not a place I should be alone, ever. The merchants are very aggressive and you buy things solely to get them to leave you alone, but then they don't. 10 Euro for 1.5 ounces of sunscreen, you tell them it's ridiculous, but they counter with "SPF 50, very strong."

Karen is still not feeling well, and she was in Ephesus last year, so she stayed on the boat, giving strict instructions, "Don't let aunt sher buy anything!"

At Ephesus I was disappointed to learn that most of the statuary was fake, the real stuff is in London at the British museum. My favorite thing though, the library, was legit, so that made me happy. And the amphitheater where Eric at the top could hear what I said in a normal speaking voice at the bottom. (Not even "Holthouse" normal, where it's loud because we're all deaf, but actual normal normal.)

boots on the ground in Turkey!

Pretty port.

Yes, Genuine Fake Watches, this is also where you get sunscreen for 8 euro an ounce.

for that price it better come with a fine young stud to slather it on for me... and reapply later. you have to reapply. often actually.

Map (duh)

Sage getting a little shade.

John and Eric discussing... philosophy? religion? ancient architecture?

(probably girls)

there were lots of cats here.

HUGE base for something... maybe a statue, maybe just a column...

Ephesus is an active archaeological site.

Devon made sure we all stayed together and got on the right bus!

Ashley and Kirsten

Ashley and Kirsten (I had to post a nice one too)

see the cat in the shadow?

The library.

Cody, Jaxon, Eric, Kirsten and Benny

getting a little better at the selfie... and yes, i'm wearing 2 pairs of glasses.

This is the amphitheater with the crazy acoustics.

I didn't climb to the top myself (I was good, Mom!), I made Eric take my camera up.

That's me at the bottom in the orange, on the left.

I'm standing where Paul stood. Crazy to think about.

the view

just above center is Eric in the black shirt at khaki shorts

Matthew is 2 over in the pink, takes after his Uncle Mike.

"it was PEACH!
it was the 80's!"

So on the way out, I stopped to use the restroom, then I saw a girl selling fresh squeezed orange juice which sounded just heavenly. I was still inside the gates (this stuff ain't free folks). So this kid comes over, leans over the gate and starts yelling to me that he'll sell me OJ for a buck cheaper. I tried to be polite, so I said I already paid, and he told me to get my money back. The poor girl is waiting to give me my money back, but I told her to keep it and make me my drink. SHEESH.

SO after Ephesus, we went to a place where they gave us a demonstration on how turkish rugs are made. and of course we also got the hard sell. I would have loved to have bought one, but even the 18" square "rug" was 90 euro. And there weren't any I loved. I loved the 3-5 THOUSAND dollar rugs. of course. Got of there unscathed, but just barely.

so Mediterranean

yarn being dyed.

These are silkworm cocoons, they're boiling. the lady uses that broomish thing to catch threads, then she feeds them into the spinning wheel.

sorry it's blurry... but that's the spinning wheel.

so these ladies tie every single piece of yard into double knots. when they finish a few rows, they trim them off with scissors.

This guy was pretty awesome... and the guy behind him, there were 4 of them, and as this dude talked, the other dudes just kept laying out carpet after carpet after carpet. It was impressive.

So after this we climbed back onto bus 18 and headed back into Kusadasi where we had a little free time before we had to be back on board the boat. Free time=shopping. But geeze, just try to walk away from a turkish sales guy. seriously. I did however, finally find my turkish towel. (These people make extraordinary terry cloth.) After our shopping time, we got back on the boat and set sail for Patmos.

Marc, who never EVER wears a watch, buying his Rolex... or is that rollecks? haha

Matthew after we escaped the bazaar.

I really wanted a ride in one of these.

i thought this plant was so cool.

Lunch on the boat. Matthew, Cody, Erin, Eric, Kirsten, Me, Marc.

Goodbye Turkey!

I think they were jazzercising or something.

After seeing this, I decided it was nap time. We arrived in Patmos around 4:15pm. We did not book any excursions so we had to wait FOREVER to get off the boat. Patmos doesn't have a pier, so we were being offloaded by tenders and one had mechanical issues and blah blah blah.

Karen was feeling a little better so she came along. Most of our group went up the hill on foot, Karen, Marc and I decided to take a cab. You'd think that would be easy enough, but you'd be wrong. After waiting and blah blah blah, a girl came up to us and said she found a bus that would take us up for 1.5 euro each if she could get 15 people together. the cab dispatcher about had a coronary when we walked away, but we'd been waiting for like 20 minutes while he hemmed and hawed and whatnot.

So, at the top of the hill was the cave of the apocolypse, also known as the grotto, it is supposedly where the Apostle John hid out and wrote the book of Revelations.

We walked down the hill with the rest of our gang, on a closed trail. I had visions of Greek prisons... no i didn't. Anyway, Karen and I shopped a little, then we got back onto a tender and back onto the boat. The next morning was our stop on Crete where no one was getting off the boat, so this was our disco night since we got to sleep in. Unfortunately, this disco was lame. We tried to have fun, but we all just went to bed.