Izmir was the last stop in Turkey, and in our European trip. The primary objective of being in Izmir was because it is close to Ephesus, the most important Archeological site in this part of the world. Tourists generally go to a town called Selçuk directly from Izmir airport, which is where Ephesus is located. Alternatively, they come to Kusadasi a city South of Ephesus by a cruise ship and then are herded there. I decide on a third option. We would stay in the city of Izmir, which by the way is the third largest in Turkey, and make a day trip to the Archeological site.
It turned out to be an interesting decision. One the one hand, we had to spend time and effort to find our way to Ephesus using public transportation, because we did not want to take a tour. Another problem was that Pamukkale, another place we were thinking about visiting, now became quite far. It is about three and half hours by train from Selçuk, each way, but from Izmir, it is five hours. So we had to drop that plan.
On the other hand, we got to live in a non-touristic environment. Izmir has a history of Roman occupation and it has an Agora (a market place), which is very good. There was practically no one besides us around when we went there. No tour groups and no selfie takers.
In Izmir, it seemed that almost no one spoke English, which gave us a taste of what real Turkey is like, not the one existing for travellers, like Cappadocia. Even our hotel receptionist spoke practically no English. When we were asking her about how to get to Ephesus, she almost booked us a taxi. No one bothered us as we walked down the streets of its bazars, as they would in Istanbul or Cappadocia. The restaurants were meant for Turkish people, not tourists. Translation: good food at reasonable prices.
Oh, yes. Ephesus. From the comments made by folks on Trip Advisor and such, we found out that we could take a train from a station five minutes walk from our hotel. That train would take us to Selçuk station. Its bus station is only eight-minute walk from the station, and there are private minibuses you can take to the gates of Ephesus. The entire journey would cost us 21 Turkish Lira (less than $4) for both of us, round trip.
Ephesus is indeed wonderful. Not only it is a very large ancient Roman city, it is also very well preserved. There is a terraced house with seven apartments, all under a protective enclosure, which is simply out of this world. Roman aristocrats used to live there. There is a huge library, enormous theater, ceremonial gates, Agoras (market places), temples and even a communal toilet. This used to be the capital of Roman Empire in Anatolia and some 250,000 people lived there at its peak during first century BC. Only 20% of the place has been dug out, the rest remains for discovered. It is absolutely worth a visit.
Coming back to Izmir, we put our slow-travel mode in full force. One of the “spare” days we had, we went to the port and took a ferry to a place called Bostanli, without knowing anything about it. It was a pleasant little place where there is a Democracy Park and a big statue of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. Then we ate in a seaside restaurant, where they only had a Turkish menu and only one person spoke broken English. There were no tourists except for us, so the manger, an Azerbaijani, came to greet us.
We spent the last day visiting the Museum of Archeology in Izmir. This turned out to be a great museum, not only in terms of what is displayed but how well everything is explained. And guess what? There was nobody else around except the two of us, a bored ticket issuer, and two women at the information counter with nothing to do except chat with each other. We had never encountered such a situation in all our travels.
In the evening, there was some sort of music program on the promenade along the ocean to celebrate the Republic Day. The security was very tight, which was not surprising given that Turkey was waging war against the Kurds. The entire oceanfront was cordoned off with hundreds of officers, most with automatic weapons. To enter the restricted area, one had to go through a search. Although we were not particularly concerned about safety, we decide that the late night event was not worth attending. We had to catch a flight early next morning.
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