Pizza and Ruins

Since the last post, we spent a few days in Selcuk (closest town to Ephesus) and the surrounding area enjoying all of the ruins and eating good food.  The highlights of our time in Selcuk were:

 - A great quote from Steph as she was drifting off to sleep, "They obviously have pineapples, they have pine trees..."
 - Eating Turkish pizza that was extremely cheap (7 Turkish Lira for 2 = about $4.50).  The pizza didn't have a tomato sauce, it used minced meat and onion for the base and had either egg or cheese as toppings.  YUM!!
 - Steph and I snuck through a hole in a fence in order to get a closer look at the Ayasuluk Castle, at the center of which is believed to be the place that John wrote his gospel.  The castle was closed for further excavation, but we couldn't resist getting a closer look.  The gates to the castle locked, so there was no getting inside unless we wanted to scale the walls.  So, we scaled the wall...just kidding.
 - We paid to enter the church built by Justinian (a Roman Emperor) as a memorial for John in the 6th century AD.  The church has been reduced to ruins, however you can still understand the general layout.  As we were walking around inside the ruins, we ran into a tourist group from the U.S. and a preacher was giving a sermon so we stopped and listened to him finish.
 - One day we walked to Ephesus which is a couple miles from Selcuk and enjoyed the ruins.  The great theater is well preserved along with a lot of other Ephesus sites.  We were amazed at the size of Ephesus, which was the second largest city of the Roman Empire for a long time and capital of Asia Minor.
 - On our walk back to Selcuk from Ephesus we stopped at the Cave of the Seven Sleepers.  The story is that seven Christians from Ephesus were afraid of persecution from the Romans and hid away in a cave outside of the city.  They fell asleep inside the cave and woke up 200 years later to find that the city was now largely Christian.  The people then thought the sleepers were holy so a church was built on the site and hundreds of people were buried there.
 - We also toured a village called Sirince that is in the mountains about 9km east of Selcuk and is known for wine making.  We had a great time touring the village, so good in fact that we thought we had missed our bus back to town.  We started walking down the windy mountain road when a mini-bus stopped and picked us up.
 - The next site, The House of Virgin Mary, the transportation to which was deemed to be taxi only.  The taxi drivers took full advantage of this and charged ridiculous amounts for the ride up the mountain to see the house.  Steph and I didn't appreciate that and decided to hike up to see it.  It was about 9km southwest of Selcuk up the mountian to the house and thankfully a car full of tourists stopped and picked us up about 3/4 into the hike.  The primary reason the house is believed to be Mary's is that a nun had a vision of the area where the house was found.  Steph, unsurprisingly, believed she felt the presence of Mary.  I was not convinced.  Afterwards we still wanted some exercise, so we walked the 9 km back down the mountain.

After a miserable 12 hour overnight bus ride, we arrived in Goreme which is the heart of the Cappadocia region in Turkey.  It took some charming, but finally I convinced Steph that the best way to tour the region would be for us to rent a motorcycle.  We saw fairy chimneys, churches cut out of hillsides, Goreme National Park, and beautiful mountain scenery.  We had a great time touring Cappadocia on the motorcycle, until the afternoon when it got bitterly cold.  After enough complaints from Steph, we rode back into town feeling and looking like Harry and Lloyd on the scooter in Dumb and Dumber.

The next place we were planning to visit was Mt. Nemrut, however we're frozen and it's only colder there.  Seeking warmth, we're leaving Goreme tonight and are heading to Olympos, Turkey on the Mediterranean coast.  We plan to relax there for a few days before heading back to Istanbul to get our visas for India.

We haven't found a way to upload pictures to the computer yet (we didn't bring our camera's computer cord), but as soon as we do we'll post some of our pics.

We hope this finds you well!