After two overnight buses, tours of Ephesus, the temple of Artemis, the house of the Virgin Mary, Pamukkale, Hierapolis, and numerous sites around Cappadocia, I'm exhaustively satisfied. Currently I am in the village of Goreme, smack dab in the middle of Turkey, and it has been a somewhat miserable experience. Yesterday, our tour guide took us through a 4-kilometer snow hike. All well and good, except a woman in our group was on crutches. Personally, I enjoy scrambling up boulders, ducking under fallen trees and crossing muddy streams, but with crutches? She was quite a good sport about it, but our tour guide soon had bigger worries when a head count showed one of us missing. Oopsy.
A few words concerning Alexander the Great. Upon entering Asia Minor, Alexander stopped at Troy to rest his men and procure the supposed shield of Achilles. After defeating a Persian army at the River Granicus, Alexander stormed down the Anatolian coast, besieging and/or liberating Sardes, Ephesus, Miletus and Halicarnassus, to name a few. Heading inland, he untied, or perhaps merely severed the legendary “Gordian knot”-verifying the prophecy that whoever undoes the knot will be ruler over all of Asia. He then marched south to Issus, a narrow strip of coastal land lying in Caria, where he met, and soundly defeated the army of Darius III. I'm disappointed to say that my main motivation behind this trip, following the path of Alexander and his army has gone largely unfulfilled in Turkey. After days of travel, transfers, sleeplessness and hunger, it proves difficult to go 200KM out of the way to see a site that while historically significant, harbors little in the way of eye pleasures. Hitchhiking is looking to be a more viable option everyday, but as it is currently 15 degrees here in Goreme, this will wait until warmer climes prevail.
Ephesus was lovely. A city inhabited since circa 6000 BC until its abandonment during the 15th century under the Ottoman Empire, Ephesus was the site of one of the wonder of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis. The apostle Paul was nearly stoned here after decrying the practice of idol worship, and Mary, the mother of Christ, is believed to have lived out her last days in the vicinity. The Temple of Artemis is now nothing more than a single column and strewn rubble. This monument must have been stunning, as it is said to have resembled the Parthenon, yet on a grander scale. Legend states it burned to the ground the very night Alexander was born.
