Ephesus and Patmos
Our cruise ship was in its port at Kusadasi when we woke up this morning. It took us awhile to actually get ready before going up on deck because the cabins are way too small; we were constantly tripping over each other and getting in each other’s way. It doesn’t help, also, that Kelvin is attached to Evelyn at the hip and is always in our room starting from sunrise even though it’s against the rules… arg…
Anyway, breakfast on the World Renaissance is pretty great but not quite at the same standards as the Caravel… no bacon… but still good! After eating we all got off the ship and got onto a bus, in which we were able to see some of Turkey’s beautiful countryside on the way to ancient Ephesus. We took a guided tour of the city, which was extremely interesting. The guide pointed out a possible location of the first Christian evangelism in Greece, in the theatre where Paul would have preached to the Ephesians. The whole place was so photogenic, I basically had my camera glued to my face.
After buying some small souvenirs in Ephesus we all headed back to Kusadasi where we were taken to place that produced silk (from the cocoons of silk worms—sick!) and also where a great many Turkish carpets were being hand-woven. They gave us tiny cups of apple tea, it was so good!
When the carpet tour was finished, we were set loose to do some shopping. I have to say it was a truly stressful and unnerving experience! We’d be walking down the center of the market and men would come out of their shops and compliment us profusely while physically dragging us towards their shops, despite our claims that we were broke and had no money. At the end, I was so exhausted and rather annoyed that I ran flat out to the nearby bus so as to avoid the three or four peddlers between me and my ride out of there!
Back on the cruise ship and on our way to Patmos, we had lunch and talked about our experiences with the crazy Turkish salesmen. Selby had a great story of a different nature—she was buying some jewelery from a Turkish lady when her son entered the room. In short, he was so hot that Selby whipped out her camera and took a picture of him, even though he was about fifteen years old at most and his mother was right there. I have to admit, the boy in the picture was pretty cute.
We arrived by tenders to Patmos in the afternoon, where we followed Mr. Korns up the mountain towards the monastery of St. John. Since I am very, very out of shape, I was getting pretty tired near the end. It was also quite humid on the island so everyone was hot by the time we got there. We met Rex, who was coming down, and she asked, ‘how did you guys get here, did you walk?’ Enraged by her tone, I wanted to say something like, ‘how do you think we got here?’ She just gave us a stupid half grin and said, ‘oh. I took a cab,’ flipped her hair and continued on. I was so steamed. Like you could have walked all this way up the mountain, smoking two and a half packs a day you stupid bi—
Right, moving on!
The monastery was so beautiful inside, and there were even monks and everything. On the way back we saw numerous stray animals and a building we thought might be a school.
Upon returning to the cruise ship, we found that someone had created a new nickname for Kelvin and Evelyn: Kevelyn! It is perfect since they are always together. Also, Alex reported another cute guy who worked in the cruise spa. After all of us had seen him, he was named, “hot spa boy”, or HSB for short.
Right now Kim’s feeling pretty sick and I’m getting rather nauseous presently from the ship’s intense swaying. Night!
