It’s a chilly, cloudy day in Kusadasi. It’s supposed to rain, but we’re prepared. We’re off the ship with the first wave, and walked through the gauntlet of tours in the pier shopping area – then headed around the marina a few blocks to Budget. The Budget guys actually called and asked if we wanted to be picked up from the port. Very nice – that’s never happened before! But it was an easy walk, and we made it just fine.
Took forever to do the paperwork for the car, and we ended up taking an extra 7E worth of insurance – just because! We told the agent we were going to Priene, and he was sort of impressed. Guess it’s a little known tourist destination, at least compared to Ephesus and the Virgin Mary house. He gave us directions, (which we sort of had), a map and then he gave us a gift (seriously!) – a nice pad and even nicer pen. These rental guys have been great!
So off we go – and instead of listening to the rental guy – we listen to Alice (we’ve had this problem in Piraeus if you’ll recall) – but this time we should have listened to the rental guy. There are 2 ways to get to the “highway” to get to the 3 sites we want to visit south of Kusadasi – the rental guy way and the Alice way. I had even plotted it out on the map with the rental guy, so I knew both ways. Ok – so we miss the turn from the rental guy, but Alice had us going straight anyway. No problem. Except, there’s a new freeway through Kusadasi (which of course Alice doesn’t know because she’s getting up there in years and isn’t the most up to date GPS any longer) and the way we’ve taken to get to the road isn’t quite complete. We run into about 300 yards of unfinished, pothole ridden, water logged sand and dirt where the entrance to the road should be. Ed expertly soldiers his way through the mess with our little Toyota Yaris and we finally get back on the macadam. Phew. That was a little bit tense!
The rest of the ride if flawless – Alice doesn’t know the cities we are going to, but the signage is excellent, so we’re not concerned. There are 3 ancient sites: Priene, Miletus and Didyma. Didyma is the furthest, so we elect to go there first and then back track via the others to get back to Kusadasi. The drive takes a little over an hour, through populated, commercial areas and into rugged countryside with jagged mountains and hills.
The roads we are on, when in towns, resemble a very commercial route 1 in the states. The most interesting thing is that there are gas stations every few kilometers. Tons and tons of gas stations. We can’t figure out how they all stay in business! We ride through countryside that is flooded – or maybe these are rice fields? Hmmm.. we can’t really tell, but we know there has been a lot of rain here.
We finally make the turn for Didim, a coastal resort town that is much larger than we expected. Here we are looking for Didyma and the Temple of Apollo. We turn up some little roads, following the signs, and we can see it, but then we miss it. Sigh. Alice actually pulls through and sends us back around until we are at the front entrance. Wow! There’s nobody here but us and this is stunning. These huge columns towering over a little old town. This is amazing!
This is the Temple of Apollo, as grand a scale as the Parthenon – it’s simple mind boggling. The temple was started in 300BC, under construction for 5 centuries, but never completed. Only 72 of the original 122 columns were completed, and some never had their final ornamental designs finished. It was one of the largest temples of the ancient world. There are Medusa head figures that would have been placed on the frieze at the top of the temple.
And everywhere around are scattered remnants of the temple. The detail is absolutely stunning. This is marble people! And created thousands of years ago. How did they do this???? It gives you goose bumps to be standing in the middle of all this archeological wonder!
And better still, we get to climb up in the Temple and walk around the pedestals and columns. Really!
In the back of the temple is a large roofed room and walls that enclosed a wide open courtyard. to get to the room and the courtyard are corridors (as well as a network of underground corridors) used by temple priests. These corridor walls throw voices into echoes, which at the time the priests interpreted. There are actually 3 other people here, and they are singing in the corridor that leads to the courtyard – it does amplify and make their voices sound rather ghostly!
The holy spring was found in the courtyard area and there was a protective building and fountain house at some point. The walls that can be seen today are only one-third the original height. Amazing!
Here is a great over head view of the entire site.
Exploring this site is great – just the two of us – and Sunny – wandering all through the “debris” fields of ancient Roman and Grecian archeology. Stunning.
We’re ready to head down the road – but first – a stop in the café across the street for a real Turkish coffee (for Ed) and water for me (of course!). Only 5 TL – that’s like $2US. Get outta here!
So, with the driver fully caffeinated, we point our trusty Yaris North, and head back up the country roads and lanes to Miletus – the next stop on our archeological site tour.
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