Turkish Delights

On Saturday and Sunday (August 20 and 21), we went to Turkey, which is one of the coolest places I've ever been. Saturday we were in Kusadasi, which is close to Ephesus, where we spent most of our day. Holy awesome ruins. Turkey has freaking fantastic food, with all the goodness of Mediterranean cuisine mixed with a lot of spicy love from the Middle East. And everything was super cheap. Glorious country.

We started out on Saturday at the Church of the Virgin Mary, the place that Catholicism claims housed Mary in her final years. I personally have been to at least 3 different Catholic churches that Catholicism makes the same claim with, which leads me to believe that Catholicism sometimes get confused.

Queueing to see the Church of the Virgin Mary.

The Wailing Wall of Christendom.

Next stop: Ephesus, a brilliant city of Roman ruins with so much history that our heads were spinning, in a good, educational way.

Nike the winged goddess of victory.

An ancient whore house. No kidding. That's really what archeologists think it was.

Public toilets.

The library.

Amphitheater.

Katie taught us how to say WOW like this.

Antony and Cleopatra once came through Ephesus and apparently it was a really big deal for all the townspeople so today they put on a spiffy little production for the tourists in commemoration. Video to follow. Get excited.

This is Butter Kitten, a woman from our cruise that we thus dubbed because of her classic tat. For the duration of the cruise, she was clad so that this lovely was on display and we were so glad because it made us smile every time we saw here. If I were to ever get a tattoo, it would be a butter kitten, in memory of Butter Kitten.

The greatest moment of David's young life: discovering that Magnum bars come in pistachio flavor.

This is a castle, the name of which I have forgotten, but I do remember that it contained the tomb of St. John...

...which leads me to believe further that Catholicism is sometimes confused.

And we came home that night to another Juan-made friend.

Turkey, Round 2.
This time we docked in Bodrum, where we hopped on a bus to venture into Turkey's nether-regions with a bunch of other chatty Kathy tourists who thought the village was just so quaint and took pictures of every cow and chicken, etc., in town.

Inside the village mosque.

Old woman weaving a rug.

Here we had yet another rug demonstration. This time David and I gave in and purchased the one that is currently lying on our living room floor :).

After stopping at a flea market to buy Turkish delight and something wrapped in phyllo dough, we made our last stop. And we don't have pictures, but it was epic.
We went to the Turkish Bath.
And after hours of steaming and sweating on slabs of marble, being dunked in an icy jacuzzi, steaming, dunking, steaming, dunking, being exfoliated to within an inch of my life by a large Turkish man, and receiving a bubble massage at the hand of a disgruntled Turkish woman in a toga-ish ensemble, I emerged feeling like a baby, possibly better than I've ever felt. It was amazing. If I lived in Turkey, I would go every day. Maybe. So I think we'll probably move to Turkey.