24 July 2001 Kusadasi and Ephesus

Between the late night and the vast dinner, we slept in by necessity, waking only to pick up the prints from the resume shots. These did rather well at making me look something resembling professorial.

Kusadasi (which Billy Vader insisted on calling "Kiss-a-tushy") is an old port town in Turkey, gateway to several extremely religious sites. Our tour took us to several of these.

The most powerful was the smallest. According to scripture, after the crucifixion, John the Evangelist rushed Jesus' mother Mary out of Jerusalem to safety near Ephesus. Her humble home still stands as a shrine, high on a hill protected from, well, everyone. It's a simple dwelling, with a kitchen and common room. One passes through, shepherded by sisters of a local order and bade to cover shoulders and knees out of respect with shawls they provide. Though the house is small and very crowded it is unspeakably powerful, carrying a presence unlike anywhere else I've been. Jen felt her Grandmother Caroline's presence, a devout Catholic and the recently departed matriarch of the family.

We saw the ancient basilica of St. John, now a foundation and a few walls, the temple having been destroyed by earthquake. The temple had been built in the shape of the cross, much like the cathedrals we visited in England. The bones of St. John himself had rested there until the Crusades, when they were hauled off. It was an interesting experience to visit a country that found itself on the wrong end of King Richard's conquests. After Mary's home, Jen could not help but find the basilica's ruins to be "not religious enough." Our experience of Turkish vendors began here. One such weathered codger sidled up, holding his palm close to his chest. His eyes dart sideways and he breathes, awestruck: "Old coin?" "Um, nope." Sighing: "Oh my God, no old coin."

Above all, we landed in Kusadasi to visit the ancient city of Ephesus (as in 'St. Paul's

The Library of Celsus, hold the lions.

Even stepping off of the bus, Jen literally had to dodge a man attempting to polish her sneakers. Needless to say, we weren't still suffering from that shopping bug contracted in Venice when we reached the portside bazaar. This, like the perfumery in Eze, was another 'value added' stop for the tour: a demonstration of the legendary Turkish carpet making. Jen and I made a solemn pact that we would not, absolutely not, actually buy a carpet in Turkey. In the "Bazaar 54," the atmosphere was decidedly more nonchalant than at Ephesus. They served apple tea and harder drinks, and showed why a handmade rug is superior to, say, the $100 job you see at your neighborhood Home Depot. Handmades aren't as stiff, nor do they fall apart when you pull on the threads. They are made by individual knots on different kinds of looms: wool, cotton or silk. You can tell which is which by looking at the thickness of the fringe. Thick wool allows for less knots; finer cotton or finer still, silk, offers a higher DPI. Silk on silk rugs are the most expensive because they have a ridiculous number of knots in a square inch, allowing for very fine resolution and more intricate patterns. They showed us rug after rug, including cotton loomed "Tree of Life" patterns, fiery red with kaleidoscopic birds in the branches. Our will power, our determination not to spend a thousand bucks won out. We haggled. It looks great in the living room.

A turn through the "Oriental Bazaar" was another experience. Some stores sport "Princess Recommended" stickers, assuring that they won't try to gouge you quite so much as their neighbors, or at least will be awfully polite about it.

The matriarch of one such store shoved her daughter toward the door to assist me the moment I crossed the threshold. Jen decided that this would be a good warm-up for the legendary chaos of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, though she was awfully cute and we did spend rather too much. "OK, my turn now! You look at leather jacket?" "No, thanks!" "Awww, why not?!"

Back on board, we spent a lovely, long evening with Stuart and Cheryl. Jen's flight attendant in from JFK had given her a bottle of champagne (no, I did not ask), and we brought it with us to the Greek-themed dinner, then recessed to the bar for real drinks. The evening's cabaret, "Words and Music" was a nice blend of American show tunes by Porter, Styne, Rodgers, Bernstein (though picking Schoenberg of "Les Miz" over Irving Berlin or Sondheim will prevent it from securing the Time-Life award for definitiveness.) We realized at that point that these folks could easily remain friends, and Stuart kindly gave me a business card.

A few casual strokes with a washcloth before bed swiftly gave me dependable notice that I had incinerated my neck in the heat of the day, as Jen had done her shoulder.

Aloe. Bed.