Jetlogged: Day 4 of Turkey

Greetings,

I think I was most looking forward to this day of our trip--mostly because I was excited to go to Ephesus! And I was not disappointed :-)

Our first stop was the remains of the Basilica of Saint John, which was a church that marked the traditional spot of St. John's tomb (although, to the LDS observer, John was translated and so it seems unlikely that this was his tomb ;-] )

This is the traditional spot where St. John is buried

grave marker

the ruins of the Basilica were beautiful! I loved walking around and taking pictures all over :-)

and here is a series of the pictures I snapped here...

the photo on the right is of a baptismal font

Next, we headed to Ephesus, which is best known as the city Paul wrote to in his Epistle to the Ephesians (and it is mentioned several other places in the New Testament)... Ephesus was one of the places where Christianity began after the death of Christ.

close up of some stone carving work on our way into Ephesus

Necip showing us a pillar that would have marked the entrance to a hospital--the symbol on the pillar is still the worldwide symbol for medicine

This is the statue of the goddess Nike--notice her wings kindof look like swooshes--this is what the brand Nike is based on :-)

Sierra repping a (possibly knockoff) Nike T :-)

The main road in Ephesus--check out all those tourists :-)

Hanging out in the main street of Ephesus

This is the earliest record of an advisement in the world-- It has a heart, a left foot, a woman, and money. Basically it means "If you are looking for love and you have money, there are women off to your left" which refers to the Brothel down the road...

Sawyer, Sister Bench, and Kara are posing in front of the location of the Brothel in Ephesus, which is pretty interesting...

ancient toilets!

check out those (marble) toilets! Pretty nice! ;-)

In the theater at Ephesus

Reading about the theater in Ephesus while sitting in the theater in Ephesus (see Acts 19)

That cool moment when you are in the exact spot where the picture in your bible was taken. (in the LDS version of the KJV there are several photos of key spots in the back, one of which is this exact shot of Ephesus).

another shot of the picture comparison...

In front of the Library at Ephesus

class photo in front of the library

and of course, I had to do a jumping picture...

I love libraries.

For lunch, we stopped at this little restaurant that is all authentic Turkish "home cooking" The people in the picture are the owners (I think it is a husband, wife, and the wife's mother). It was great!

After lunch, we went to Prienne, which was a Hellenized city

our class in front of the Temple of Athena

temple of Athena in Prienne

In the theater...

So Dr. and Sister Jackson took a picture at this spot (and the picture ended up in our field trip manual) when they were younger, so Mikkel and Kara posed for the same picture :-)

view from Prienne

I love Stratford's face in this!

hahaha- Stratford is my favorite :-)

in Prienne :-)

our bus had a little problem as we were leaving--the battery kindof exploded... So here we are waiting around for it to get fixed! (our bus driver was awesome and got it fixed and we were on our way in a pretty timely manner!)

Our hotel that night was on the beach (the Aegean Sea)...Too bad it was SO windy! (we couldn't open our eyes without getting sand in them)... we were on the beach long enough to snap a photo...