We next drove to Kusadasi for our next night’s hotel.  We stayed at the Hotel Marina Suites, which had a luxurious spa that none of us in our photo tour used.  We had noticed that German was a common language on many signs in the ruins, and we had often been spoken to first in German by vendors.  Here was our first real understanding why.  Germans showed up in large bus loads, 60 at a time, and overwhelmed the hotel.  We six American photographer tourists were surrounded and swallowed up in the sea of Germans arriving just behind us.

The road to this town were like many we experienced in our tour around Western Turkey — paved, but very rough.  Some of the roughness appeared to be intentional, as grooving to reduce slipping in snowy or wet weather, much like we have near Lake Tahoe, in California.  Some appeared to just be poor design, or poor workmanship, or wear & tear?  In any case, it made reading or working on computer (for photo editing) difficult on the longer bus legs.

We visited the ancient ruins of Ephesus twice — once for sundown and the next morning for sunrise.  Ephesus is an ancient Greek city built in the 10th century BC, and is considered the best preserved ancient ruin in Asia Minor. Above are some of the columns and statues that can be seen today.

Here we see the ancient library and the great amphitheater, as well as Mehmet (our tour guide) flanked by two fellow photographer tourists looking down at the scene (center-top). In modern times, many famous musicians have performed in this amphitheater, including Joan Baez, Elton John, Sting, Ray Charles, and Julio Iglesias.

Some of the ancient city is still being uncovered and restored.  One new area is the Terrace Houses, which comprise a section of homes covered by an awning, with archaeologists actively working as we wandered through the rooms.  Each section of this restoration is being financed by a different group in various countries.