Kusadasi & Ephesus

We stayed about 5 nights in the coastal tourist town of Kusadasi and from there took a day trip to the ancient city of Ephesus.

Kusadasi

Kusadasi is a major tourist town on the coast. The old town / main town center is pretty small but the modern city spreads out quite a way. Unfortunately Kusadasi has lost a lot of its charm due to mass tourism and there wasn’t much left of the old town anymore. One shop keeper told me that 20 years ago it was a lot like Fethiye, but once the cruise ships started coming, a lot of Turks sold up and left.

Here are some photos of Kusadasi:

We did have one very exciting incident that happened to me and the kids in Kusadasi. We were walking about 2 blocks from our apartment where there is a small park with some exercise equipment, a garden, some bushes and benches. As we were approaching it on the other side of the street, a female wild boar suddenly came out of the bushes in the park and started chasing us! I saw that there was another adult boar there and 4 babies. K started screaming and we all started running back up the street the way we came. I was too busy running to get any photos! 😂 Luckily a guy on a motocycle came past and managed to chase to boar back into the park where he called someone (presumeably wildlife services?).

Ephesus

The reason so many tourists and cruise ships come to Kusadasi is to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. According to the information at the site, Ephesus used to be the second largest Roman city after Rome. It was originally a Greek city and was established in the 10th century BC. The city is now inland, but the sea used to come to the city and was a harbour. What’s amazing is that they’ve only uncovered about 10% of this city!! The other 90% is still underground across the hills. When you look at the hills in the distance, you can see various walls and structures here and there. It really must have been enormous and it certainly has one of the largest ampitheatres I’ve ever seen – 3 stories! In fact, there were 2 ampitheatres – one large one for entertainment and one smaller one (only 2 stories) in the government section of the city for government meetings and smaller gatherings.