Where in the World are V and M?: The Ancient city of Ephesus

Our first trip to the Asian side of Turkey (Anatolia) was a city called Selcuk (pronounced "sell choock"). This is the city you stay in if you want to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. To get there we took one of Turkey's many overnight buses (If you want to travel in Turkey, the bus system is very efficient, and comfortable. They serve drinks and snacks throughout the trip.) The ride was about 9 hours. After one bus transfer we arrived in Selcuk and found our hostel, Urkmez Hotel. We grabbed breakfast and then checked into our room and napped for about 3 hours.

Since we only had one night in Selcuk we got up and started looking around the city. It was pretty small, about 36,000 people. You could see the whole downtown area fairly quickly. We walked up to the ruins of St John's Basilica, or the remains of it and after seeing the admission fee, we decided it wasn’t worth it. After avoiding the purchase of a so-called ancient coin we walked further into town. We found the Ephesus museum, which was closing within 30 minutes. Again, we decided it wasn't worth touring, though we did spend some time in their gift shop. After that we took a walk over to the Temple of Artemis. If you take a look at the Bible in the book of Acts, chapter 19 you'll see how the people of ancient Ephesus worshiped Artemis. Artemis is the Greek god of animals, hunting, new born babies and expectant mothers. There wasn't much left of the temple. The area has been ravaged by earthquakes over the years so the temple was destroyed. There was only one column left standing when we were there and another part of the temple was under water. After checking out the temple we went back to the city center to find some dinner.

These are the remains of St. John's Basilica in Selcuk.

Here is what's left of the Temple of Artemis on the edge of Selcuk.

The next day we took the 3km walk to the ruins of Ancient Ephesus. Thankfully it was a sunny day so it was a nice walk. When we finally arrived in Ephesus we found a dozen bus loads of tourists. We checked out the ancient city for about 4 hours. The city dates back to 6000 bc. It's been hit by earthquakes many times and rebuilt many times. We saw the ancient theater, the one talked about in Acts where the Christians were dragged to face the Ephesians shouting for two hours "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" We saw the agora (market place), library, temples, public toilets,and terrace houses. It was really cool to be in another place that I have read about in the Bible. To think that Paul, Timothy, Apollos, Aquila and Priscilla were here along with the other disciples. Then, at the same time, to think about what Jesus said about the church in Ephesus in Revalation 2.