Ephesus - Ancient Ruins in Turkey

Good morning. It's 8 a.m and we are walking to the ancient city of Ephesus. Let's go have a look. Yeah we've really been looking forward to seeing this so we're excited to go and have a look. So the site of Ephesus is about a 35 to 40 minute walk from our hotel but the walk looks adorable and absolutely picturesque so we'll try and show you some of that as well. Angela and I decided to walk this this morning because we're old and chubby and we could use the exercise. This looks a little ominous as we're kind of walking through here. Step to the side so you can kind of see what's back behind us and then that's what we're getting ready to walk into right now. It's a tiny little narrow pathway. It's full of water and mud everywhere. If a car comes we're kind of screwed. We're probably gonna get run over. I'm trying to look at the positive here and imagine myself in ancient Greek times. It's helping. I am just loving this pathway on the way here. We've passed fig groves, citrus groves, olive trees. It's just so much more atmospheric I bet than taking a tour bus here would be. You know you're getting close to the ancient city of Ephesus when you start to see all the souvenir stands. So we've just paid the entrance fee to get in. This is amazing. Just as you start to look around behind us we've just walked through the gates and this is pretty cool. Behind us are where the archaeologists are storing all of like the texts they can find and if you can peek through here you just see tablet after tablet after tablet filled with writing which they say are death sentences, your rights as a Greek etc etc and then there's so much writing here that these tablets are just kind of strewn about the outside of the storage area too. It's so amazing. We're standing right now down what would have been one of the main roads in the ancient city of Ephesus. One thing we highly recommend is to get here early. There is literally nobody here. It's all ours right now. This amphitheater and apparently this is only one of several that are on this site and apparently one of the smaller ones too. We're currently standing on what would have been the main road through the ancient city of Ephesus. We're going to walk down a little ways so we can show you the library of Celsus. We have just come inside the terrace houses. I'm going to back up a little bit. The entrance fee to get into the park in general is 120 lira. If you want to do terrace houses too you need to pay an additional 55 lira to come in here but we're kind of figuring that with everything we've seen so far this has got to be worth the 55 lira each to get in here. Yeah this is supposed to be like residential homes of wealthy citizens of Ephesus so we're looking forward to see how they lived. Behind us is the basilica area of a private home. Apparently the owner used to receive his guests in this area and I can see why. We're going to show you a close-up of what's here behind us right now and as somebody that's spent his entire life in the construction industry and has done a lot of stone work in my life what's completely mind-blowing to me is the stone that you see on the walls back behind me and we're going to show you a close-up of would have adorned the entire wall inside of here. It's just absolutely amazing to see what they were able to do with veneer work more than 2,000 years ago. We were debating whether or not we wanted to pay the additional 55 lira a piece to come and see this terrace house park. I think that we both found it insanely worth it like you got to see a lot of the flooring and the mosaics and whatnot just to get a sense for for how some of the people here in Ephesus lived and also one of the great parts is that they have put a roof over this so it will be preserved for for a long time it's it's a very cool experience. Yeah this place is very special it's an amazing place. Right behind me is the library of Celsus. Fun fact it was a library also it was built in the second century AD. It held over 12,000 scrolls and was once the third largest library in the Roman world. One of the most surprising things to me is just how huge this site is. We've been in here already about three hours and I don't even think we're close to done and Ephesus itself was such a huge city apparently at one point there was about a quarter of a million people who lived here. What you're seeing back behind me is the grand theater here in Ephesus and Angela is going to tell you more about that. This theater had been around for a long time they just kept adding to it and adding to it until it got to be the size that it is right now. Initially it was a theater for like dramatic performances for actual plays it was also used as an assembly area and eventually later on in its life was home to the gladiatorial games. Another one of the main roads here through Ephesus and it's just insane when you start looking at the ground what their road was marble slab after marble slab it's stunningly beautiful. I'm standing in front of the Church of Mary here in Ephesus. There is a legend that Ephesus was very close to the Virgin Mary as it's said that she came here with Saint John the Apostle after the death of Jesus and eventually came to live and die here. As you can see we're out amongst the gift shops again which means we have left the site. He spent about three to four hours in there and we think we made our way through it pretty slowly and got our chance to see everything. One thing is that we read is that you should enter through the north gate where we're at now and leave through the south because that way the trip through Ephesus is downhill. We started at the south gate and came to the north and we're quite sensitive to hills and we didn't even notice it so I don't think it would make a difference. 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