2nd Stop: Kusadasi, Turkey

If I had to sum up our time in Turkey in one word it would be surprise. If I had any expectations for this place, they were totally surpassed I really fell in love with Turkey! This place was just gorgeous, better than I could have imagined. Within the country side of green-ness and the bluest ocean ever, we found our amazing tour guide/friend/one of the most interesting people I have ever met. His name was Savas. We literally just walked off the ship and found this guy waiting with a taxi-van type thing and he said he would show us the sites! We definitely got our money's worth and he was ecstatic to have 7 American girls as his passengers. We hopped in the cab and headed to Ephesus.

As we drove through the outskirts of the city, we asked Savas for information about what we were passing outside of our taxi-van. He began telling us all sorts of information about his country and about his life. If I have a life as interesting as his, I will be content. He has done it all and taxi-driving is really just a temporary thing, a way to make extra money and make contacts with tourists like us that will want to come back. He was awesome! He has been to 62 different countries, worked as a traveling journalist, trained dogs in Alaska, at one point was a skydiving instructor. He was living in America with his girlfriend until, and I quote, "She left me for a doctor, that WITCH!" Ha, anyways, now he runs the family hotel in Turkey, but he reassured us, only until his next great, big adventure comes calling and he will take off to another part of the world. The way he talked about life was so inspiring. "I just love life, I just love to live." It was refreshing to see a person so genuinely happy, he inspired each of us and really made me want to return to Turkey one day.

First on the list of places to visit was the house of Virgin Mary. Although it cannot be confirmed, it is relatively accepted that Mary spent her last days in a modest house tucked away in the hills outside of the city with St. John before going to heaven. It was amazing to watch all of these people standing in line chatting away, walk through the house and come out on the other side full of emotion and struck by something within the four walls. Even one of the girls in our group, a self-proclaimed Atheist, lit a candle and said a prayer. It was a very spiritual and intimate place.

Outside of the house was a wall of prayers where visitors had scrawled a prayer on a piece of paper and lodged it into the wire mesh. I felt like I was cheating if I looked at some of the prayers that past visitors had written, so I just scribbled my own on a receipt from my satchel and added it to the wall.

Up next, the ruins of Ephesus! These ruins are the only ones remaining in the world where visitors can freely frolick around without any red tape. This means we took an inappropriate amount of pictures on top of and inside of the columns. We even saw the third oldest library in the world, well the rocks that remain anyways. We also saw the amphitheater where there are still concerts. In fact, Elton John performed there recently. Savas told us the place was full of people, just standing on the century old ruins, trying to hear a little bit of him swooning, “Hold me closer tiny dancer, count the headlights on the highwayyy.” As I was singing this song in my head, I was snapped back to reality when one girl in our group yelled, "They're just rocks.” After uploading about 100 pictures from the day onto my computer, I have to agree, but it was still pretty cool.

After wandering through the ruins for about an hour, Savas picked us up on the other end. He took us to modern day Ephesus where he and his family run their hotel and introduced us to his family working that day. My friend Jordan said it was “My Big Fat Greek Wedding Style.”

"Nick, Nick, Nicky, Niko, he's single, how handsome no? Nicolai, Nick..."

We stood on the top of his hotel and Savas pointed out different sites around the city including St. John’s Basillica. We then headed back to the port. We exchanged information with Savas (we are now Facebook friends!) and we all vowed to come back one day. I really hope I do. After we bought ourselves a Turkish kebap for an late lunch, for those of you who are wondering, it was the same as a Spanish kebap, then we walked around Pigeon Island before heading back to the boat. Pigeon Island, with its gleaming image, sums up Kusadasi. It was the first place that we saw when we were pulling up the shore and I had to go there. In fact, the name Kusadasi actually means Bird Island because the island was the place of birds during the migrations. It is connected to main land by a bridge and is all sorts of greens and blues. We walked around the little island for awhile before heading back to the ship for some tapas.

That night we had our first official dinner with the waiters that would be taking care of us all week. Cesar was from Peru and Luis was from Colombia. They were so sweet, attentive and were thrilled to be taking care of the 7 American girls on board all week. Dinner, each night, was amazing with four courses every night, the 4th and last being an amazing assortment of desserts. I stole this from my friend Jordan because it really sums up our dinner experience, “Some in our group were painfully disinclined to behave like they were in a nice restaurant and made every meal embarrassing for the rest of us. If you choose a Spanish cruise line, you should expect your menu to be in Spanish, the food to be a little adventurous, and the wait staff not to be fluent in English. No, you can't order three entrees instead of the appetizers. No, you can't wear holy jeans and wet hair to dinner. No, you can't have a rum and coke from the bar across the ship to accompany your meal.”

Ha, sorry for that little rant, but besides one of us, it was a great meal every single night and I always loved my meal, not to mention, the two South Americans who gave us champagne at dinner every night and were more than willing to adjust to what we needed/wanted. Example: After the first day, there was always a bottle of ketchup waiting on our table. Of course, after dinner, we spent that night dancing at the disco to Michael Jackson and other Spanish songs that we couldn’t understand but danced to anyways. In fact, the other students on board went from hatred of the random non-Spaniards on board to asking us to translate Lady Gaga songs to Spanish. Next up, back to Greece!