Today marks the halfway point in our vacation. We are also as far East as we will travel. So basically, tomorrow we will turn around and come home. Very slowly. ;)

Today is also our one and only Princess Shore Excursion that we are paying for on this trip . We wanted to go and see the biblical town of Ephesus, and this seemed like the best way to accomplish that.

We had a quick breakfast in the dining room before heading out. Since they have soy milk on board, I decided to get raisin bran today. Bryan is sticking with the bagel and cream cheese option (we rarely have cream cheese on hand at home). We didn't have to wait too long in the theatre before they ushered us off of the ship and onto a bus.

Our tour guide, Ike, was very good. He talked to us about Turkey the whole way out to the site of Ephesus. I was surprised when he pointed to the map and told us we were on Asia Minor. I hadn't really considered that we would be visiting Asia. (Even just the far side of it.)

When we got to the ruins, Ike explained how the area was prone to earthquakes, and that the ruins had not only been buried under many feet of soil, but they were also toppled . So the work of the archeologists has been to uncover the pieces and then rebuild what buildings they can. The result is impressive, but it is estimated that only 15% of the ancient city has been uncovered.

We got to see the gates, bath house, main street, the remains of the forum, a tiered seating area for the senate, the privy, hospital, library, red light district, shops, temples and theatre. Take a look at the pictures for a better idea of what we were looking at. :)

It was pretty fantastic to imagine biblical events playing out in this very spot. Ike told the account of the silver smith Demetrius stirring up a riot against Paul (see Acts 19:24 - 41) and pointed to the areas where it took place. So very cool!

When we got back into town, we decided to skip the carpet weaving demonstration, because we had heard it was heavy on the sales pitch. So we took off through the Turkish bazaar to find a place to use the Internet . Now, the street was something else. The owners of the shops and salespeople were out in the street using all sorts methods to get the attention of those passing by: they would call out "Excuse me!" in the tone that implies you have dropped something and they are trying to return it; they spotted our stickers that had our group #4 on it and said "Four is my lucky number! I love number four" (we removed our stickers in unison without a word); yelling as if there was an emergency down their side street; hearing us talking about the "locations" on our tour, "This is the best location to do your shopping."

We walked together, arm in arm and said nothing. I had my sunglasses on and my hat down low so no one could get eye contact, but Bryan said they all looked to him to see if they would make a sale. We had been warned to not even say "No thank you" in Turkey. And it worked well. While we saw other people moved bodily into the shops, we slipped through the place like a hot knife through butter .

Finally we found a cafe with WiFi that looked alright, and Bryan ordered us some Sprites. As we logged in to their network, behind us, other custumers started smoking a hookah. Ah well, the Internet worked well enough to post our blog, and it made for excellent people-watching.

After a while we wandered back to the ship and ate our lunch with a view. :) We relaxed for some time on the promenade with our lemonade. Bryan played iPad games while I finished up the book Equal Rites. Then I spotted some dolphins jumping in the wake and went squealing and pointing down the promenade trying to get a good picture. Not so much, but seeing them was lots of fun.

Then it was time for dinner. Bryan zipped on his pant legs, telling me he was "dressing for dinner." Too funny. With the wardrobe we brought we have been a little more lax about what constitutes as "smart casual." Oh well. At dinner, we all agreed that Ephesus was great . It sounds like we lucked out on our tour guide though. One of the other guides was not nearly as good.

We didn't have much interest in the show last night, and the promenade was closed again due to high winds. So I got myself a tea and we sat in the Piazza listening to the pianist. When my cup was empty we went back up to our room and played a game of La Havre together on the iPad. That was fun. Bryan won, of course. So far on this trip I have played one game of Carcassonne (I lost, even worse than the stand-in computer players), one game of Ticket to Ride (which I managed to win) and now a game of La Havre.

By the time the game was done it was time to turn in. Tomorrow is an at sea day, which means we get to sleep in. Yay! I am hoping that Bryan will get some good sleep, because he doesn't seem to be sleeping as well at sea as he had been on land. Last night he had a good reason for that, though, as our TV kept turning itself on very loudly at random times. We would turn it off, and it would come on again. Bryan took the batteries out of the remote. It still kept happening. Finally he unplugged the TV itself. But the on board electrician has been by and replaced our television, so hopefully nothing strange like that will keep us up again.

That's all for today. Good night!

This stop was a really fun experience. Aside from just the novelty of making it to Asia on our Europe trip, we really enjoyed getting to tour Ephesus. I knew from previous travels that I really enjoyed touring ancient ruins and it turns out that Mer feels the same way. We both also thought it was cool to tour a site in the Bible, as that was a first for us. Our tour guide was really good and made the experience memorable.