5: Fruity Vino!

23.10.2011 – 23.10.2011 sunny 17 °C

Spent half of today in the bus as we travelled from Bursa to Selcuk. The day started early and the morning was completely taken up by our bus trip. First a local bus to the station and then on a longer bus to Selcuk. We arrived after lunch and immediately took off on a walking tour of the town.

Selcuk is the gateway to Ephesus and is the main stepping stone to the old ruins. It is also surrounded by ruins in its own right. The town itself is kinda what I expected Turkey to look like. The town is surrounded by rocky hills, sparsely vegetated with stumpy looking shrubs. The colours are very muted.. lots of pale oranges/ greys and the trees are a greeny/ grey in colour.. The buildings are mainly half finished and everything is covered in a fine coating of dust! Very interesting! It’s pretty much what I always pictured Turkey to look like.

The most famous of the ruins is the Temple of Artemis, which was once one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Today the site is in complete ruin and the only real remnant from the once proud temple is a pillar that is now home to a stork’s nest! The most impressive site in Selcuk is the ruins of the St John Basilica which was erected in the 6th Century in honour of St John the Evangelist (John the apostle from the bible). He was apparently buried on the site. The town is also home to the remains of Roman aqueducts and a very old Mosque (Isa Bey) as well as a museum with artefacts from Ephesus. I’ll be checking out all of this sites tomorrow!!

After a quick tour of the town we hopped on a bus and headed out to this tiny town outside of Selcuk that is famous for fruit wine. We had a walk around the town (although it was right on sun set so it wasn’t the longest walk ever) before we found ourselves a wine bar and tasted some of the local delights. By far the best wine we tasted was Quince (unanimous decision) and probably the worst was Cherry (which was quite reminiscent of cough syrup) so as a group we pitched in to buy a bottle of the Quince vino before we found ourselves a tasty Turkish restaurant and had some shish.

Early night tonight because we are off on a full touring day tomorrow with our conclusion being the walk through the Ephesus ruins!

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