Monday 2 July 2012

day 3: off to izmir/kusadasi

ok, i know i've been really lazy in updating. it's only day 3 of my turkey trip! *sweat* will try my hardest to get it done as soon as possible, so that i can blog about other stuff...


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so as mentioned, lovely lily arrived around midnight. after quickly filling her in on what she's missed, we went to bed at about 3am. but we had to drag ourselves out of bed again at 4.30am, coz we had to check-out at 5am! we're flying to izmir and our flight was at 7am.


it's just a short drive to the airport, especially it being at such an unearthly hour. we arrived at the airport in good time, but when we found our counter, there weren't anyone there. the whole airport seems to be dead, with people at only a handful of counters. so we thought we were early and sat around waiting for the counter to open.


after a while, we went over to ask a staff at another counter and he said the people for our flight don't come so early. we thought this weird coz don't we have to check-in at least 1 hour before our flight, even for domestic? ok, maybe it's how things work in their country, so we sat around some more.


but then we've only a 1/2 hour left before departure and STILL the counter remained close. we got a bit worried, so we went over to the airport information counter to ask. imagine our panic when we found out that we're actually in the international airport, when we were supposed to be at the domestic airport! man, did we run like mad women over to the domestic airport, which thankfully was just in the next building. but it was still a long way away and between our panting and huffing and puffing, we were cursing the driver for dropping us off at the wrong airport! who would have thought to check if the driver sent by the travel agent knows where to drop us?


upon reaching the domestic airport, more panic ensued when we saw that there's a rather long queue at our counter. we were praying hard that they will not turn us away (and in between praying hard, we were also still cursing at the driver!) luckily after a while, an officer came over and started asking "izmir? izmir?" to those of us in the queue. lovely lily and i, and 2 or 3 others, quickly raised our hands and we were asked to jump queue to be processed first. *phew*


and we felt further relief when we got to the gate, as there is still a very long queue of people moving slowly through. i think they just opened the gate! *phew*


we were picked-up by our driver at the airport in izmir, together with a family of 3 singaporeans (parents and their adult daughter) and a chinese mother-daughter team from united states. then we went about fetching more people from 2 more hotels including our tour guide, before proceeding to our first tour site 2 hours' drive away from izmir, the house where the virgin mary is believed to have spent her final years.


 lovely lily made me light a candle too, tho' i'm not a believer. but i dun see any harm in doing it, so here's me caught in the act...


drinking from a natural spring source... ok, just a tiny sip, as i wasn't so sure drinking uncooked water. 


attaching my wish to the wall of wishes...


wishes in various forms... 


wc stands for "water closet", meaning toilet. a widely used term in europe?


next, we went to the ancient city of ephesus, the famous greco-roman city that's said to be the most well-preserved example of its kind in the world. toured the place the rest of the morning...


by the time we arrived at ephesus, it's already 11am and the sun was really shining bright and hot! izmir is known for getting 300 days of sunshine. here i'm at the main street of the ancient city...


 restoration work is still going on...


 snake and staff symbol - an evidence that this section was a hospital


 the public toilet. marble seats are the original and stone ones are reconstructed. in the ancient times, family slaves would be sent over to warm up the marble seats in winter, tho' they're not allowed to use these toilets. our guide warned us not to touch the marble ones, coz they've been used by a lot of romans and have not been sterilized! lol...

 the oh-em-gee site, according to our guide. this is the entrance to the ancient roman library, said to have held the 2nd most scrolls in the ancient world, the first being the library in egypt.


another theatre... the crane at the top right kinda spoiled the view, doesn't it? :(

it's 1pm by the time we finished the tour and everyone was hot, sweaty, tired and hungry! lunch was included in the package, so we were brought to this restaurant that served turkish fares in buffet-style, tho' drinks were not included. talk about preying on tourists to make money!


chicken and some vege stuffed with spiced rice...

after lunch, we were brought on a detour to this huge shop selling leather jackets, where we were first treated to a fashion show catwalk-style. then we were encouraged to browse around the shop and try on their leather jackets. dun worry about the price printed on the price tag, coz we're a special group and we get 50% discount! *rolls eyes* of course this wasn't in the itinerary! but their jackets were really top quality, really soft and fine, from the best sheep skin in the region. didn't buy any tho', coz these were not in our budget.

next destination was ephesus museum... just took a quick walk around, as i didn't really have any patience for museum. not the boring ones, anyway...

then we went to the site of the temple of artemis, which was once one of the seven wonders of the ancient world but is now in ruins. see its actual structure in the previous photo, taken from the museum. nothing much to see here actually, only one column left standing. i think they threw this into the itinerary coz there wasn't really anything else worth visiting in this place!

before dropping us off to our hotels, we were again brought on another detour, this time to a carpet factory. actually i don't really mind visiting these factories and shops, as they reflected the local culture and the industries of the place. and they were so much nicer than those in china, where they'll try to con us into buying their stuff. here, the proprietors were very passionate about their industries and proud of their work. they didn't really try to persuade us to buy anything.

extracting silk from cocoons in a boiling pot...


carpet weaving... the turkish knot is different from those used in persian rugs as well as those from other regions.

my first glimpse of the aegean sea! but my dream is to see it from the greece side :(
this was when our driver dropped off a few of our tour members to their hotels by the sea...


our hotel in kusadasi, the worst one we stayed in on this trip! see my review on tripadvisor


initially we wanted to try out the hamam (turkish bath) and tried to book through the hotel, but the front desk guy couldn't locate the hamam owner...


...so we decided to just take a walk to the beach / aegean sea.

dinner was included in our hotel booking, but it was nothing to shout about, so didn't take any photos.

3 comments:

gina said...

Eh, I think the carpets here looked so much nicer lah compare to the silk factory in China. I guess everywhere is the same, if you go for guided tours, even in Malaysia. They take you to buy this and that, and they earn commission! As long as they are not pushy lah. In China, they were really pushy lot..and you know they are desperate when they slash price 80-90% off!

Biow said...

the silk from silk worm(?) is so educating..

the jacket looks sophisticated.. ah well.. i guess so must be the price :)

stargal said...

gina, yeah. i hate the pushy ones in china... and tak habis2 their gimmicks!

biow, yes, very educating. but i've seen it a few times before, so kinda bored la... hahaha... n yeah, the jackets were all very nice. there are some that are so soft that they can be folded into a square and stuffed into a small 10x10 cm pouch. then when we take it out n give it a shake, there won't be any wrinkle on it!