Onward: Day 27: Selcuk/Ephesus, Turkey - My Second Seventh Wonder

Staring into history?

A 14 hour bus ride later, I arrived at Selcuk, closest city to the ruins at Ephesus. As nice as Turkish buses are, being on a bus for 14 hours still sucks, so I was glad to be on my feet again. My plan was to spend two days at Selcuk, one day for seeing Selcuk sights, and the other for visiting Ephesus. From the photo above, that obviously didn't happen.

The first place I visited was St. John's Basilica, purported burial site of, who else, St. John. In addition to being a discipline, John was evidently a really trustworthy and chill dude since the gospels write that the Virgin Mary hung out with John after the death of Jesus. And I guess they chose Turkey as a good place to kick it.

St. John's Basilica.

There was also an impressive looking castle on the same hill as the basilica, but unfortunately it was closed for excavations and renovations. Done with the hill, my next stop was the museum, which housed the artifacts brought from Ephesus.

The statue of Artemis from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

While the museum was certainly cool, it was much smaller than I thought, and I was done with it in under an hour, and it was just past noon. Figuring I had the whole day ahead of me to just hang out like John and Mary, I headed back to the hostel to drop off my bag. My roommates had returned, three Americans from the same college. They informed me that they were planning to visit Ephesus that afternoon, when it was cooler and the crowds had died down. I decided that was a better use of my time and joined them.

The remains of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, a wonder of the ancient world.

The ruins at Ephesus are pretty astounding. My Lonely Planet guide advertised it as the most well preserved ruins of the Eastern Mediterranean. It's hard to imagine anything topping it, and I would have certainly seen anything topping it along the way. In fact, most of the ruins in Italy didn't compare to these.