Last night we had a new
adventure. We decided to take a
night bus to Selcuk (and the ruins of Ephesus) about nine hours south of
Istanbul. About two hours into our
trip we boarded a ferry and crossed a small unfamiliar body of water. A light fog hung above the dark surface
and I could see my breath. It was
actually fairly chilly. I stood
outside on the upper deck anyway and wondered casually where we were. We got back on the bus and slept on and
off for a while. We drove through
mountains and mixed forest with a certain type of dominant Mediterranean pine
and evergreen shrubs. Quite dry
but greener than the Okanagan – beautiful. One place we stopped Leah got off to try to find a bathroom
and the bus almost left without her!
I rushed to the front of the bus and tried my best to communicate to the
bus driver the potentially (very)
problematic situation. Thankfully
Leah was in sight and the bus driver got the message.
We arrived in Selcuk and met our
host, Nese Sirin who picked us up and brought us to her guest house, The
Shepherd’s House Pension. She
seems like a wonderful lady. She
is a Turkish Christian with a contagious vibrancy and vivaciousness. Again, it is so exciting to meet
believers from all over the world.
It helps broaden my vision of how truly epic and global God’s purposes
and plans really are.
We slept for a few hours. Wandered around town a bit. Selcuk is magnificent. It’s only a small town of about 30,000
people (though apparently the population grows exponentially during tourist
season). The town seems quite
contained by the rock-strewn, sparsely vegetated, gorgeous light green colored
mountains bordering it circularly.
There are also crumbling ruins dotting the landscape in places and a
spectacular old castle up on a hill on one side of the town. The castle is currently closed but Leah
and I managed to ‘break in.’ We were strolling on a small path beneath it and
saw in the fenced-off castle grounds outside the walls a few boys flying a
kite. They called up to us, “we
will show you,” and led us to a small hole in the fence. Our curiosity beat our sensibility
temporarily and we climbed through and followed a spry 15 yr. old boy as he led
us up a path to a ramshackle gate.
We climbed through a space in the gate to get behind the walls and
explored the empty courtyard. The
boy took us places I’m sure properly escorted tourists are forbidden to go
(including a tight winding stairwell up a slender tower leading to a really
neat lookout where we could see the whole city, surrounding mountains and
certain agriculture areas). He led
us out and we paid him 5TL and ambled back to the guesthouse.
I’m sitting on our roof now
overlooking lovely, quaint Selcuk with all its colorful houses. I’m looking at its hangout rooftops,
its narrow alleyways, quarreling cats hustling and bustling about from rooftop
to rooftop, – jumping and fighting and playing – clothes hanging on lines
suspended from house to house, orange and lemon trees growing in random
places – I love it.
Went out for dinner. Got mincemeat Turkish pizza. Leah got Durum pita wrap thingamabob
(I’m still unsure about what most of these new foods are actually called). A black cat sat beside our table pretty
much the whole meal and begged. We
discreetly fed it scraps. There
are cats everywhere is Selcuk.
They seem pretty well fed and lively.
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