Snapshot: Ephesus, Turkey

After crossing the Dardanelles, we docked in Kusadasi, a summer resort popular with Europeans. We went almost immediately to the historic site of Ephesus.

Ephesus is magnificent - a 3000-year-old city in southwestern Turkey, abandoned in the 7th century AD (when the harbor silted over), where an incomparable set of Greco-Roman ruins representing about 10 percent of the original city have been excavated and beautifully restored.

Ephesus was the third-largest city in the world at its peak with a quarter-million residents. Only Rome and Alexandria were larger.

In the Christian world, Ephesus is associated with St. Paul who, during one of his three visits as a missionary, locked horns with the silversmiths making idols of the goddess Artemis and was nearly put to death. It was also visited by St. John the Evangelist (who is buried in nearby Selcuk), and Mary, Mother of Jesus, whom John (according to legend) brought to Ephesus where she later died in.a hilltop building that still stands.

Some highlights of the visit:

* The breathtaking facade of the Library of Celsus, to which we returned in the evening for a chamber concert under the stars.

* The remains of a brothel immediately across the road from the library ("honey, I'm going to get something to read").

* The terrace houses - generous grants from Austrian banks and businesses have restored seven private homes full of mosaics and frescoes, and they've built a plexiglass catwalk that lets you see the homes from every angle.

* The latrines - everyone chuckled as we walked through, and the Chinese tourists all wanted their pictures taken sitting on them.

* The infrastructure - roads were made in large part of marble, grooved for safety; an elaborate water and sewer system made of terra cotta pipes, many portions of which are visible in their original locations.

*The outdoor theater - it's in terrific shape and seats 24,000 - Elton John, the Berlin and London Symphonies, Joan Baez, and Ray Charles are among those who have performed there in recent years. After a show by Sting literally rocked the house, they decided to bar rock concerts and to stop using the top 10,000 seats because they had become unstable.

*The columns- Ann points out that it's an art historian's dream to see Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns all simultaneously in use in one place.

*The harbor road - a stately, colonnaded marble road on which Anthony and Cleopatra walked into the city.

We had a warm-up lecture by Dr. Louis Sussman, professor emeritus of classics at the University of Florida. He used the layout and facilities of Ephesus to highlight Greco-Roman city planning concepts.

One of Dr. Sussman's favorite things at Ephesus - and it became one of ours, too - was the signage on little shops at both the entrance and exit to Ephesus reading "Genuine Fake Watches."

Unnerving moment of the day: we learned that the only commercial cruise ship that has ever been attacked by the infamous Somali pirates is the one we're on - apparently an RPG went thru the window of a suite, and there are still bullet holes visible in the hull. Fortunately, after two hours of evasive action (during which most of the guests were fast asleep), the captain shook the pirates and headed out to open sea.