A fine breakfast this morning and then we took the dolmuş down to Selcuk. It was all very easy – the dolmuş goes every 20 minutes, costs 5 lira per person, making the journey feel smooth and spontaneous. But like and quite unlike our journeys in Beitou about 18 months ago.
At the foot of the hill we were deposited in a quiet seeming town with storks nesting on minarets and ancient columns, very picturesque. A negotiation with a taxi driver ad off we went to a place we had not known existed, Mother Mary House as all the drivers called it, the place where the Virgin reputedly spent her last years and died.
It was up in the hills where, despite the current lack of visitors, it was organised with the swift efficiency of a well oiled pilgrimage site. Though set in a forest there was no way to go save down a wide path which led to a small stone house. Here we were made to queue and allowed in a few and a time into a simple space with a statue at the end, a few icons and some displays of gifts from various popes. One person sat praying in a oew but otherwise no one was allowed to linger and a firm voiced attendant made sure that the line kept moving.
Outside the visitors milled around a bit with an air of slight confusion that with all the build up this seemed to be it. There was one more thing – sacred springs (presumably healing?) coming out of taps set in rock. I rinsed one hand in the vague hope of healing my skin, but for all I knew the sacred properties of the water might have been quite different. A few Spanish speaking pilgrims were writing on scraps and tying the pieces of paper on a line along the rockfall (about 10 feet high, and above was the path where the queue was for the shrine). And so we were spat out back into the parking lot.
The taxi driver dropped us off at the upper gate of Ephesus for a slightly more comfortable downhill path through the site, against the flow of people and ending where the dolmuş back to Selcuk stops.
It was fiercely hot and the marble underfoot and all around projected the heat back at one so not the most comfortable, but still a remarkable place to visit especially with only a fraction of the usual crowds. The famous library was impressive as in the photos and the terrace houses had pretty frescoes though the visitor path made it hard to imagine what they would have looked and felt like when inhabited. That said they were inhabited for centuries si I suppose there is no one way they would have been experienced, something easy to forget for such places. Another well-oiled pilgrimage site though there were enough side-trips one could make, and few enough people, that I didn’t feel too funnelled.