Day 8 - Ephesus

Today was spent in good old Turkey! It wasn't easy when the alarm went off at 6am this morning... but we needed to get up and get ready for our tour. After grabbing breakfast at the buffet, we headed into the theatre to wait for our tour to be called. We had signed up for the tour that covered the most... this means all day! At about 8:30 we were called to begin heading out to our bus.

The first stop on the tour was at the house of the Virgin Mary! It was about an hour drive from port... but was well worth the drive. When we arrived we all got off the bus and our tour guide began to give us the history of her house. Once the tour guide was done we were released to go through the house and tour the grounds on our own. The house was small, maybe 400 square feet and stone both inside and out. It was really cool to see and kind of weird to be walking through the house knowing the history! After spending about an hour at the house we made our way down to the city of Ephesus. Our guide said the city has been rebuilt 5 times and the one we were about to visit was the first. We pulled up and all piled off the bus... we were brought through the city by our guide while she gave us the history. The city was amazing... dating back to around 600BC she shared with us that it is considered one of the seven wonders of the world! The city was discovered as they began work on the roads in Ephesus... and as funding becomes available they continue to uncover more and more of this city! After about close to three hours, we moved onto our last stop at the Basilica of St John. This church is believed to be built over the burial site of St. John. We spent about 30 minutes at the church at then moved onto the provide lunch.

Lunch was served outside at a train museum in Ephesus. At the beginning of our tour we were told lunch was provided at we'd all be treated to Turkish cuisine... I could hardly wait!!! Actually it didn't end up being too bad. Lunch started with a salad, then these cheese tortilla and then they plopped these leaf wraps on our plate, I could barley look at them, but Jennifer actually gave one a try! The main course was chicken, lamb, rice and veggies... the chicken and rice were good. After lunch we boarded the bus and made our way back to port. We pulled up to the ship about 5:15 headed to our room!

So far there's been a lot of walking on the trip so we figured it was time to spoil ourselves... so we made massage appointments in the spa! Our appointments were at 7:30, but around 6:30 we headed to the spa to take advantage of some of it's other amenities. We started by relaxing in their giant whirlpool which consisted of jets, bubbles and waterfalls! After hanging there for a bit we moved to the heated tile lounge chairs that overlooked the front of the boat and waited to be called for our appointments! Needless to say the massage was great, just what we both needed!

After the spa and getting ready we headed to the atrium and met up with Vern and hung out with him and some others for the rest of the night.

We were able to see a bunch of pics from the engagement party... and we're sorry we missed it, looks like it was a really good time! Hope everyone is doing good... tomorrow is Istanbul... a little shopping and our second party at night!