Woke up, brekkers, waited a bit, nothing exciting there. Today we visited Ephesus, or Efes. That's somewhat more exciting.

We had been told beforehand that this would be the best of the ancient cities we visited, the most intact/preserved, the most impressive. All true. We saw baths, toilets (great group photo there), a remarkably intact facade of the library there, and a huge ampitheatre. Now, I told Swaffie he had dibs on the netbook, so more to come later.

Thursday, March 11th, roughly 5:10 PM local time

So yeah, saw all those awesome things. 5 of our people sang “Amazing Grace” in the ampitheatre to give us an idea of the acoustics, it was pretty awesome. Liz, Michelle, Becky, Nate, Allen. Saw some more things, also Ephesus is FULL of cats and at the end there was a momma dog with puppies and it was adorable. From there we ate and went to a Basilica, lots of beautiful old architecture, prickly pines with names carved into them, and a millipede. So that was all pretty cool. Also saw a column way off in the distance with two storks nesting on top of it. The last stop of the day was a house that supposedly the Virgin Mary stayed in at the end of her life, which was in very pretty surroundings. Walked in, which was about all I did, not being Catholic and all. Nice little shrine though.

We came back to the hotel and I sat around for a little bit before Nate suggested we go to the pool. This turned out to be a very good decision. We swam a bit, Zypy joined us, Nate helped teacher her to swim a little bit, I got my breathing better (still needs work), and then Nate said he wanted to try the sauna. Well first we sat in the Turkish bath for a little bit, watching two people get slapped and then rubbed with these glove things. That was uh, interesting. Nate had some trouble figuring out the paying for it, but wow. It was HOT in there, but nice. You literally feel the heat when you breathe. We had a good talk, deep stuff and all that, came out for a break and were a bit confused about what to do next. A guy working there told us to go into the pool, so we tried it.... wow. FANTASTIC feeling. Utterly amazing how refreshing it was. A few laps, back into the sauna, fantastic. A bit, back into the pool, few laps, back to the sauna, back to the pool, one last bit of sauna with Swaffie joining, and that was it. I never really got sauna before, now I understand. Awesome. Maybe we can do it in Norway?

Thursday, March 11th, roughly 6:45-6:50 PM local time