Ephesus and Selcuk

This photo is for Claire... before I left for Turkey, she told me that she had been to Ephesus and had found the earliest 'advertisement' recorded. Since I do a lot of advertising work, this was of interest to me, and she clarified that the advertisement was for a brothel. Great. Well, I was curious enough to look for some Latin or Greek inscription on the doorway of one of the buildings, but eventually found these three images - a foot, a woman's head and a heart - inscribed in the marble roadway just near where a doorway had once been at the side of the road. The audio guide at Ephesus said that these inscriptions had identified the establishment as a 'house of love'.


A few hundred feet further on I saw this cool inscribed column. Not sure what it says, but I like it a lot!


Sorry for the Spanish tourist in pink, but even though we arrived at Ephesus very early in the morning AND we are well ahead of the 'busy' season, there were already many tour busses unloading their groups. The photo shows the pedestrian approach to the famous library at Ephesus, but there was no chance of getting the shot without a few people in it.



And here is the famous library. Somehow I managed to get several shots of this without people crawling around inside. It's a truly amazing building!


The final Ephesus shot gives you an idea of the gauntlet we run both entering and departing from each of these tourist sites. Every possible souvenir is sold, with vendors hawking the praises of bottles of water, postcards genuine fake watches, etc. This was the only time I saw signs admitting the true quality of the merchandise, however.

For the past few days I have felt like documenting - from the car - the various modes of local transportation. There are only a few I have missed, like pack donkey and donkey cart. This is a group of my favorites - shots usually taken through the car window or windshield at 80kph.

motorcycle

walk

(waiting for the 'dolmas' or local bus)

retail pushcart

commercial delivery by motor scooter

tractor

another tractor

passenger tractor

another pushcart

everybody waits for the dolmas

bicycle

village flatbed

Here's one final shot taken in Selcuk the first evening we were there. There are a number of pedestrian shopping streets and every once in a while a motor scooter zooms up or down the street to the peril of the tourists. I got the idea that it would be a neat shot to get the tail lights of the scooter along with the slower movement of the strolling tourists and the static scenery of the shops and lights.

As I set up the shot, it became apparent that there were no more motor scooters driving around. Bummer! So I waited and waited. In the meantime, Robert was over making friends with some merchant or other and I spotted some fellows around the corner with a parked scooter. The longer I stood there with my camera on the tripod, set up to take the shot, the more attention I began to attract.

The guys Robert was talking to wanted to know what was going on. I pantomimed at a distance to the guys with the scooter - hey! get on your scooter and drive up this street! I will take your picture! In the meantime, Robert had convinced the other guys to get on their scooter and oblige me. Within five minutes I had two different riders and two different scooters zooming up and down the street until I got the shot I wanted! Here it is...