Up early enough that well before noon I've moved about 80km, found a hostel in Selçuk and started walking towards the ruins of Ephesus. I bump into two Americans at the entrance to the ruins, Kat and Kim, and we wander around the remains together.
The Ephesus ruins are much bigger and grander than at Troy, though slightly less legendary. They cover a huge area and it takes us a good few hours to walk over the whole thing. You can go right up to a lot of the ruins (which may be why there's less here than there otherwise might have been, but I'm not complaining). They have a monstrous theatre here, which I estimate could hold something like 10,000 people, as well as a library with a statue of Science outside. Yay! The entrance to the library is in good condition / has been restored well; it must be 20m high, and very ornate.
The girls are heading off to Greece so after lunch I say goodbye and wander round Selçuk town a bit more. There are some ruins of an aquaduct which would have been incredible back when it worked, and more ruins of a basilica above the supposed tomb of the apostle John. I meet a New Zealander called Sam here, and we wander to what was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artimis. In its day this was a massive temple, on the scale of the Acropolis, with about 200 columns. Today only one and a half columns remain on swampy, boggy ground. There are storks nesting on top of the tall column.
Back at the hostel we chill with some of the other guests for a bit, before we all turn in.
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