We left Bergama, heading south, and we decided to head for the coast as we all felt we have kebab overload and needed a good fish lunch. As before, we got lost going through Izmir - Turkish road signs are confusing or non-existent! We made a pleasant detour and ended up at a lovely little fishing village on the Aegean. After the East, this was heaven.

We pressed on towards Ephesus and started to look for a hotel. We had decided to stay in an old Greek village (in 1922, there was a forced exchange of people between Greece & Turkey and there are lots of Greek style villages around) called Sirince. We hadn't booked and tried to find one hotel which was up a mountain track for about a mile. She was full but had a place in town we could look at - her kitchen boy jumped in the car and directed us down the mountain track and into the cobbled streets of the village - the driving through the village was hair raising. We didn't like her place but found a beautifully restored Greek mansion - Ken did his magic with the negotiating and we were in.

Dinner was interesting as there was an electrical storm - the first bad weather we have seen. It took all the power out so we were scrambling around for torches to get home.

We had an early start so that we could beat the tours and cruise ships into Ephesus. We were there at 8:25 am - we were impressed but there were still coaches there. It was relatively empty, for the first hour we almost had the site to ourselves. Then we saw hordes of people coming down the main street of Ephesus. It was like shopping in Oxford street the Saturday before Christmas. Still, the site is vast and very impressive. The amphitheatre is huge, the library looked wonderful and we especially liked the inside of the upper class houses - mainly because the tour groups didn't venture in here and the you get a real impression of life in Roman times - for the upper classes it was quite luxurious.

At lunch time, we were 'ruined out' so headed into town for lunch. After this, we went to the museum to see the pieces taken from the main site. The girls were taken with the statue of Priapus - the roman god of fertility, symbolised by an enormous phallus. You could only see him by switching on a special light. We then visited the basilica of St. John which supposedly had his tomb in it. I say we loosely - it was really Judi as Ken, Fran & I had gone into 'ruin overload' and badly needed an ice cream.