Turkey Round 2: Part 4: Hopping over to Greece

For some reason, I am willing to wake up at 6:30 on vacation but my body rebels at my 8am alarm for school on a daily basis.  Having woken up so early, we had another great breakfast before getting picked up and taken to the port about half an hour away.  On the way, we passed not one but two kitschy water parks, one of which had 3 Russian-inspired onion domes, which made me laugh.  Kusadasi, the port city, also had lots of fancy beach resorts and shopping, which made me very glad I had given no thought to staying there.  It took about two hours to get to Samos, the majority of which I spent in the cabin of the ferry, trying to avoid the wind.  The sun had not come out yet, making my idea of going swimming seem dimmer and dimmer.  It was not terrible, since I was able to chat with some Australian backpackers the whole way there.  Once off the boat, we found out we had missed the bus to where we wanted to go, so decided to achieve our second goal of the day: feasting on Greek food.  The Greek salad really was amazing, but it might not have seemed so glorious had I not been deprived of my requisite number of veggies for so long.  I also had a gyro, and the tzatziki sauce was delicious.  We then caught the bus to Pythagoreion.  It’s named after Pythagoras, the mathematical genius who was born on the island.  We knew there was a temple of Hera and a tunnel we wanted to see in town, as well as some other sites.  We mostly wandered along until we found signs.  We walked up to a beautiful monastery that seems to have been built around a grotto church.  We did not see a single person on our trek up there, so it had a very eerie stillness I liked.  We eventually found the Eupalian Tunnel, which was built in the 6^th century BC.   It was only the second tunnel in the world to be built with crews digging from both sides.  The calculations thus needed to be exact, but the brilliant designer did not want to take any chances, so designed the tunnel to be a bit bigger and angled in the center to ensure the two sides met. 

The tunnel was built to serve as an underground aquaduct, funneling water from the top of the mountain down to the city in a protected manner, in case of siege.  Herodotus mentions it in his writings, which led to the long-forgotten tunnel’s rediscovery in the 1950s.  

While Samos might seem like another idyllic Greek island one can hop, it actually has a long history and was a major player in the region when the Greeks ruled that part of the world.  Since Greece has so much ancient history, and since the ruins on Samos are not that well preserved, we would walk along streets and see a few stones in among wildflowers and weeds.  There would then be a lovely brown sign telling us that this was the Temple of Aphrodite or some other ancient building.  The Roman baths were fairly well preserved and had a lovely view of the sea.

We put our feet in the water while waiting for our bus back to the port.  Having a handful of Euros left to spend, we sat down for tea/coffee.  They actually gave us cream and a few cookies as well, which was a win.  Turkish tea is wonderful but is only accompanied by sugar cubes, and Georgians never put milk in their tea, so creamy, sugary tea tasted like heaven.  We eventually got back on the boat, where I napped for part of the time.  On the way back into Turkey, we stopped and grabbed our 1L limit of Jack Daniels, since the guy who had sold us our ferry tickets had asked that we bring it back for him, since taxes on hard alcohol in Turkey are extremely high.

Once we found our bus back to Selcuk, we dropped off the whiskey and had more tea as we chatted with our travel agent and an American girl who was there working on the travel agency’s website.  We then ate dinner in this adorable courtyard that had lemon and orange trees growing in the middle of it. I had a plate of mezes, or appetizers, and was in heaven with the veggies, hummus, and yogurt dishes.