It was an early start today because our crap ship docked at Patmos at like, 6am. After a quick breakfast we left the ship solo and it wasn't long before we were making our way to St John's grotto, laughing at the fools on the ship who had payed something like 50 euros for the same trip. We had a lovely uphill walk on a long road and soon we were on top of a mountain overlooking the whole island. St John's grotto was a tiny place, which has since been converted to a church. We stayed at the mass for a little while with the locals and then made our way back down to the ship.
After lunch we got ready for our trip to the Turkish port of Kusadasi. We were flying solo again so we were warned about the cab drivers, because our intention was to hire a cab for about an hour or two to take us to the archaeological site of Ephesus and back again. Lin and Willy came with us, as well as two French girls from the boat, and we ended up hiring this young guy with a big cab for 20 euros each. He took us to the house of the Virgin Mary first (Lin really wanted to see it) and then to Ephesus. The ruins of some once-great city, Ephesus was amazing. The most intact archaeological site we'd seen on this trip, and it was truly easy to imagine Romans and Turks meandering down the marble streets and through the heavy archways. The city was huge - it took us about an hour to walk through it. Most of the buildings (library, temples, houses, even brothels) were only half destroyed. The most magnificent was the two-storey, thirty-something column library, which resembled the temple from the final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The cab driver turned out to be a pretty nice dude (even though he drove at like, 150km/hr) and he got us back to ship safely, with one hour of free time left. Darryn and I wanted to visit the beach, but halfway there Darryn noticed that the video camera was missing. I was the last one holding it so my heart skipped fifty thousand beats and I ran all the way back to the taxi rank. Luckily the can drivers were all very nice and helpful and we were soon reunited with our camera. After that we decided to give the beach a miss and just settled down at some restaurant with a glass of beer (and some baklava for me)
Back on the boat we tried our hand at a rather unsuccessful round of Cash Bingo before dinner and after that we decided to go to the casino and see if we'd have more luck there. We did, and we ended up with a profit of like 5 euros (double our initial offering, so all things considered it was a great win). Then we packed up and went to sleep, dreading the 5.45am wake up call at Athens the following day.
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