Can You Explore Ancient Ephesus by Yourself? Ruins, Cats, Museums | Turkish Coastal Roadtrip Izmir

i want to show you how to visit ephesus the crown jewel of ancient ruins the right way by yourself at your own pace where you can really dive deep and not just get hurried past all the hidden gems by an impatient tour guide plus we'll be dropping by one of the seven wonders of the ancient world at least what's left of it and checking out the local artifact museum as well all to create a better itinerary for you so welcome back to near from homes turkish road trip of ruins let's hop in the car hit the road as we make a short drive from our base in izmir and only get a little lost along the way [Music] after a pretty peaceful hour-long drive from izmir to ephesus we finally made it to the ancient city itself by a happy accident we've actually driven to the exit because ephesus is kind of in a line there's an entrance where everyone comes in by a tour bus they walk two kilometers through get picked up by their tour bus go home however that's not really how i like to do things because i wanted to walk through it twice anyway so now we're gonna walk up through the exit as you can no biggie walk back down again we're gonna walk it twice i'm gonna love every minute of it i hope one observation off the bat though is that it is so much more touristy than anything else we've been doing over the past week as i've seen more people in the last two minutes than i have in an entire week and a half of road tripping it's weirding me out just a little if i'm honest with you so much english around me for now though let's get inside the room let's stop hanging out by the entrance like weirdos we need a ticket or do we i mean that's right it's back on the museum card train we go it's a hundred and twenty liter to enter but not for me that's gonna be 120 lira i knock off of my museum cart price as we continue the museum card challenge what's also nice is you get to skip the line this is already a ticket you just walk right through so let's do that now now as i'd hoped the exit is so quiet in comparison to the entrance above i've seen the size of the tour buses there's a flood coming but they haven't made it here yet so it's lovely and peaceful so far but as i had feared there are way too many cute cats who need cuddles by the exit i don't even know if i'm gonna make it into the ruins anymore i've got cats to pat they're growing so many fresh new cats that's a good harvest this year it's really nice seeing how well they look after these animals and some of these cats are like legit chunky hey they're chunky [Laughter] the marble paved column street that leads from the old harbor to the amphitheater is really a sight to behold but what it's really triggering in my mind is a memory of the esclepian it too had a column lined street heading towards its grand temple this one of course is in far better condition nature hasn't quite reclaimed it yet and so what's really cool is i find myself feeling as if i'm learning more about the escapion by being here as well recontextualizing what i saw that day with the grandeur here at ephesus that's pretty cool [Music] the ephesus amphitheater is absolutely incredible i mean everybody can just appreciate the size of this place seating 25 000 this is way more than double the largest amphitheater we've seen so far and it's extraordinary though what i'm really thankful for is the fact that i visited those other amphitheaters as well because i'm picking up on a variety of cues that i just would have never noticed if i hadn't now of course this lacks the intimacy of the 5 000 seater amphitheater in asos set alongside the sea that was truly beautiful nor does this have quite the daunting steepness of the pergamon amphitheater but by comparing and contrasting them all we can really learn quite a lot and i'll share with you just one thing that i'm noticing and that is the separation of seat to orchestra that is very unique compared to the rest that we've seen in our source you'll have noticed that the seats went all the way down very similarly in pergamon as well but here there is a massive separation and to me that belies something quite interesting because in asos i learned that when the romans came in they brought with them gladiatorial events to the amphitheaters and as such they built walls in front of the associates to separate them from the gore if you will but this place has that built in and so considering ephesus was at its height during the roman empire i think there's a lot we can take away from that and it's the kind of detail i would have never noticed had i not visited everything else and brought them together i hate to use the word synthesis but that's exactly what it is [Music] i apologize if my commentary is getting a little grating after three videos of me constantly describing everything as incredible wonderful astounding but uh come here for yourselves and tell me if you think anything different so of course it's not all upsides this place has something in common with troy which is a little unfortunate but of course understandable with the increased foot traffic comes increased need to control that foot traffic to preserve the site itself so don't come here expecting to free roam like we did at the ruins of asos and that was a lot of comparisons but yeah it's a lot more sanitized than some of the other places we've been to for better and for worse [Music] so here it is after all of the time road tripping from istanbul we finally make it to the southern agora gate here in ephesus and it probably is one of the most touristy things that you can do in turkey and if you're a follower of the channel you know that i usually don't like those things consider this the exception that proves the rule you're not gonna get a lot of peace here between yourself and everyone else wanting a photo but it truly is magical and you're gonna need to come here and check it out for yourself though definitely not the only thing in ephesus worth looking at it definitely is the most iconic so if you ask me my favorite so far just the streets walking along the marble streets lined with columns that's my favorite but if this is your favorite i can see why right little buddy now and though the cats here in ephesus are definitely not unfriendly they are the least friendly of all the ruined cats we've seen so far and i can't tell is it because they know they have the prime real estate and don't need to try so hard or do you guys not treat them right this place also goes through massive ebbs and flows with the tourists just huge battalions of people kind of marching through the streets from one end to the other and you just gotta wait like 15 minutes they'll go away and then you get the place back to yourself yet again and this is like the fifth lull we've gone through next up we have the terraced houses and it might not look much from the outside what is inside is exceptional it's technically considered an optional extra it's not even included in your ephesus ticket it'll be an extra 55 lira at least for those of you who have still not cottoned on to the fact that you need to get the museum ticket so for me it's free let's go on inside [Music] with these frescoes the mosaics the columns the granite this is quickly becoming a highlight of ephesus to me and well worth splurging a little extra lyra to get in here [Music] in truth nowhere else i have ever been has had such a wonderful collection of mosaics frescoes overlaid granite pieces columns it's insane all coming together to give you a really wonderful picture of how people would have lived in this little terraced village and to the untrained eye you might think that this village has been abandoned for thousands of years but you'd be wrong as the terrorist houses have their own colony of kittens [Music] and haven't we just gotten so incredibly lucky with the weather today oh it's unimaginable especially because today was supposed to be the worst weather of the whole trip if you watched in istanbul you'll have noticed that it was pretty rainy pretty gloomy the whole time and that's just one of the dangers of traveling in the off-season in the mediterranean sometimes rainstorms just park themselves on top of you but thankfully all of that worry was for nothing it's a beautiful day no idea how no idea how long it will hold but it's good right now [Music] now then sadly you can't spend all day in ephesus though we dan sure have tried we've been here for four and a half hours now i've seen many a different flood of tourists coming through on their buses and i worry about how long they're spending here because it doesn't seem like quite long enough to me which is just another tick in the box of doing this diy you really get to spend as long as you want here but another take is that ephesus actually isn't the only site in this little region across the road is one of the wonders of the ancient world and i wonder if that's included in everyone's itineraries maybe maybe not [Music] okay so i do get it i understand why people after seeing something as grand as ephesus probably wouldn't come to the temple of artemis but if you know me you know i'm not going within a kilometer of one of the ancient wonders and not going to see it for myself how am i supposed to live knowing that i passed that up you know when we were driving from yolova we stopped by the ancient city of ziticus it was well off in some neighborhood covered in manure and smelt terrapore but it had perhaps the most beautiful piece of marble work i have ever seen so you can't just judge things by a google pin sometimes you've got to roll the dice and try it for yourself that's what we've done here in the temple of artemis and yeah it could do with some love [Music] at a glance with the naked eye there definitely isn't a whole lot going on here but if you let yourself just steep in it for a moment really absorb the scale of it you'll notice that the columns they're just larger than everything else we've been seeing the foundational blocks and elements behind me they're all just bigger everything's been scaled up and that's how you can know that there really is something special going on here it's just much harder to appreciate at first especially compared to the wonder that is ephesus itself [Music] i mean after all this place has been destroyed for about 1800 years the goths tore it down in like 200 a.d or so it's got to be the second worst thing goss have ever done other than of course the first being the corporate goth that is marilyn manson so you're putting those things together and come on guys that's not a great rap maybe the cure fans out there can do a bit of a fundraiser to fix it that's for you carolyn [Music] if you look really close though i think there's a bird's nest on top of the column which what a cool bird what a great location to put you next ultimately though my point with this video and the whole series in general is that there's just so much more than just istanbul and ephesus if you're willing to go out into a field and see what you can find here alone there's also a great museum that if you have the time should definitely consider checking out [Music] so i think what we might do to cap it off is since we've seen so many amazing ruins both in the mind and visually let's check out the museum and see the artifacts they even have a recreation of the temple of artemis which will be good for those of you out there who couldn't really imagine it from a single column the entrance fee is only 30 lira but we'll knock it off the museum ticket anyway today's been a high value day let's get inside so that's it that's the last of the museum ticket savings or is it actually the day previous in izmir we saw the ancient city of smyrna for 40 turkish lira additionally we pulled a sneak yanya and actually went to asus twice do you really think our videos are edited in the same order they're filmed absolutely not we totally underestimated how much time we needed to see asus and came back the next day to film so let's lop off an additional 30 lira if you watch that video closely maybe you can discern which shots are from different days so in total we spent 600 turkish lira we saw that much worth of museums plus an additional 192 lira and 50 cents it was a close call for most of the trip but we pulled through in the end it should come as no surprise that i really love this museum it's the perfect size nice and small which is appreciated on such a busy day not to mention the coin collection was astounding i've never seen anything like it and yeah the recreation of the temple of artemis it really did help deepen my understanding and my appreciation for that little patrigrass we visited earlier and of course it was free on the museum card so what isn't there to love i'd rate it a 10 out of 10. though i'm sure any long time view of the channel already knew i'd say that [Music] so what do you think did ephesus live up to the hype i sure think so though my heart really does go out to all the people hurried past us today they missed out on so much and i hope you don't now that you know a little bit better because i really think you need to skip the tour and take your time with this one but let me know in the comments do you agree or disagree have i done it all wrong have i misunderstood tours what should you watch now though well if you haven't seen my entire turkish trip this is a great time to start as this video sadly it's the last i'm heartbroken that the trip is over but i've made so many lifelong memories along the way and i'm just really proud of this video series too i even managed to make good on my museum card investment which i'll admit i was getting a little worried about for a second from diving deep into istanbul and traveling by the public ferries to our beautiful sunset in arsos the lofty heights of pergamon discovering troy was a real place and every single one of the beautiful cats i've befriended this trip has been an absolute blast i'm in love with turkey i'm counting the days until i return and i hope you're just as inspired as i am to come here and see it for yourself but more importantly i hope these guides have empowered you to come here by showing you new ways to see these sites as i really do want to help you travel so thank you all so much for watching it means the world and i'll see you in the next video whatever that might be [Music] you

Channel: NearFromHome | Slow Travel Experts

Views: 28,915

Keywords: istanbul, turkey, istanbul turkey, turkish food tour, turkish road trip, vlog, travel vlog, expat, hagia sophia, mosque, turkish, troy, turkish ruins, greek ruins, ancient turkey, ancient greece, brad pitt troy, ancient city of troy, canakkale, roadtrip, turkish roadtrip, driving in turkey, yalova, turkish ferry, istanbul ferry, assos, ancient city, ancient greek, best ancient ruin, ancient greece documentary, ephesus, artemis, ephesus road trip, izmir, izmir road trip, ephesus ruins

Id: OkJz-voxOeA

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022