You NEED To Check Out THIS Part of Turkey (Izmir, Ephesus, Alaçati)

Izmir. It’s the gateway to the ancient world you didn’t know about, home to Ephesus and its ruins dating back to the 10th Century BCE, including the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

This is a place of pilgrimage for Christians who believe John the Baptist hid the Virgin Mary here following the crucifixion of Jesus. (Sorry, spoiler alert…)

And it’s home to the Ephesus Ultra Marathon, taking runners across the rolling hills and farmlands that surround this Ancient Greek city for up to 120 kilometers.

But for my wife, Melanie, it’s a homecoming of sorts. In 1922, her great-grandmother Vasilea Antoniadis fled Smyrna, as it was known back then, following the Great Fire at the end of the Greco-Turkish War.

Special thanks to Emin Bola at the Ephesian Tourism Agency: https://ephesiantourism.com/ and Süleyman Erköse for the tour in Izmir. You can contact him at tr.suleymanerkose@gmail.com to book your own tour!

FOLLOW ME
📸 https://www.instagram.com/BaurJoe​
🐦 https://www.twitter.com/BaurJoe​
⏰ https://www.tiktok.com/@baurjoe
📔 https://www.facebook.com/BaurJoe​
📝 https://www.withoutapath.com
🏡 https://www.joebaur.com

📖 CHAPTERS
00:00 – Welcome to Izmir
00:33 – History of the Great Fire of Smyrna
01:40 – Agora of Smyrna
03:02 – Selçuk & Turkish Carpets
08:33 – Ephesus Ultra Marathon
11:38 – Ephesus
16:38 – Alaçati & Turkish Food
20:52 – Back to Izmir

Ismir it’s the gateway to the ancient world you didn’t know about home to Ephesus and its ruins dating back to the 10th Century BCE including the Temple of Artemis one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World this is a place of pilgrimage for Christians who believe

John the Baptist hid the Virgin Mary here following the crucifixion of Jesus sorry for the spoiler alert and it’s home to the Ephesus ultramarathon taking Runners across the Rolling Hills and farmlands that surround this ancient Greek city for up to 120 km but for my wife Melanie it’s a homecoming of sorts

In 1922 her great grandmother vasilia antoniadis fled smea as it was known back then following the great fire at the end of the Greco Turkish War this is a wildly contentious point of History arguably on par with Israel and Palestine you got two peoples Greeks and Turks with completely different views on

The history for the Greeks and Armenians for that matter it was a genocide in a city with more Greeks than Athens at the time for Turks it was the final victory in their war of independence cementing the creation of the Republic of Turkey we know today sources vary on the cultural

Makeup of the City generally Turkish sources will say it was a Turkish majority City other sources will say it was a Greek majority City suffice it to say the Ottomans refer to it as Infidel smirna for a reason what’s undeniable is that it was a multicultural and Cosmopolitan Center where Greeks Turks

Jews Armenians and lentines live together in relative peace and Harmony visiting Americans called it Paradise so our journey begins with a quick stop in ismir at the site of the ancient city of smea just outside of the old town Bizaar so we had a little for bonus time this morning before hopping on the train to celuk for the race and we decided to check out some of these ancient Greek ruins here the old Agora of smea and so yeah we’re just checking out a little bit of melan’s History ismir isn’t

Really so high on the tourist map it seems I have not seen very many International tourists a lot of I think our flight was almost exclusively Turks feels like an extra special experience not only with melan history but that we’re seeing a part of the world that not a whole lot of folks

Around from get to see and especially these like this is this is an Agora a massive Agora they don’t make aoras like this anymore I’ll tell you that much despite being surrounded by thousands of years of her history few things could touch Melanie’s heart quite like the stray dogs Welcome to seluk where race fever has clearly swept across the town but first things first food Emin Bola lives in celuk and is a founder of the Ephesian tourism agency he meets us at our hotel and takes us to lunch at yavu I mean just look at that Feast the star of the

Show just might be the goam a kind of Turkish flatbread stuffed with charred eggplant onion and cheese handmade and fresh right out of the Woodfired Brick Oven it simply does not get much better than that folks our next stop takes us to nakas Ephesus to learn a bit more

About the legendary Turkish carpet Jean was raised in Australia but returned to his native turkey where he’s been working in the carp industry for the last 40 years carpets have been a part of Turkish culture for the last 3,000 years every region has its own particular design color combinations and

When you look at a rug the design and colors will actually tell you where it comes from if you know what to look for basically there’s no such thing as a Turkish rug there are carpets made in Turkey with the influence of many many cultures including Armenian Jewish Greek

And Turkish as well marrying into a Greek American family I quickly learned about the let’s say less than amicable history between Greeks and Turks there’s a reason why Yaya in my Bak Fat Greek Wedding is constantly running from the [Laughter] Turks the GRE and the T friends now but as a third party Observer I couldn’t help but notice a lot of similarities between between the two cultures it’s something Jean’s noticed as well 3 years ago I went to a Greek island called Samos and my wife and I went to a nice

Greek restaurant we asked for everything as Greek as possible and to our surprise every food that was served to us was exactly the same as what it is that we have on the side of the aan uh the culture the music the food uh just everyday reactions to

Different things of the two cultures both Greek and Turkish are so similar uh that I think it’s only the politicians at the top that caused a big divide between the two what separates us today the agan are I think in actual fact is a very very good bridge between

The two cultures something that surprised me more than anything is just how little tourism there seems to be here considering the history especially in this corner of turkey a century ago this was Paradise now I bet most Americans and Europeans for that matter have never even heard of ismir or

Ephesus in general we tur have never been good at marketing the Eiffel Tower in Paris is back to the 1800 something it’s a metal structure it gets more visitors a year than the whole of this country does per anom and yet most of the things that people have read about

In the Bible read about in history books took place in this country but people just don’t know of it Ephesus if you’ve read the Bible you’ve heard about it if you’re a history buff you know about it but very few people have actually heard of Ephesus and yet it’s just as good a

Condition as Pompei the ancient city of Troy it’s in present day Turkey uh Helen the face that launched a thousand ships the war took place in Turkey Mount aderat where no wasar is believed to have landed it’s in Turkey Istanbul the only city in the world located on two

Continents it’s in Turkey we have to do something about marketing uh because we do have so much to offer not only geographically historically but culturally as well and we have very nice food as well and for that we have Turkish Farmers to thank roughly speaking cuks economy is split about

50/50 between tourism and agriculture Mustafa is an agricultural engineer at the Ephesus Life Center a seed bank with educational programs his goal among other things is to get the Next Generation interested in sustainable agriculture for forign speech foree foreign speech speee forign speech and his team also work with local

Producers and Farmers Distributing compost fertilizer and seeds free of charge to keep cost slow and help them earn a profit they do this to ensure that healthy foods are getting to local consumers foreign speech foreign speech fore spe speech forign speech Speech all righty heading down to the start line it’s a about 6:45 and I can hear the music can see the police lights didn’t sleep very well strangely feel more nervous about this one than I did my ultra back in October I don’t know what it is Nanny

Hoole signed up for the damn thing might as well run it Leave Okay just over 10 K in so far so good we do have a major climb right in the middle of the race about 15 km so let’s see how that Goes I already hitting the end here about 5 km to go I feel like I could already give my little race review because we’re kind of repeating some of the trail here back into cuk and what I really like about this course is that it’s one that’s best done as an

Event sure you can get the GPX and try to run it but these aren’t like traditionally marked Trails so it’s definitely more enjoyable doing it as part of an event I know it’s about [Applause] [Applause] My There she is Ephesus never before have I walked in a place with such ancient history and could actually sense that this was indeed a city with actual living breathing people so you can have a look here about the benefits of coming at 8:00 in the morning there’s nobody

Here pretty much and for about the first half hour we were by ourselves and aan just said that in about an hour there’ll be 5,000 people walking around so definitely get up Early further down the road to to Terrace houses protected from the elements to ensure their preservation this is where wealthier residents of Ephesus lived and you can still see the intricate designs that decorated the rooms thousands of years Ago but what really just makes you pause and go holy is the library of celsus built in the early 1 Century CE after the city was given to the Roman Empire near the library you can find this outline of a footprint which some consider the world’s first advertisement

What are they advertising you ask the broel located conveniently across from the library a mean says they believe there was a tunnel connecting the library to the brothel so men could go to the library acting like they wanted to bang out a scroll when really they

Just wanted to bang the walk ends with a view of the ancient Greek Theater built around 250 BCE the Greeks used the theater with a capacity of about 25,000 for drama performances before the Romans turned it into gladitorial combat fortunately there’s no stabbing these days but like the Coliseum in Rome it is

Used for concerts with the likes of pavarti Ray Charles and Diana Ross having performed at the great theater about 6 km or 3 and 1 half miles down the road from the theater sits The House of the Virgin Mary where pilgrims gathered to pay their respects but my

Heretical ass would only stand to suly the Joint so we instead head over to the Temple of Artemis where there’s not much left to suly constructed around 550 BCE the temple was an enormous marble structure in honor of Artemis the Greek goddess of the hunt childbirth and the Wilderness amongst other things honestly

It would make for a hell of a LinkedIn profile these days standing in the heart of the ruins I ask aine to share a little bit more of his story and his passion for sustainable tourism we are trying to increase the awareness between Young Generation by organizing school

Trips to the young people so while they are going to the school they are also visiting some touristic sites and understand where they live because okay we born here we are living here but we don’t understand the value of where we live part of understanding that value is

Understanding the history of why some of these ancient cities like Ephesus were abandoned all cities all ancient cities in Turkey left by locals because of their economy when the economy goes down people are start moving to another cities if we continue like that in this kind of small town there will be nobody

Left to stay here and protect the area but it’s interesting you you say that about learning from the history of the places that used to be and then suddenly no now they’re no more and you don’t want that to help them the Cela cuz when we were walking around Ephesus and I

Went to the gift shop I didn’t imagine I’m like can just imagine in a thousand years people doing tourist through here be like and this is the Tourist shop that the tourist went to and how that could happen that you know over time that eventually things can be lost again

Um but that’s an interesting connection to not just tourism but engaging people to make sure that that doesn’t happen and that there’s not a tour group here in a thousand years saying like that there were people here in cuk once and they used to do tours to this other

Ancient city and now this is an ancient city but we’ve actually maintained it yes it’s all about the local communities they are trying to promote Ephesus as much as possible now we are in emis Temple of emis it’s called artemisian also it was the first Pilgrim area in

The ancient world the religious tourism started in Ephesus actually and it is started around 2,000 years ago now it’s still continue and we are just trying to to keep continue for our Young Generation different gods these days yes different guys these days for different reasons for different reasons yeah but

Nobody’s coming for Arty anymore unfortunately yeah Unfortunately our next stop is alach chati a gorgeous little medieval town with Greek Roots you can see in the stone houses and narrow streets good morning out here in alati the plan today is to mostly be working remotely but I was lucky that I found a restaurant with a husband wife

Duo working as co- chefs and they’ve invited us to come have a meal and learn a bit about Turkish food so I’m really excited about that as you can hopefully tell by my getting over a cold voice hyria was born and raised in anara and started her restaurant Sim so good in

2020 with her husband just in time for the pandemic but they survived with a small team namely themselves foreign speeech foreign for speech speech speech foreign spee speech speech foreign foreign speeech foreign Hy invites us into the kitchen to learn how to make Sarma tightly packed grape leaf stuffed with in this

Case cherries and rice foreign speech foreign foreign foree foreign speech foreign foreign for spech foreign speech foreign speech foreign foreign spe forign foreign speech forign speech forign fore while we wait for the rest of the meal Hy challenges us to try wrapping some ourselves Melanie is a natural though

She had a bit of a leg up having grown up with the Greek version doades but after a few pathetic attempts on my part we move on to the feast and H joins to walk us through the menu foreign speech foreign Foreign speech foreign foreign speech speech foreign speech foreign foreign speech fore fore fore speech speech and the list goes on hummus mashed black lentils aan artichokes with apples sundried Tomatoes sea fennel grown on the Rocks along the aan and of course the Sarma speech foreign fore Spe after one last plate of menamin eggs with tomatoes green peppers and spices it’s time to leave the comfy confines of the Cozy kak and head back over to ismir where we meet with Solan Solan is a tour guide from from outside of ismir where he’s been based since 2019 but he can

Trace his interest in becoming a tour guide back to his childhood the moment that I decided to be in this business is going back to years ago it was in my small Hometown my mother was uh making bread in one of the communal uh stun ens where other neighbors were joining as

Well and so there was this German uh tourist with a camera that that that was the moment so she kept Ed a photo of my mother then she got the address and then she sent that photo to my mother but the moment that I could not interact I could

Not help that person I could not communicate so it kind of encouraged me in the later years and so that’s personally at the moment how I think I ended up with this business to be honest just to help people to have a better experience while traveling around that’s

Precisely why I reached out to Solan in the first place because it’s damn near impossible to find a local guide or any opportunity to get to know ismir better every tour you can find online sends you out of ismir to places like Ephesus so I really appreciated the opportunity to

Get to know ismir a little better it has always been a crossroad when we think about this specific region even the pace in ismir is different because in Istanbul you need to rush you need to go from A to B but over here you have to

Take it slow you can just enjoy your time just slow down enjoy enjoy your time in the city ismir is quite a liberal City compared to Istanbul or Central or Eastern part of turkey you can you can see it in the day life when you just walk out and even even the

Dressing code is going to be completely different than uh these other parts of the country yes turkey is a secular country but you get that feeling in ismir the things that I personally love while traveling in ismir is going to be the local Delicacies and especially having those things in the historical

Places like this place from 1700s I would like to show the real life where when people come to isir so I would like to show how we live and what we eat what we do so I would like to mix them all up so just to give a real angle while

Visiting the city but yeah food is the priority to be Honest when we first landed in ismir Melanie said she was overcome with anger as if some ancestral bit of her DNA were lit on fire by the end she didn’t want to leave and that my friends is why you travel why you break bread with your neighbor and

Get to know your long lost cousins a little Better