The Valantines: Turkey!

I'm SO SORRY for being so far behind on our trip this summer! I still have like, 6 countries to do! Today is all about our day in Turkey! Ephesus mostly. We've actually been here before and we LOVE it! The ruins are amazing! Our first stop of the day was to this little village called Sirince, it was amazingly beautiful. It was full of all of the locals shops and everything was hand made and incredibly detailed.

I had fun taking shots of the little Turkish women, this one is consoling her cat after Evie scared the death out of it lol

Thus, our first lesson in not touching stray animals in foreign countries...

Natalie and I bought these GORGEOUS hand painted plates in this little shop just before we left.
I wish I had a picture of them they are beautiful!

After Sirince we went to an old turkish Mosque

Women need to cover their heads and we only had one scarf lol

This is the cute little man who showed us around the Mosque :)

Afterward he took us outside to his little shop and drew all of our names in Turkish for us

He was so nice we just loved him!

The place we love most in Turkey is Ephesus. It's this city of ancient ruins with an amazing library! We went there last time we were in Turkey so this time we decided to also hit up the Ephesus Museum, it's full of all the artifacts that they've found around the ruins!

Evie was a little bit of a handful with all of this ancient stuff to climb all over!

Luckily we found a ramp and she did that for the rest of the time :)

After a while she and Jared were going crazy so we headed off for the rest of our day

The place where The Virgin Mary was thought to have lived is in Turkey and it's a really beautiful sacred place. It's all the way up on top of a mountain so we had to take a little drive.

It's okay though because the locals along the way never disappoint lol

The middle picture is outside of Mary's house. There are no cameras allowed inside but once you get out you can go light candles in the garden and then pass the prayer wall. This is my favorite part.

People write their prayers on little pieces of paper or tissue and stuff it into this wall in hopes that they will be answered. It's AMAZING how much is stuffed into this wall!

We drove all the way down the mountain again toward the ruins at Ephesus!

We of course stopped for some legit turkish lunch first.

Middle Picture: this is the Arena that the Apostle Paul (I believe, correct me if i'm wrong) preached in,

it's the arena thats in the picture section of your scriptures

after you pass the arena you walk further to the ruins and

this

is the first thing you see when you round the corner...

The Library of Celsus

It's the most beautifully detailed ruin I've even seen! It's so overwhelming because you start out so close to it and you can't take it all in at once!

Once you back up further into the city you can see it all

My mom always researches each country for months before we go on these trips so she always knows all the answers to any questions we randomly throw out!

Example

Me: "Man, I wonder how many people lived in this city!?"

Mom: "well this was a seaside city so it was actually one of the most populated cities of it's time, during the war between turks and the greeks the only place to get resources was from the ocean so the turks moved here after their leader Amid Heduish died in 160 BC"

(That was a bunch of bologna I made up but you get the point)

Here's my mom (putting off heat stroke) and reading to us about the Library of Celsus from her book she's been reading all year :)

(and jared being a teenage boy)

dad always taking pictures :)

I very much love that about my dad. He documents EVERYTHING and I definitely get that from him.

Evangeline passed out thankfully

When we were here a few years ago my brother Ryan took a picture just like the one of Jared below. Since Ryan couldn't be with us on this trip (he's on a Mission in Cambodia) Jared decided to honor is memory by doing the same pose on a broken column