Ephesus audio guide

[coralsmum]

Hi, I originally posted this on the Ports forum but have had no response. Has anyone used one of the audio guides you can hire from the entrance at Ephesus? If so was it a good way to tour the site? Does it include details for the Terrace Houses? Thanks, Sue.

[jaceyar]

Download Rick Steve's audio guide - its free, was very good.

[Presto2]

We tried to use one of these with a tour we were on and it was a fiasco (with another cruise company). We gave up and just used our guide book and went for a potter!

[coralsmum]

Hi, I had heard Rick Steve's was good but we are not very technical and don't have anything to download it to! Presto2 was the audio guide you used obtained from the entrance to Ephesus? P&O offer a trip where you go aroung on your own with the audio guide so that is basically what we want information about. We fancy being able to take more time at some sections but don't want to miss the Terrace Houses nor have an audio guide that is hard to use or understand. Thanks to you both, Sue.

[Jammy Bun]

We used the audio guides last September - they were included with our P&O booked trip to Ephesus. We thought they were very good, but we didn't 'do' the terrace houses as the queues were so long and it looked like it would be a claustrophobic experience. In fact the whole place was over-crowded and uncomfortable. We first visited Ephesus about 10 years ago, when it was busy but not too bad, and we were looking forward to a return trip, but were extremely disappointed. In my opinion they ought to limit the number of visitors each day.

[Jammy Bun]

Your query reminded me that my OH had written about our day in Ephesus in our holiday blog last year... here's an extract:-

 

The ancient city of Ephesus, or rather the kit to rebuild it, lies on a hillside about 10 miles from Kusadasi. The city was comprehensively trashed by rampaging Persian hordes in the 5th Century BC. Archaeologists have been sticking fragments of it back together for over 100 years and when they can't find the right bit they just use a block of concrete which works surprisingly well. They haven't got very far, but there's just enough there to allow you visualise what the city must have looked like. The magic of Ephesus is that you can see all the working parts of a city dating back over 2000 years.

 

There are government buildings and communal toilets and bath houses with warm air heating. Paved roads with underground sewers and water pipes. (Some roads even had street lighting.) Lots of gates, fountains, monuments and a 25,000 seat amphitheatre with a channel for the blood, or it may just have been drainage. There is even a brothel with an underground tunnel to the public library. Library services were far more comprehensive in those days.

 

Our visit lasted two hours and we arrived 15 minutes early so they could sell us the opportunity to go the toilet. Inside the site, it felt like it must have done on the day the city fell. The rampaging Persian hordes were played by the thousands of passengers from the four cruise ships that were parked up in Kusadasi harbour. It's time that, as well as listing “World Heritage” sites, the United Nations publishes a “Destroyed by Tourism” listing with a logo that has to be prominently displayed in places of maximum greed. Ephesus now even beats Venice on my own draft list.

 

If you've never been to Ephesus I still think that it's a place you ought to see. If, like us you have seen it before, in quieter times, stay well away from the hell hole it now is and rely on your memories.