Taxis round trip Kusadasi port to Ephesus

[schwerin]

If anyone has toured ancient Ephesus without a tour guide and has used port taxis, please advise cost and availability both ways. Did it work out well or if you had to do it over, would you have taken a organized tour instead?

[Lilith]

When are you going to be there? We're on Galaxy--in Kusadasi on 9/29 and booked a private tour with no shopping.

[schwerin]

Lilith, we are on Galaxy, but in Oct. Thanks for your response.

[seakat76]

Our family just did this in July. We hired a taxi driver for 40 Euros (there were 4 of us.) He drove us to Ephesus and then picked us up 3 hours later. In addition to the taxi cost, we had to pay our own entrance fees to Ephesus which must be paid in local currency (I seem to recall that it was 10 YTL each.) The cheapest ship tour was $50 each and I know that we paid less than that this way even with adding the Terrace Houses (another 10 YTL each.)

 

There are other threads with much more detail on doing this, but here is a bit more detail on our experience.

 

From reading the posts, we knew that there would be taxis right as we got off the ship, but advice was to walk thru the market to get a better deal so that is what we did. (I did not know what amount to expect unfortunately.) We talked to one group who wanted 40 Euro, but the guy was quite pushy and made me uncomfortable. We ended up talking to the owner of a leather store who offered to call his friend (it is Turkey) who would take us and that is what we did. Our advantage (I believe,) since we paid the same price offered by the first guy, was in the amount of time we were able to spend (3 hours versus 2) and no attempt to take us to carpet factories, etc. Our driver could speak a bit of English and offered to drive us by some waterparks (we had two teenagers with us) and also a great lookout point for photos on the way back.

 

On seeing Ephesus without a guide - this is our preference. We did buy a book for 4 or 5 Euros which we used, but mainly looked at later, and most of us had read up on the site before we left so at least we had an idea of what we were looking at or for. It also made us aware that we would want to pay the additional entrance fee and see the Terrace Houses which everyone, us included now, recommended. They are definitely worth it. We really prefer to do things at our own pace and not be part of a large group (plus I believe even the ship tour goes to the carpet places.) We could have used a bit more time (maybe another hour) but it was very hot in July and we weren't that disappointed.

 

I don't know what the weather will be like when you are there, but it is very wise to take water, sunscreeen and even a hat with you. I eventually used all of the above.

 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have other questions.