Mary’s House at Ephesus

We arrived in Ephesus to visit Mary’s House and walk the streets of ancient Ephesus where St Paul preached.

Catholics believe that Mary and St John lived their last days in the hills above Ephesus. Mary allegedly appeared to an invalid to reveal the location of her house at Ephesus. The archeologists unearthed Mary’s House at that location.

Ancient Ruins at Ephesus

No one lives in Ephesus today. The area was abandoned because of earthquakes that frequent the area among other reasons.

This has meant the Archeologists have been able to unearth the whole city. The effort has been ongoing for over 100 years. They are about 20% finished. It is an active archeological site.

This was a marvelous place to visit! It was by far the most impressive site we have visited on this trip!

You can see how people shopped, entertained themselves, worshipped and studied. You can walk the marble streets where the horses and chariots roaming. You can see the covered “basilica” walk ways that people used.

There was no evidence of St Paul here and Mary for that matter. Ephesus was a huge pagan city until the time of Constantine. However, you can imagine St Paul preaching here and the lack of reception among the shop keepers as described in scripture.

The water delivery system under the streets was really impressive. The human waste removal system in evidence resembled our own!

Last day in Istanbul, Turkey  10/11/2014

We went to the largest Catholic Church is Istanbul for morning Mass.  It is a Basilica – St. Anthony of Padua. This church was indeed beautiful. Pope John XXIII was known in Turkey as Turkey’s Pope since he had served many years as the pastor of this church in Istanbul. So some reason, our bus did not pick us up right away to take us to the Chorea Museum. This meant that we dropped going to the spice museum.

 Basilica – St. Anthony of Padua

Chorea Museum

Leaving Istanbul

Our first day in Istanbul, Turkey was a full tour day. There were long lines everywhere we went.

We visited the Topkapi Imperial Palace, Hagia Sophia Church Museum, The Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar.

We had a Turkish lunch together before going to the Blue Mosque. This was a very tiring day and the stop for lunch was refreshing.

Topkapi Imperial Palace

The Imperial Palace was changed into a museum. There was no sense of what the palace might have been like be there. There was an immense display of royal jewelry. The extensive grounds were impressive.

Sophia Museum

The Sophia Church Museum is no longer used for religious services. The original Christian church goes back to 3rd century. It was destroyed and restored a number of times. It is filled with man, many mosaic paintings.

 The Blue Mosque

We had to wait in long lines to get into the Blue Mosque. There were services in the morning that excluded visitors so all the tourists seemed to show up at the same time. The women had to cover their heads so there were many vendors selling scarves although the mosque provided Milly with a head covering scarf.

The Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar was truly an immense collection of covered “streets” of shops that seemed to fan out in all direction. There seem to be everything imaginable for sale.

We left on our Mediterranean Cruise on Monday Oct 6th. We took a train from tome to the port of Rome. We got on Board about 1 pm. We the Celebrity Reflection cruise ship departed at 5 pm. The ship is absolutely gorgeous. It holds 3,000 guests. It is only 3 years old. It isn’t noisy at all. The food has been very good. The entertainment has been outstanding. We have seen three shows already.

The Catholic ANswers hadds a daily Mass to our agenda. When we are at sea we all meet from 10-noonand 2-3 Pm for lcctures. We have had 4 lectures so far from 4 different speakers. Three of the 4 have been very good. The best being on Dante’d Divine Comedy. Fred downloaded a copy after hearing the lecture!

Santorini

We had take a tender from the ship to shore in rather rough waters. The islands in this group were created by a volcanic  explosion . The island of Santorini is about 20 miles long but sits on high cliffs overlooking the ocean. We did take a bus up a switch back road at the new port. We got back to the ship from the old port where cable car took us down. The other option was to take a donkey down.

The capital of the island is Fira, high above the old port. The village of Oia at the other end of the island is really very very quaint. The richest people on Greece live there. After going the a local winery for wine tasting, we walked around both Oia and Fira.

We stopped for greek coffee in a restaurant high above the ocean and the streets of Oia. It was wonderful.

We are now at sea and will dock in Istanbul, Turkey on Friday morning.

We had a plan for this day. We think the Holy Spirit may have had a different agenda.

Our plan was to have a good breakfast at Beehive Cafe where we are staying. Then, we were going to 9:00 am Mass at St Mary’s of the Angels and Martyrs within walking distance.

The first part of our plan worked out. At breakfast, we agreed that after we visited the ruins of Ostia Antica, if time permitted we would go to visit the Basilica of St Paul Outside the walls. We went back to the room.

Fred decided to call the TEP Wireless company because our european hotspot device wasn’t charging and was acting broken. Fred thought he damaged a wire connection when he changed the battery the day before. He ended up on the phone for over 50 minutes trying to arrange where they were going to send the replacement since or cruise started the next day. Fred had to gather some information for them on our itinerary. He sent them a reply to their email to him.  We had lost about two hours and we were a little frazzled. We both decided to forgo Ostia Antica.

We had lunch and headed to the train station to buy on all day metro tickets so we could visit several sites in Rome beginning with St Paul’s Outside the Walls. Fred noted that the St Pauls Cloister wasn’t open until 3 PM.

It took us 1.5 hours to buy our Metro tickets. It was a horrifying, illogical and unbelievable! We got in the long line 3 times for buying tickets from the “office”. The automated ticket selling machines that every one uses refused to even recognize our credit card. It may only have accepted debit cards.  We tried many machines, asked many people for help and got no where. We decided  to buy with Euro’s. We put in a $20, it wouldn’t take it. We went and got 2 ten’s. The machines wouldn’t accept them either. It seems they  were only accepting coins.

In the process we must have gone up and down the stairs from one level to another 4 or  times. We finally went back to the ticket office and waited and waited. Finally our number came up. We paid him euro’s 2 ten’s and we had our daily train passes. Normally, like the previous day – 2 minutes stop for tickets, now had taken 1.5 hours.

Amazingly, we arrived at St Pauls at about 5 minutes before the Cloister opened. How ironic! Thank you HS. I learned that my tempered wasn’t yet under control!

St Paul’s Outside the Walls

Cloister at St Pauls

St Peter’s in Chains

After we went to St Pauls and its cloister, it was about 4:30 pm. St Paul’s was breathtaking!! Milly normally wouldn’t have wanted to go to another church. She agreed that we could go to St Peter’s in the Chains. We got lost but eventually found it.

Last Dinner in Rome

We thought we would get a couple of Pizza’s at our favorite restaurant. We had been the variety of Pizzas they offered and thought they would be good. It was closed on Sunday!

We decided to go to a full course dinner place. We has a great 4 course dinner with half liter bottles of wine (white for milly and Red for Fred).  We had bruschetta, Spaghetti Carbonara followed by Veal and beef entries and then desert! All of this was excellent.

We take an 11:15 train to port to board the Cruise. We will be ready to board by 12:30 pm. We need a rest and a day at sea!

Last night (10/3) in Rome, Milly and Fred went back to the excellent restaurant where they had eaten several days before. We had seen a man eating a steak dish that looked great. Milly and I ordered 2 different beef dishes, shared a salad and an Eggplant  parmigiana. The later was a real great dish. It was different that we expected. The beef steaks were outstnding! Great meal with great wine!

Fred met his objective if possible of visiting all of the Italy Papal Basilicas. Today’s post on Assisi will cover the 2 Papal Basilicas. Tomorrow’s post will cover the last one to be visited St Paul’s outside the walls. Prior posts covered the others:

Papal Basilicas 

The four major basilicas, together with the minor Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls were formerly known as “patriarchal basilicas”. Upon relinquishing in 2006 the title of Patriarch of the West, Pope Benedict XVI renamed these basilicas from “patriarchal basilicas” to “papal basilicas”.^[5] Those “patriarchal basilicas” were associated with the five ancient patriarchal sees of Christendom (the Pentarchy):^[6]

• St. John Lateran was associated with Rome (Patriarch of the West),
• St. Peter’s with Constantinople (Latin Patriarch of Constantinople),
• St. Paul’s with Alexandria (Latin Patriarch of Alexandria),
• St. Mary Major with Antioch (Latin Patriarch of Antioch),
• St. Lawrence with Jerusalem (Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem).

The title of “patriarchal basilica” (now, since 2006, “papal basilica”) was also officially given to two churches associated with Saint Francis of Assisi situated in or near his home town of Assisi, Italy:

• Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi
• Papal Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels

Orvieto

We took a bus tour to we are now on bus headed to Orvieto and Assisi on a tour bus. Orvieto hosed the Papacy for a number of years when the City of Rome was threatened.

Orvieto sits on a high plateau. It is a quaint, quiet village with a huge Catholic heritage. We have pictures below of the tram ride that takes you up the the village on the hill. Click here to see a little movie clip on the tram ride.

While going though the wonderful Orvieto Cathedral, Fred went over to a Franciscan Monk who was hearing confessions in a roped off are. Fred asked if he could go to confession even though he says he didn’t have any serious sins other than the little ruckus that occurred in the Vatican Museum when Fred stopped some people from cutting in line. The priest didn’t understand english but gently motioned for Fred to get his blessing. He held Fred’s head with one hand and made the sign of the cross on Fred’d forehead. It was very special. Fred felt the Holy Spirit’s energy pass into him.

You were not allowed to take pictures in the Cathedral. Orvieto Pictures:

 Assisi

We left Orvieto and headed for Lake Turismo for lunch. Our tour was first treated to a reception of wine and bruschetta which was excellent! Then, we sat down for a full lunch that was wonderful. We then headed out to Assisi.

We visited the church associated with St Claire before heading for the Basilica of St Francis. The village of Assisi sits on a hill high above a tone where the Basilica of Mary and the Angels resides. We visited the later on our way out of town.

We visited where St Francis was born and raised, where he worked and where he decided to form the Franciscans.

There was a Corpus Festival in Assisi while we were there. The streets were very crowded. At the Basilica of St Francis, there was a procession going on to move relics from the lower church to the upper church. We couldn’t visit the upper church because there were too many people trying to get in and our time ran out.

The lower church was spectacular. It’s too bad we couldn’t take pictures.