We arrived in Izmir very early in the morning. Well, it was just before 8am but it seemed really early to me as I had stayed up much too late the night before. Marty and I had booked a trip to Ephesus and we had to be at the pre-arranged meeting place for 8am. I must admit that when I first woke up I was really tempted just to stay in bed. But I’m glad I didn’t. Ephesus was really worth seeing. At first I was concerned that there was only going to be a few marble pillars to look at but once we got into the site it was fascinating. I’m sure that not everything the guide said about Ephesus was true (I was really unconvinced about the stuff concerning the last resting place of Mary and John) but it was very interesting.

I really can’t remember much of what we did when we got back to the ship. Marty wasn’t speaking so I assume he went to hear one of the speakers and I spent the afternoon studying. What I do remember very clearly is dinner. It was one of those nights when the waiters decided to dance. I didn’t get up to dance with the waiter as I really didn’t want other people looking at me. However, it seems that one of my friends had decided that I should be centre of attention at some point that evening. I’ve always hated the idea of having waiters sing “Happy Birthday” to me. You see it happening to people in restaurants and I always cringe. What I wasn’t expecting was to have the waiters on the ship come over with a birthday cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to me. The main reason I wouldn’t expect such a thing to happen was that it wasn’t my birthday. Not even close to my birthday. So imagine my surprise when the cake arrived at the table. To say I found the experience embarrassing would be a bit of an understatement. The people sitting at the table with me cried with laughter. The waiters looked really perplexed as I kept saying over and over again “but it’s not my birthday”. When asked to blow out the candle and make a wish I managed to lean over and hit the cake with my chest getting cream on my new top. All in all an interesting experience. It was fairly obvious at this point who the prankster was. Marty and I had been winding Casey up all week.

After dinner we played cards with Barbie down in the bar. He taught us a game we hadn’t played before called 6 Nimmt. For whatever reason this was not a card game that I found easy to play. Actually the game wasn’t that difficult. It would be much more accurate to say that this was a game that I didn’t find easy to win. I stayed up much too late chatting to Casey and Barbie and decided to call it a night once Randal and Co started on the triple shots.