Six years ago, I was at this site of "the Virgin Mary's last home" outside of Ephesus. The most memorable part of that visit was that it was the only time in my life that I ever got "car-sick".
We were on a Turkish bus "for tourists" that appeared to be clean and well-maintained. Little did we know that this bus turned out to have virtually no shocks left for our winding ascent up the steep mountain as that isn't something you can discern by looking at the bus while it is stationary. We sat in the back of the bus as it careened around every turn of this serpentine road up the mountain, and with each sharp curve, the bus leaned over the side to give us a nauseating horizontal view of the valley below. Two curl-horned mountain goats literally lept over the front of the moving bus never missing a step on their vertical descent down the mountain, as I was praying to God that the last one wasn't going to come flying through the bus' front window. This seemingly endless ride was also punctuated with right and left hand grabs for any bus fixture that might keep us from slamming face-first into the side windows. I can't even tell you how long the ride was --30 or 50 minutes, maybe hours -- but I can say that my one continuous thought at the time was that these were going to be my last minutes on earth and that I was most likely to be "seeing the Virgin Mary face-to-face" in the immediate future rather than "just seeing her house"!
When we finally arrived at the site, we were greeted by a silent, sullen-faced Turkish guard brandishing an ouzi who was none to happy to see me "acting strangely" -- in fact, I was attempting to find a place to sit down before I fell down and there was no such place to be found. When -- with some water and time -- I finally recovered enough to look around and take in the site, I really felt that my sacrifical journey had been a complete waste of time. I am an Orthodox Christian and my home church is "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary", so the Virgin Mary does have special significance to me, but this place absolutely did not. The house was pretty much a garden variety one-room shrine filled with modern carpets and candles, but with no special feeling of either mystery or God's Love to me. In fact, as far as I was concerned, you could have plopped down this little stone building anywhere and said that it was anything you wanted it to be, and it would have had the same aura & feeling -- like a bland Christian Disneyland without the entertainment value, unless you consider that bus ride to be "entertaining" (needless to say, I did not!).
If anyone goes to Turkey and thinks about visiting this site, I would NOT recommend it. But if anyone has been there and has a far better spiritual experience than I did, then more power to you!
Thank you for sharing the bus trip ... I am still ROFL!!! Having traveled extensively throughout Italy, I am more than familiar with those serpentine roads. So here's a story for you. Many years ago, one one of my trips to Italy, I decided to take the train between Rome and Campobasso (Molise Province). In looking over the options, I noticed one reasonably priced train was called the "accelerato". I boarded the train early in the morning and sat towards the front. Pulling out of the station, the aroma of 'moth balls' wafted up my nostrils. The train progressed slowly, winding around the hills and stopped at the next town. After 10 minutes or so, it pulled out of the station and again the choking odor of 'moth balls' hit me. Well, I soon discovered that the train ran on 'naptha' and was called 'accelerato' because it accelerated after every stop. This was the 'local' train. It took 4 1/2 hours to reach Rome!