Mount Solmissos, Mary’s House

Our cruise ship, the “City of Rhodes,” left Athens and stopped for a few hours at the Island of Míkonos, a half-day on the Isle of Patmos, then at Kusadasi, Turkey, where we negotiated for a taxi to take us to the local sights. We visited the city of Ephesus, a ruin that our imagination told us must have been the most beautiful city ever, when it was in its prime.

The elderly Chevy taxi took us up Mount Solmissos, above Ephesus, to visit what local legend says was the last home of the Virgin Mary. Near “Mary’s house” a row of pipes supply what we understood is “holy water,” something like at Lourdes, France. Our taxi driver (that's the driver, next to Emmy dressed in blue) had been a driver for a General in the Turkish Army, and was wounded in the leg during a war in the 1950’s. The wound would not heal, in spite of what the doctors and hospitals did. He managed to visit “Mary’s house,” did something with this water, and his leg healed.