Izmir

"Going back to the beginning of the trip...one our first day, we kind of stumbled around. We were able to sucessfully take a train from the airport to Basmane, the city center, for 1.50 YTL per person (about $1.15 each) which was a mojor accomplishment given our very limited Turkish and only a vague idea where we were going. Instead of just getting a cab to go to the Archaeology Museum, which I had planned for us to see, we just walked in the general direction of the water. "

(We walked for a very long time and asked a ton of people where the Museum was but no one really had a clue. It turned out to be aggrivatingly close when we finally found it, and just closing early since it was the last night of Ramazan, where like Christmas Eve, everyone just wants to go home.) "Finally we gave up and took a taxi to take us to the Agora, the Roman ruins that housed the Basilica and marketplace (remember, the original meaning for basilica is a meeting place, and had no religious connotation at the time).
A columnade still stands but what we found more interesting were the tombstones piled all over the place from Greek, Roman, Seljuk and Ottoman times. I had never see tombstones with turbans on top before.

After milling around with the cats in the ruins for a while we caught another taxi to take us to the museum, but they were closing early, so we just walked around in the gardens, which were lined with amazing archaeological remanants from many different eras and peoples.