How the eleven days unfold.
We gather in Kuşadası, an arrival day before the work begins. The next morning opens straight into Ephesus: the empire at full scale — marble streets, the Library of Celsus, the great theatre. This is the city where Paul lived for three years, and the weight against which the rest of the voyage is measured. On the morning we board, we stop first at Miletus — the now-silted harbor where Paul gave his farewell to the Ephesian elders, among the most moving scenes in Acts, and the city of Thales, the first of the Greek philosophers, who held that all things arise from a single source. Across the narrow strait lies Samos, the island of Pythagoras; on a clear morning it sits plainly on the horizon. From Miletus we transfer to Bodrum to meet the gulet.
For six nights the gulet is home. We cast off from Bodrum — ancient Halicarnassus, birthplace of Herodotus, the father of history, and home to the Mausoleum that once stood among the seven wonders of the ancient world — running south and east with the prevailing winds rather than against them. We make our way one unhurried anchorage to the next: Knidos, at the tip of the Datça peninsula, whose temple once held the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, the most celebrated statue of the ancient world; the sheltered fortress bay of Bozukkale; and then Lyda, in the approaches to the Gulf of Fethiye — an anchorage almost certainly used by Paul's ship — with a hike up to the ruins above the bay. We anchor at Gemiler — St Nicholas Island — where early Christian pilgrims bound for the Holy Land paused for centuries, and where the saint's memory still rests, with a climb to the top of the island. We step off the gulet at Kalkan, the easternmost anchorage of the voyage; if the wind is kind, an afternoon visit to Patara, an Acts port on the grain-shipping route between Rome and Alexandria. Each evening ends at anchor in some of the most beautiful water on earth.
We disembark at Kalkan and take the beautiful coastal road east. A stop at Myra — where Paul boarded the massive grain ship bound for Rome, the ship that would wreck on Malta (Acts 27) — before an unhurried arrival into Antalya by late afternoon. A full day among the southern sites follows: Perge, where Paul's first journey began in earnest. (We hope to include the Antalya Archaeological Museum, currently being rebuilt; if it has not reopened, we weight the day toward Perge or visit the museum at Side instead.) Before the closing dinner, we walk down to the old harbor at Attalia — Paul's departure point — framed as the sending. Sunday is travel home.