The Pauline Coast

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; the calm approaches of the Gulf of Fethiye; and the Twelve Islands of Göcek, among the most sheltered cruising water on the whole coast. Our final anchorage is Gemiler — St Nicholas Island — where early Christian pilgrims bound for the Holy Land stopped for centuries, and where the saint's memory still rests. Each evening ends at anchor in some of the most beautiful water on earth.

We step off at Fethiye and take the coast road east. The disembarkation day stays deliberately light, with a single stop at Patara — the Lycian harbor where Paul changed ships in Acts 21 — before an unhurried arrival into Antalya. A full day among the southern sites follows: Perge, where Paul's first journey began in earnest, and the great theatre at Aspendos. (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.) The voyage closes with a morning walk down to the old harbor at Attalia — Paul's departure point — framed as the sending, on the very morning the group flies home.