The pilgrims gather at Aberdeen Airport at 5-50am for the 6-50am flight to Heathrow and at 10-30am meet up with those who travelled by different routes to London to begin the check-in procedures with Turkish Airlines.  The flight to Istanbul is delayed for about an hour but eventually we are airborne and fly across southern England and the Channel before heading towards Germany, Austria and the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the European part of Turkey to land at Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, in mist and rain.  The flight to Izmir has been delayed by an hour and so there is time to browse in the duty free shops, to enjoy some Turkish coffee and to acquire Turkish Delight.  Then back onto the tarmac and a baggage check before the hour long flight across the Sea of Marmara and down the Aegean Coast of Turkey to Izmir.

An 8-0am call, then breakfast and away at 9-0am.  Izmir is ancient Smyrna and the name was changed only after the Turkish War of Independence in 1922.  It is Turkey’s third largest city, after Istanbul and Ankara, and is built round a magnificent bay, with the city rising up the slopes of the hills. In Roman days the city was described as “first of Asia in size and beauty”.  It was the birthplace of Homer, the great epic poet of Greece.

We travel 35 miles south of Izmir to Ephesus.  Here Saint John ministered and was buried.  Here Saint Paul taught for three years and it is here that the Virgin Mary is said to have lived after leaving Jerusalem.

The city was founded around 980BC at the mouth of the river Cayster, but the lack of tides in the Aegean to scour the sediment brought down by the river has meant that the coastline has receded some six miles in the 2000 years since the New Testament events in Ephesus.  Even at that time access to the harbour was through a constantly dredged channel from the sea. The Greco-Roman city was abandoned in the sixth century and a new city built around the acropolis hill where remains of the Basilica of Saint John now stand.

We pack and leave the Kaya Prestige and travel some 50 miles northward to Thyatira.  The town is now called Akhisa but at the time the letters in Revelation were written it was the least important of the seven towns.  It stands at the mouth of a long valley which connects the Hermus and Caicus rivers and some of the greatest roads in the world passed close by - that from Byzantium to Smyrna and the one from Pergamum to Syria.  The town was founded in 290BC as a military base whose function was delay any enemy advance on Pergamum.  There were temples there to Artemis and Apollo and it was also the shrine of an oracle, called Sambathe.

The electricity and water pumps in the hotel fail just before we leave at 9-0am and travel six miles south to Colossae.  No record exists of Paul ever visiting here but during his stay at Ephesus a citizen of Colossae, Epaphras, became a Christian. Much later, probably when he was in prison in Rome, Onesimus, a runaway slave, became a Christian and Paul sent him back to his Christian master, Philemon, in Colossae.

An early call and breakfast and we leave the Hotel Colossea at 7-0am for the long drive to Istanbul.  We pass through Denizli and join the ancient Silk Road and on past Colossae.  We skirt by the Turkish lake-land, which contains unspoilt salt and freshwater lakes, and come to Dinar for a coffee break.

From 4000BC the Bosphorus has been a busy waterway.   The first settlement on the Golden Horn dates from the Hittite Empire, around 1300BC, and it later moved to Seraglio Point, where the Topkapi Palace now stands, where there was already a fishing village called Lygos.

We drive back to the Hippodrome and are the first visitors of the day to Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Divine Wisdom.  Constantine’s original church was burned during an uprising on June 20 404 and was rebuilt during the reign of Theodosius II and reopened on October 10 415.  This church was destroyed by fire during an uprising in 532 and completely rebuilt by Justinian and Theodora, the architects being Anthemios of Tralles and Isador of Miletus.  No expense or effort was spared and the work included bringing eight columns of red porphyry from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.  A thousand masons and 10,000 apprentices worked on the building and after five years 11 months and 10 days it was consecrated on December 27 537.

Today is a free day which means that we do not have an organised programme, nor the benefit of a guide or coach. However, we set off from the Aksaray Hotel at 9-30am and walk for 20 minutes along Ordu Caddesi, past the University of Istanbul and come to the Grand Bazaar. It is said to be the largest covered bazaar in the world and we have an hour or so to explore its streets and alleyways.

We pack and leave the Aksaray Hotel at 10-0am and make our final pilgrimage visit.  It is to Saint Saviour’s, the monastery of Chora, outside the original city walls.  The first monastery and church here was built by Theodora in 534, rebuilt in the 12th century by Maria Dukaina, the mother-in-law of the Emperor Alexi Comnenos.  In the 14th century it was completely restored by Logothere Theodore Methocrite, who spent his entire fortune on the task.  The mosaics are among the finest examples of Byzantine art in the world.