Weather - Fine and sunny
Accommodation - Hotel Kolin
Our wonderful tour of Turkey is fast coming to a close as we only have two days left. Tomorrow evening we will arrive in Istanbul having completed 3000kms in a clockwise route around the central, southern and western part of the country. The final day will be a further tour of Istanbul.
There was a fair bit of driving to be done today so our wake up call was for five thirty. We visited the ancient site of Pergamon in the morning and Troy in the afternoon. The bus departed at seven thirty and headed north for our three hour journey which included a morning tea break and we arrived at Pergamon by ten thirty. We passed through Funda's home town of Izmir which is Turkey's third largest city with four million people. Once again it was a dense city of high-rise buildings of six to eight stories high. In the country we passed hundreds of acres of olive trees.
At Pergamon we visited the Sanctuary of Asclepius (the god of healing) which sits on the plain below the Acropolis. In this place people with health problems came to bathe in the sacred waters and whilst sleeping Asclepius would appear in their dreams to tell them how to be cured. These three here look like they might be looking for a cure!
The site had a theatre, a healing spring, an underground passageway and library. This was another site which I had learned about at uni. It has been good to see these ancient sites and try and remember what I used to know!
After yet another delicious lunch (diet starts at the end of this holiday!) we spent a couple of hours driving to Troy. After climbing a steep mountain for quite some time we arrived at the strategic site at four o'clock. There were very few tourists around as it was so late in the day. Funda once again excelled in describing the site and its nine layers of ruins which date back to 5000BC and have been uncovered during the past 150 years of excavations. The numbers in the photo indicate the layers uncovered.
There was a very large modern-day wooden sculpture of the Trojan horse at the entry of the site. This was made by a Turkish sculptor. Henk and I climbed to the top of it. You might be able to see Henk looking out of the top left window!
When we arrived at our five star hotel at five thirty we found that the electricity was turned off. We were on the fourth floor and as the lifts and lights weren't working we thought that this was a very good excuse for us to proceed directly to the very stylish outside bar area. We were given complimentary drinks as we overlooked the strait to the European side of the Dardanelles.
We were soon joined by a very large group of German tourists. It confirmed for us that a small group tour is the way to go! The buffet dinner at the hotel was outstanding. It was hard to choose what to eat as there was so much to choose from. Tomorrow morning we will catch an early ferry and spend time at the Gallipoli site before heading back to Istanbul.
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