Troy & Pergamum
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
61
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Canakkale,
Turkish Aegean Coast,
Turkey
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
At Troy, Gokhan took us through the ruins (the world's first archaeological excavations!), reading us passages from Homer's Iliad. The ruins were pretty crap compared to Pompeii, but I'll admit I was only really looking forward to seeing the horse.
There's a giant wooden horse designed to look like in the tale, and we went inside it! It's really cool ... there are windows so I got people to take photos of me inside the horse from ground level, and you get an idea from inside of what it would have been like for the Greeks in Homer's tale. Gimmicky but fun.
Pergamum
Now THIS place has great ruins, and it's high up on a hill with amazing views over the Canakkale region. We visited the acropolis, the reconstructed Temple of Trajan (which looks a little like the Parthenon in Athens) and, most significantly, the ancient Hellenistic theatre which holds 10,000 people, the steepest in the entire ancient world. For an idea of how it looks check these photos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Akropol_yuksel.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TurkeyApril2004.jpg. Grant took a cool photo of me at the bottom of the theatre, standing on top of an ancient column and pointing (shooting an arrow?) at the sun in the distance. It was really relaxing sitting in the seats and looking at the beautiful view below, imagining the atmosphere that would have been enjoyed when the theatre was in use thousands of years ago.
There's an ancient well in the complex with a pillar in the middle, you can see thousands of coins at the base but only about 15 at the top of the pillar, Gokhan says it's a game tourists play to try and flick their coin onto the pillar. Naturally, I took this as a challenge, and succeeded in my first and only go while the rest of the group failed! At the end of the visit James took a great photo of me next to an arch overlooking the city below, I'd seen a photo of Milena and her brother sitting on the same arch a few years ago and I wanted to recreate that, but there were warning signs all around and I was nevertheless too chicken to climb up it.
After touring
We watched Troy on the bus, I love its epicness (??), and after being inside a recreation of the horse it was far more exciting to watch it. After dinner, I went with Gokhan and about half the group to a sheesha bar, where we shared 3 waterpipes, and I couldn't manage to blow rings. I'd be very keen to get one of these at home, if my brother doesn't already have one hidden away. Afterwards i won a 4-person ping pong round robin back in the hotel, and might seek new challengers for tomorrow night.
