A Visit to Troy

This morning, after breakfasting in the hotel, we left Istanbul and drove south towards the coast. The drive was long and on the way, our tour guide instructed us in the basics of the Turkish language. In Turkish, many suffixes can be added to words until one word can equal a paragraph in English, There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet and they are all extremely phonetic, so it's merely a matter of learning to pronounce each sound. We learned "merhaba" (hello), "su" (water), "sogul" (please, pronounced sow) and "lutfen" (please), among others. Our tour guide also informed us of the history of some of the places around us. After a couple hours of driving, we reached the Dardanelles, which is a tiny strip of land that connects Turkey's little peninsula to the rest of Turkey. The Sea of Marmara is on one side and the Aegean Sea is on the other. In World War I, British and French troops tried first to use the waterway, then the narrow peninsula to try to give aid to Russia. However, the Turks beat them back.

We gained a short reprieve from the tour bus when we had to ride on a ferry to get to Canakkale. The wind was so strong that, when blowing directly in my face, I found it hard to move forward and, when at my back, I found myself running. Afterwards, we drove several more hours until we reached Troy, and yes, it is the same Troy from Homer's The Iliad. Each new city was built on top of older ruins, so there are ten cities from different time periods that are all essentially Troy. There are sections of walls that are standing, and our tour guide informed us that the supposed "break" in the wall is not actually a break at all: it's a deception to deceive invaders from the real break, which is the the weakest part of the wall and therefore vulnerable to attack. There was a wooden replica Trojan horse at the entrance that our group gleefully climbed into and took a group picture. There were many stray cats and dogs milling around, and more than once we caught the attention of one little one that followed us around for several minutes, cold (it was very windy as well as rainy) and wanting attention. One even jumped onto the model city of Troy in its efforts! 

After our visit to Troy, we drove for a while longer until we reached Assos. Unfortunately, by this time, it was pouring rain, so we were unable to view the ruins. We drove past them as our tour guide pointed out a few things, and then found ourselves in a cute little seaside town right on the coast of the Aegean Sea. We will stay in this town for the night and then journey to Ismir in the morning, stopping at the Pergamum Acropolis & Asclepium and the Smyrna Agora and Fortress.