Turkey, Cannakalle

We visited Cannakalle today, it is a port city in western Turkey. It was an overnight bus ride from Cappadocia which took 18 hours, brutal is all I can say. Managed to sleep most of the time though so it was alright. I found a nice place to stretch out and sleep on the back of the bus (where the seats formed a kind of bed) but got woken up in the middle of the night by the conductor and had to move. I thought this was because it was a safety issue or something but it turns out he just wanted my spot, arrggghhhh!!!! So I went back to my seat and attempted to sleep in the chair which didn't work too well.

Cannakalle is okay but we came here to see Troy since Dave and I wanted to see it. Took the dolmus (Turkish mini-bus) survived the ride (dolmus drivers are almost as crazy as the cab drivers) and arrived at Troy. We basically had the place to ourselves as there were only about 20 people there. My initial impressions were that Troy was a lot smaller than I imagined, although where the outer wall and town was were not altogether clear. It was really neat to be in the place where the Greek hordes came ashore and look at the plains where Achilles and Hector duked it out the the death (if you believe that really happened, it's quite controversial) Dave and I loved this place since we are big history buffs, Kirsten politely tolerated it :)
Here are the pics from Troy...

Dave scaling the wall pretending to be a Greek invader

Standing on the ruins of a temple? I don't really see it though

One of the gates to Troy VI, I believe

Foundations overlooking the fields of Troy, where the battles were fought, now they are farm fields...

Closeup of the ruins...

Another shot of the ruins...
- posted by mark @ 2:15 AM