Turkey Day 18 - Troy!

Luke enjoying Troy, and looking out for wooden horses.

Driving to Canakkale today, and I'm nearing the end of the Turkey holiday as this is where the Gallipoli Peninsula is located.

Again the breakfast in the Pergamon Pension was just out of this world, I’m going to miss these lovely hot breakfasts with such a range of food.

Today is a three hour drive and then of course visiting ruins and then Canakkale. Normally there is a long drive at the end of the day – it was nice for the drive to be in the morning instead for a change.

And what ruins to visit – the famous site of Troy itself.

Robin and I inside the wooden horse at Troy.

Last time visited Troy I was on a tour group and it felt very rushed and I promised Julianne & Nadia that I would arrange for us to come back – and today I fulfilled that promise, unfortunately Nadia was not able to make the trip.

Not only was it more fun going through at my own speed, and I was there for about 3 and a half hours but there are lots of Bronze Age ruins – which are just amazing.

Troy as a city was in use from 3000BC through to Roman times, and has 9 defined stages, and the early 3000BC to 1000BC remains are what interests me – and there are parts of building foundations and house foundations and because of the thousands of years of occupation you can see how the buildings techniques changed over the years – fascinating stuff. A good example are the city walls which started off as mud-bricks which had to be continually replace, and progressing through to walls made of stones but with no use of mortar.

Grandma, Julianne and the boys next to a modern mud brick wall so you can see what it would have been like.

And the foundations of the mud brick walls from thousands of years ago.

Julianne, Grandma, Robin & Luke outside the original stone wall made with no mortar from 3000 years ago, and likely to be city wall from the famous Troy & Wooden Horse legend.

Visiting Troy.

The large trench dug by Henrich Schliemann in the 1800’s who discovered Tory, and destroyed lots of history at the same time and incorrectly claimed 5000 year old golden treasure as coming from the 3000 year old Troy battle.

Robin and what is expected to one of the city ramps which the wooden horse could have been taken in through.

And something I found fascinating, the ground story of a 2 story building from 4000 years ago. The top story was made of wood so didn’t survive, must have been a large house. 

I have not seen any ruins anywhere as old at Tory on this trip so it quite exciting to be here, though I have seen similar bronze age ruins in Greece such at Mycenae so it was interesting to compare.

After a much better time at Troy than I thought I would have it was time to jump in the car for the 20 minute drive into Canakkale, and boy was it crowded in the city.

As I am always finding historical buildings in the centre of where we are staying and they are always built before cars were invented so parking is usually a hassle, but is worth it once we are settled and everything is a short walking distance. What we always do is I drive to near the hotel and Julianne runs in to find out where to park. And again hotel is right smack in the middle of Canakkale which is handy once everything is unload but I had to go around the block three times on these tiny one way streets with pedestrians everywhere before the car was parked as directed by the hotel staff, which was challenging especially as I was tired and head-achy at this point.

The hotel had us in rooms that were far apart, and Grandma expressed her dis-satisfaction at this setup and luckily the lady in the room opposite from my room agreed to move and we now have 2 rooms across from each other, and in the original historical building to boot.

In the hotel by 5-30 and I actually had a quick nap to help with my headache and then was woken at 6-30 for a quick meal just down the road before and early night for a long day tomorrow - the 100 year anniversary ANZAC Service.