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Luke & I resting by Iznik Lake in the early morning.

This was the day which was supposed to have the easiest drive, about 3 hours. So I was really looking forward to spending the afternoon relaxing in Istanbul after dropping off the car and maybe heading out to the Grand Bazaar. Well that didn’t work - the gentle 3 hour drive became a very unpleasant 7 hour nightmare.

Robin and I inside the Aya Sofia in Iznik– at the end with the seats for the bishops.

After five really good & emotional full on days here in Canakkale beside the Gallipoli peninsula it is time to move on, and to get back in the car. Today was the latest start on the holiday and we were not away until 11am!

And as we left Chunuk Bair, Robin stopping on his own to take in the memorial to his Great Uncles - incredible moving stuff. He is touching their names.

Julianne and Luke directly after the 100 year anniversary ANZAC Service in Gallipoli.

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.

A theatre with a view, not for those with a fear of heights at the top of Pergamon looking into modern Bergama.

Today is a short drive, with only a single stop at Sardis and we arrived at around 11am. The Lonely Planet guide talked about the Lydian civilisation that founded Sardis – but there was only Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins to look at which was disappointing – especially as the visit added several hours to the drive today.

I found the ruins of a Roman aqueduct which had storks nesting in. This I found really brilliant and very cool – Storks nesting in the centre of a town in the ruins of a Roman aqueduct – you couldn’t invent this stuff – brilliant to see.

I have seen lots of Roman ruins over the last couple of weeks, but today is the most famous of them all in Turkey, Ephesus and I can safely say I was under-whelmed. Grandma spent the day relaxing and recharging her batteries after the last busy couple of days by spending her day at the cottage. 

First up was Didyma, where the site is actually one building - the huge Temple of Apollo. The temple was started by the Greeks and was huge and through it was in use for hundreds of years was never actually completed. The temple is a huge Greek temple with this forest of huge pillars around it (and these are the largest pillars I have ever seen let alone the number of them it was just like a forest – would have been impressive 2500 years ago.

The Castle of St Peter was built by the knights of St John (the precursor to the modern St Johns Ambulance Service we have today). It has been a number of years since I have been in a medieval castle, Grandma never been in a castle and Robin being a 5 year old boy was really excited – so it was a fun time.

Today on the road trip we are going to stop at the Roman ruins of Afrodisias, which not surprisingly is named after the Greek goddess of love & beauty – Aphrodite. It was sort of on our way but still adds about an extra hour to our trip but was worth it as there was an amazing very complete huge stadium.

 There is a replica of the mine-layer ship which was involved in the battle that defeated the 16 Allied Battleships which lead to the Gallipoli army landings. Imagine 16 Battleships defeated by forts on the shore and mines – amazing defence by the Turks in 1915 and no wonder they are proud of the work done by the little mine-layers.

Today we headed out to visit Laodicea, a Roman ruin just 8kms down the road. This was an impressive large city with good Roman ruins. There was an impressive Roman road we got to walk down. I am enjoying walking down these Roman roads, when visiting Roman sites in the UK they are all granary’s and villa’s and don’t compare to the large elaborate Roman cites I am visiting here in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Months ago I was sitting in on a train heading home to Pukekohe reading the Lonely Planet guide and I saw a picture of people bathing in thermal water in what was the remains of an original Roman spa – and how cool is that. The idea of bathing in the same pool as Romans really caught my attention and is something I really wanted to do but to be honest was something I thought wouldn’t happen as the location was far off the beaten track. But today I got to do it and I was so happy, it’s great how life works out.

Fully working huge Roman Fountain - How cool is that!

Today we hit the road again, this time heading to Pamukkale but on the way we stopped off at what turned out to be one of the best Roman ruined site I have ever seen, Sagalassos. In fact I think I can safely say these are the best Roman ruins outside Italy. It added an hour to our trip but boy was it worth it.

After the full on day yesterday, today is a simple take it easy day. Breakfast is a really nice simple Turkish affair with toasting the bread on a hot plate over a fire place which Julianne enjoyed.

After an hour of driving we came to the Phrygian Valley; the Phrygians were a tribe that ruled in the area between the 8th century BC until the arrival of Alexander the Great and then the Romans. The most famous Phrygian is King Midas of golden touch fame.

We found a side road which pointed to where the ruins were and luckily there was no snow on it, so it must have been cleared sometime over the last couple of days.

Our last day in Eskisehir started after breakfast by fully exploring the historic Ottoman Quarter. It was a lot of fun and Grandma really enjoyed just walking around looking at all the old houses. A number of the oldest buildings are marked on our map and have a brief history which gave us a rough route to walk around.

It was really nice to wake up to this huge room in this luxurious suite in a historical Ottoman House and finding it nice and warm after the cold of last night, the suite must have slowly warmed up overnight. Then to top it off Robin comes in and is all excited as there was snow outside, and in fact was still snowing!