Today was a long drive of well over 4 hours and the mountian coastal road again often remonded me of driving thru Rogers Pass in BC...slept a little, chatted lots, blogged and read a bit but that can prove to be dangerous to one's health and equilibrium I have quickly discovered...especially on these winding roads and a crazy fast driever who likes to pass everyone!
A few gals in our tour have been hacking like crazy for the last several days and I was wondering how long I can defend these germs while we are in close and confined company? Well leaving Ephesus I got my answer as my throat started a tickle and then the chest cough and today I noticed while driving more than half our group is part of the hacking choir!
It's particulary brutal with the hotels wall mounted air conditioning that blow on you all night and the blankets that are provided are so skimpy you just lay in a curled ball and turn the a/c off...then of coure it gets so warm that you wake up and turn it on again and off again. During most days its been in the high 20's to early 30's so you sweat, and if that isn't enough the same old Turkish food we have at every breakfast, lunch, and supper is getting very boring and finding fresh fruit is only once in at the bigger outdoor markets, so my immune system is not quite what it ought to be...oh well this too shall pass!
So a very hard act to follow after Ephesus...not sure what could compare from an ancient historical perspective...although we saw some pretty cool stuff in Cappadocia but Ephesus wins the contest for me and only Rome and Florence in Italy can very closely compare!
I have seen so many ancient rocks, stones, monuments, churches, and theatres these past 26 days that I am kinda looking forward to modern and contemporary everything for a while, when I get back home! lol
Our drive to Canakkale took us through another large and sprawling port city, that from my perch on the bus appeared to be very modern, industrially and and commercially well developed and quite clean. Interestingly Izmir is the modern city of the ancient Smyrna, of the seven church ages, and is currently the third largest city in Turkey with over 3 million residents, followed by Istanbul and Ankra.
So Troy was made famous with the Trojan Horse legend and more recently as Hollywood took another big stab at it...however Troy has a bit more to offer than legend I learned this afternoon...the original horse that was used in the Troy movie with Brad Pitt is in the main square of Canakkale and I have a pic included.
This Troy site is another UNESCO World Heritage Site...I have already lost track of how many UNESCO sites there are in Turkey!
There is no city or even resemblance of a city here today but there is lotsa excavated rocks and a real big wooden horse that all the throngs of tourists like to climb into!
Apparently these excavations have revealed nine levels of Troy from the early Bronze Age which is around 2920 to 2350 BC...making it one of the oldest excavated settlements on earth. Each level of excavation reveals a separate period of settlement and life from 3000-BC to AD-400.
During the Greek and Roman periods the city was known as Llion or Liium and apparently Alexander the Great offered sacrifices at the tomb of Achilles in 334 BC.
There was a magnificent temple to Athena built and the theatre which we saw the remains of, seated 6000 people and was destroyed in 85-BC.
The powerful Roman emperor Augustus visited this city in 20-BC and following and in his honor an Odeion was built.
The controvercial and exhaustive excavations by German businessman Heinrich Scheliemann have provided many historical treasures and details of ancient Troy, and these are of course ongoing.
Now the seaside city of Canakkale is home for over 200,000 people and is the region that ancient Troy belongs...only about 15 mins drive away.
This popular and touristy city is located on the shores of the Dardanelles, which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Agean Sea and touches by peninsula both Europe and Asia.
Our hotel is in the heart of the city and like others close to the water we have stayed it is very dynamic with loads of merchants, and cafes, restaurants, a seawall and large court hustling and bustling with people and very exciting. There is also a ferry which we will boarding early tomorrow with our bus to tour the Gallipoli Peninsula, before we jouney back to Istanbul.
Tonight our group did what we felt and so I joined my American friends from Montana and North Dakota and we tried scary local food. There are many ladies cooking cob corn in boiling water in these kiosks on the seawall and then they lay the cobs on coals to turn the kernals kinda dark and as I found out...dry the corn so it tastes like straw and what you would feed to livestock? It sure is popular with the local Turks at 3-TL, however one dried out cob is enough for my lifetime! lol
Next we visited a super popular place that made those gyro wraps from huge rolls of meat on a turning stick in a fired vertical oven...they had lamb, beef and chicken and I felt safe with chicken and it included some nice veggie and was very tasty and filling and only 4-TL...wow what a bargain and this place was packed with people and take away orders. Kinda breaking all my nutrition rules but thats how it has to be cause in Europe and Turkey there is no such thing as great food and super nutrition that I have yet seen!
Walked around quite a bit on my own along the narrow streets packed with interesting stores of all type and also the seawall and marina areas while watching the late night young people taking it up a notch with packed restaurants and playing cards and backgammon and smoking their water pipes and cigarettes!
My lungs have never been so contaminated with second hand smoke as they have been in every busy outdoor area in Italy, France, Spain and especially Turkey. If you count a thousand people walking the streets and sitting at the many outdoor cafes...you will be very lucky to count 100 that are not smoking...and they are likely the strict Muslim women?
The young people, men and particulary girls and the older men always seem to have a cigarette in their hand or mouth and this is obviously affecting my cough and even in this non smoking room 4 floors above the narrow market street, I smell cigarette smoke inside and from the balcony...Yuck!
Oh to be back in the beautiful clean BC mountains where the air is fresh and the hikers and others wanna be healthy! :-)
I have included some very random and fun pics of local Canakkale people just being casual and themselves...its a nice memory of the variety of culture and for the most part...friendly simple people!
Stay tuned for my last little Turkey Blog...and whatever I decide to do on my free extra day in Istanbul??
PS - Nice to have Wifi in our hotel rooms for a change...even if it is super slow? - Nice to have my travel finally blog caught up, however now it's 3:30am on Saturday and I will have only 3 hours sleep til our wake up call for breakfast, check out, and boarding the early ferry to the Gallipoli Peninsula?- Nice to be above the street with the stray dogs barking and listening to stray cats fight? - Nice to be able to hear other rude guests in the hall way rattling their suitcases and talking loudly? - Nice to be able to hear my tourmate from NZ in the hotel room next to me snoring quite loudly? - Nice to Not being able to drown some of the noises out with the A/C running, cause there is no extra blankets and I will freeze? - It's really nice to be traveling abroad and most nights in a different city and hotel...cause home will be so much more appreciated! :-) lol
It's all very good, and having a whale of a time...Have a super weekend! :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment