At last – TROY (without Brad Pitt in a skirt!!)

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Hello, All!

SO nice to be blogging again! When we got up this morning, for some reason the computer wouldn’t connect to the internet. R very unhappy, and me wondering how I was going to keep on blogging…(for the record, Katy, I was going to email you from my iPad and ask that you log on to our blog and tell people…fortunately, (hopefully!) I think we can now get out!!)

Very peaceful evening; nice quiet place, very comfortable. Breakfast started about 7, and with the two different tour groups, there was quite a line. To be honest, this has probably been the worst breakfast of our entire trip – but then, for the most part, we are not staying in hotels that cater to tour groups. Very limited selection of cheeses, and why the heck hotels have to serve TANG when they have so many oranges, is beyond us! At any rate, R kept working with the computer – first in our room, and then in the hotel lobby, but without success; so, decided it would have to wait until later!

I just LOVE poppies, and this field is very close to our hotel!

First stop: TROY! We left the hotel about 7:30 and got to Troia (the archeological spelling) about 5 minutes to 8. However, the ticket office was open, and they let us in – which was good, because as we walked into the grounds, here comes the first tour bus right behind us! We were very, very fortunate to have the majority of the grounds to ourselves, which was wonderful. By the time we left, the people were inside of the wooden horse and screaming all over the place!
So…Troy. As most people know, Homer wrote about the 10-year battle/siege at Troy over Paris running off with Menelaus’ wife, Helen. We had watched the movie a few years ago, and it was terrible – made it seem like something that happened over a long weekend!! And Brad Pitt should NOT wear skirts… Many of the tour books say that people can be very disappointed in Troy, as many of the walls are not very high and it requires a good imagination. Well, all I can say is that we LOVED Troy; it has become one of our favorite sites so far! Schliemann, the German merchant who first located Troy, did a lot of damage in his run to find treasure – think a portly Indiana Jones…in subsequent excavations done by Turkish, German and American archeologists, the city has been excavated down nine different levels – it’s really amazing! The difficulty is that each subsequent layer is on top of a previous layer – and it’s not consistent – that is, some parts were rebuilt over part of a previous layer, and other parts over a different layer making this very, very mixed up. The guidebooks and signage talk about Troy I or Troy II, etc. It was determined that the Homer Iliad was either Troy VI or Troy VII. However, it now appears that Troy VI was destroyed by an earthquake, but Troy VII by some catastrophic event – burning, for instance – so who knows, maybe that Horse did get within the walls!

At any event, we very, very much enjoyed seeing it – in fact, Robert was quite shocked, but I actually bought a small (about 3” high) carved wooden horse in the gift shop! Great place!!

From Troy, we decided to keep heading south, and our next stop was Alexander Troas. Talk about hard to find…Emmy had a posting to it, but she only led us as far as the beach – but no ruins. So, turned around and tried it again, and with the help of the Rough Guide – this time heading out of town to the south – voila, there it was! Alexander Troas was founded by Alexander the Great’s general Antigonos I in 300 BC. As the only folks there, we wandered quite a bit – until I ran into a SNAKE and decided that I’d seen enough…would you believe that I wandered into TWO snakes while walking this morning, and one more on the road?? I HATE snakes!!!!!! (So did Indiana Jones but that didn’t stop HIM! – Robert)

From here we next drove down little dinky roads to the Apollo Smintheion and the city of Khryse. Again, there was a ticket seller and a security guard – and us! Quite an interesting site – the Smintheion was originally built as a cult temple to the God Apollo as Slayer of Mice…didn’t see any mice, but it’s an interesting thought! Took more pictures and saw the work that is currently being excavated – so glad to hear that universities are getting support for these types of projects – even if that support comes from Efes, the Turkish beer distributor! However, it was here that R and I both ran into something we’d never seen before – stinging nettles! And ouch, did they sting – and kept stinging for minutes! Don’t want to do that again, that’s for sure!

Our last site of the day was Assos, which was incredible; literally. First of all, the ruin is on a hilltop, with a road running very steeply to the bottom of the hill, where you hit beach and town, and it is literally about a block and a half wide…wide enough for a small hotel and a few restaurants running along the harbor. However, there were absolutely NO guardrails whatsoever, and the pitch was incredible! I kept hoping that we wouldn’t encounter a car going up while we were going down, because I’m afraid that if I’d had to pull any more to the right, we’d have gone right off the edge…truly unreal! Made it to the bottom and pulled into a small parking lot on the hill – really to get off the main road! – but decided then to get some lunch, as dinner is included in our room rate … and while the hotel food is OK, it’s certainly not great, and we didn’t want to be hungry all night! So…basically had a mezza lunch, right on a dock over the water! Incredibly clear water; lovely breeze; lots of sunshine; a perfect day! The view from Assos is of the Greek island of Lesbos, which is MUCH closer to Turkey than Catalina Island is to Los Angeles; it looks very beautiful, but I think it’s just about impossible to get there from Turkey – have to go back to Greece. Oh well!!

We had aubergine (eggplant) in tomato sauce; pickled red peppers; cheese borak (phyllo dough with cheese inside, rolled up and fried; GREAT!) and a lovely salad with fresh mint, tomatoes, cucumbers and olives and onions…more than enough food for two!

Up the hill, then, thankfully NOT running into any traffic going in the opposite direction, and we set our sights back to the Tusan Hotel. Got back here about 3:30 p.m. … at which time R tried the computer again, and voila! It worked!! So…am taking this opportunity to blog now. The wind has really sprung up, and there are lots of white caps on the bay … also the swimming pool, if that were possible!

So…tomorrow we move on to Bergama and the Pergamon ruins! VERY excited, as it is from this very spot that the Pergamon altar of Zeus was excavated and subsequently taken back to Berlin where it now resides inside the – guess what? Pergamon Museum! (Which is a TERRIFIC museum; also home to the Ishtar Gate!!)

More later!
Much love,
m
xxxx
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Addendum –

Now that we are more than half way through our trip, it’s time for me to add something to the record.

I just want to point out how much Margaret puts into planning and organizing our travels and to say what a fantastic job she does. Checking on places to visit, screening hotels, renting cars…the whole array of what it takes to make a trip “work”. It takes a special talent and not everyone has it; I know I don’t! I just cannot relate to a place I’ve never been to before the way Margaret can. It’s incredible to see how, once we start a trip, she knows the layout of the area and the details of the sights to be seen.

And all her work really does pay off, as you can tell from her blogs. I am very fortunate to have my own personal tour guide and appreciate very much all she does to make our travels so much fun.

Robert