Ancient city of Troy, Hisarlik, Turkey

After the brief visit to the Blue Mosque, our bus headed towards Canakkale where we will be spending the night. On the way to the destination, we stopped at the town of Hisarlik where the remains of the ancient city of Troy, built around 3000 BC, were located. I have no idea that Turkey had so much ancient history.

I learned of Troy from stories during high school, when we studied Greek history and read about Homer and his famous poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. I learned a whole lot more during this visit to the ruins of Troy, and whether Helen of Troy, Achilles the Trojan wars and the Trojan Horse, were just legends or if they were real. Our tour manager Metin, was a fount of information on the history and the debate on how much was real or fantasy. It was pretty surreal to walk among the ruins, and realize that there were several iterations of Troy, as wars and natural disasters devasted the city that was then rebuilt on top of the previous city. The mounds and ruins were marked for each rebuild as Troy 1, Troy 2, etc. We saw a section where there was a sign for Troy 7.

I would have loved to see a replica of the Trojan Horse (suspending our disbelief a bit there), but we only saw the frame for it as the horse itself was being re-constructed.

This was a very interested and unexpected stop on our tour of Turkey. We spent the night at the Kolin Hotel in Canakkale, which also offered a very good dinner buffet. There was a variety of main courses: beef, chicken and fish, salads, vegetables and amazing desserts. Needless to say, I made a pig of myself. This time around, I remembered to take photos of the spread.

There was also a supermarket and a mall a short distance across the hotel. I found out that we could swim in the hot springs in Antalya but did not bring my swimsuit. After dinner, I walked over to the mall and found a store that had a swimsuit my size, at a very reasonable price. I even bought an umbrella!