Troy, Pergamum & Kusadasi

15th June 2010

Another early start to the day, but it wasn't a long trip until we reached the ancient city of Troja, or Troy. We saw the big wooden horse, that the Turks made in the 30's, and climbed up and through the rickety structure. We then moved on to the ancient city, which was actually 9 different cities built on top of each other dating from 3000BC through to 52AD. Even though it was early in the morning it was too damn hot for me to listen or concentrate so I missed out on a lot of the information Kev was blabbing on about, but Dan caught most of it. Dan tells me that you could see the different ages through the layers of rock; the ones on the bottom had larger stones and no mortar and the newer ones used smaller stones or bricks and mortar.

From here we were back on the bus for a while to reach another ancient city, Pergamum. The bus ride was made slightly more interesting in the fact that we watched the movie Troy, but again, I fell asleep, only waking up for food stops! Lunch was again another truck stop restaurant, but it was pretty decent, and friendly on the wallet.

We arrived to the ancient city of Pergamum mid afternoon, when the sun was scolding. They city itself was perched up on the top of a big hill, and gave an awesome view of the modern town below it. We looked through all the ruins (Again I was too hot to listen properly) and climbed up and through all the rocks.

There was a massive theatre cut into the side of the mountain, which is apparently the steepest in Turkey (It puts Telstra Dome to shame) and it seated about 12000-15000 people. Dan is also telling me that there were two temples up there, a gigantic one that the King built himself, and just a teeny tiny one that he built for God Zeus - not a very nice thing to do back in those days….

It was late afternoon by the time we were back on the bus and it was about an hour until we got to our hotel. Kev thought it would be a lovely opportunity for another movie, something less classy and chose Borat. Nice. There was an option tonight of having a Traditional Turkish Bath. Many chose to do this, but I couldn't be bothered, but as soon as we reached our hotel in seaside holiday village of Kusadasi, everyone pulled out cancelling the trip. Our hotel was only 4 stars this time, and it was like something you'd see on the Gold Coast. Directly opposite the beach, and with pool (which was open!) and pool bar out the front, we were all happy. Some chose to go to the beach, but most complained that the water was pretty dirty and not overly inviting, we just hung out in the little pool out the front, knocking back cheap beers.

Dinner was again included at the hotel, another buffet, but this one did not even compare to the previous evenings. Nevertheless we managed to fill up substantially, before retiring to our room for the evening. When we got back to our room we found that the air conditioner had been leaking water all over Dan's bed (We were lucky enough to get twin beds everywhere we stayed except the night before - their religion frowns up us unwed couples!). Any who, we had to call maintenance to come and fix our air con, and after 2 hours of a dirty man on the bed bashing the crap out of the box it stopped leaking. More complaining to the reception about needing sleep (It was 11pm!), and when he refused to change us rooms and was reluctant to get the wet sheets changed off Dan's bed - he was too busy playing on bloody facebook - I got mad. It was all sorted about 2.5 hours after we first told them, not happy! It didn't take me long to get to sleep that night, as we had another bloody early morning and most of the day to be spent on the bus ahead of us!