39:22.958N 26:36.643E

Muskrat
Chris and Alison
Mon 25 Sep 2023 12:40

25/09/23

After 10 days and nights of intensive treatment with the antibiotic eye drops my eyesight has improved so that I can now see and read. Hopefully no long term damage. 

Needing some sightseeing, we decided to visit Pergamum even though it was much further away than if we had managed to get into Dikili. We thought we would leave Muskrat in the safety of a marina while we visited the site so enquired at Aylvalik Setur Marina to see if they had some space. They had space for the dates we wanted so we enquired about the cost. £125 per day, electric and water was an extra charge, even the use of the washing machines were an extra cost! We decided not to pursue that idea and leave Muskrat at anchor while we did our sightseeing and I would do the washing by hand:(

So saving ourselves over £300, we organised a car and driver for the day to take us to Bergama and Pergamum. 

The site of this ancient city lies atop and majestic hill 335m height in the middle of a large plain. The site has been occupied since Thracian times. Alexander the Great took it in 334BC and it was under his successors that rose to fame. Pergamum became important as the intermediary link between Syria and Macedonia, a link which continued into the Roman era after the city was left to the Romans by Attalus III in 143BC. It became the second city of Roman Asia and was an important fortress until the decline of Byzantium. The site is impressive. There are numerous ruins, some of which are undergoing reconstruction, and the commanding view from the summmit is worth the visit. There is a theatre that could seat 15,000 on a vertigo inducing slope, a library that housed 200,000 volumes, the palaces, the altar of Zeus, the temples and the agora.

After spending a good 3 hours at the site we visited the museum in Bergama that housed the finds from the site as well as a collection of Turkish costumes and crafts.

Our last stop of the day was the Asklepion. Not as dramatic as the Acropolis but just as interesting. It was one of the important healing centres of the Roman world, it had baths, temples, a theatre, a library, treatment centres and latrines. Remnants of many of the structures have been preserved on site, and what is seen now is quite similar to how the centre would have appeared in the time of Emperor Hadrian (117-138BC). It offered many different treatments including fresh air, cleansing with fresh water, mud baths, the use of herbs and ointments, enemas and sunbathing. Diagnoses, like the Asklepion in Epidaurus (Greece), was often by dream analysis where the patients would sleep in the round temple hoping that Telesphorus, another god of medicine, would send a cure or diagnosis in a dream. The names of Telesphorus’ two daughters, Hygenia and Panacea, have passed into medical terminology.  It was a long day, but well worth the journey, made more pleasant by having someone else doing the driving.

We are now in our last week of our Türkiye leg. Sunday we leave Türkiye for Lesvos in Greece and then we will make our way back across the Aegean again to haul out. 

We have had to change our place of haul out boatyards. The one we were going back to, the one we were in last winter, did not want to help us repair the copper coat and were almost being obstructive, probably because we had asked them to quote for the job and then had it done in Türkiye. So we are going back to the little boatyard in Khalkoutsi in the Evia channel where we know the family who own it and know they will help us to move props and allow us to do the repairs ourselves.

The temperature at night has now dropped to a chilly 25’c, so along with the thin blankets on the bed, Chris has decided that it is now time to get the slippers out!!
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Pergamum theatre

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Pergamum Acropolis

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The site of Asklepion

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Mosaic floor at the Acropolis 


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It’s 25’c and the slippers have come out!

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