Troy
Marita3
Mark & Helen Syrett
Wed 27 Mar 2013 17:38
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We left Istanbul early on Monday morning having
booked a five day tour which was no more expensive than a diy tour and saved us
uncertainty and carting bags around.
We were collected from the hotel and taken, along
with eight others, on a five hour journey to Eceabat on the Gallipoli
pennisula.
We had lunch in the hotel, the ''not so grand''
Eceabat Hotel and then set off to Troy. The mini bus went onto the ferry and
crossed the Dardanelles Strait to Canakkale.
 This is the entrance to the Sea of Marmara, which
leads to the Bosphorus at Istanbul and then into the Black Sea. There are about
4,000 shipping movements every year in this narrow stretch of water famous for
the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War.
We had decided not to do the tour of the
battlefields but there were plenty of Aussies and New Zealanders doing the
''ANZAC tour''.
The following photographs of the bronzes tell the
story of the loss of 130,000 lives of which a third were Allied forces (British,
French, Australian and New Zealanders) and two thirds Turkish----no further
comment required.
       Having crossed the strait we saw the Trojan
horse used in the film, Troy, made in 2004
 The drive to Troy took about an hour and we arrived
at this historic World Heritage Site and sure enough the urns, tile drains and
stones were in abundance
  but the excellent guide was very enthusiastic and
made the place come alive with his story of the evolution of the
site
  There have been nine cities of Troy and as one was
destroyed by an earthquake another was built.There are therefore nine layers of
foundations.
It was built here as it was an ideal place for
a trading post which depended on the infrequent southerly wind to blow the
square sailed trading boats northwards.
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