Travelogue - Highlights: Troy

Troy

As we already knew, about the only reason you'd go to Troy is to say that you've been there, as there really isn't that much to see. The tour we went on was also somewhat rushed, but we did find out a few interesting things, and see a few decent-looking ruins.

Naturally there was a wooden horse near the entrance, which you could climb into and poke your head out of. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time though!

The town of Canukkale, where we were staying, actually had the wooden horse they'd used in the movie. It looked pretty cool:

And here are some shots from around the ruins themselves:

A close-up of that ramp you can see in the picture above. There used to be a gate at the top of it, and apparently it was deliberately designed that way to further tire anyone trying to breach it with a ram, and lower their morale at the same time.

And that was it for Troy, and Turkey. Before I finish up, here are a couple of shots from Cannukale that didn't fit in anywhere else. The first is one of a rather cool shop window display:

And this is a cannon from the Dardanelles battle:

Egypt highlights is the next post. That'll be about it, unless I can scrounge up enough decent photos from my day in Singapore to make it worthwhile. Check back in a few days. :)

Travelogue - Highlights: Gallipoli

Gallipoli


Somehow, the word "highlight" only seems half appropriate when talking about Gallipoli. It was definitely one of the most memorable moments of the trip, yes, but my feelings about the whole thing were very mixed. This was actually added to in a way by the guide we had for the day. We were lucky enough to get one of the best, if not -the- best one in the business, by the sounds of it. He'd been lecturing about it for at least 20 years, had read hundreds of books, as well as gathering information from families etc, had escorted dignitaries of the likes of Bob Hawke around, and seemed to have a very broad, objective view which covered all sides of the story. He could have talked the day and then the night away, but he was so obviously passionate about it, and told it all in such an interesting way that he wasn't boring.


We started near the ANZAC landing sites and moved on from there. The tour took the whole afternoon, and we visited a lot of significant areas including a museum which contained a lot of items and photos from the war.


It occurred to me at the time that this view, and others as well, would have seemed stunning if not for the sense you had of what had happened there, which definitely dampened the feeling you'd normally get.

Unsurprisingly enough, the gravesites were the first thing that really started to bring it all home for me.

The Lone Pine memorial.

Turkish soldiers who fell weren't remembered with gravestones, but were simply buried in mass graves. At some point though, the Turkish people started to feel that they should have something to commemorate their soldiers too, seeing as other countries were visiting the site so much. This was a memorial (probably the largest one) dedicated to them.

This quote was very moving for me, and I still have trouble reading it aloud to other people. You'll probably have to click on this one to be able to read it properly. (Mehmet(cik) is the Turkish term for the common soldier, equivalent to Tommies, or Johnnies.)

While we're on the subject of quotes, of all the ones I saw, this was the one that came closest to describing my own feelings, even if it didn't quite:

"Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat"

--- C.E.W. Bean, Australian official historian

Interestingly enough, the Turkish and ANZAC soldiers seemed to develop a lot of respect for one another, sharing smokes and bully beef during ceasefires, and even helping one another's wounded. There was a photo in the museum of an Australian soldier giving a wounded Turkish soldier a drink, and a giant statue of a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded Australian. 

Another quote read:

"The Turkish soldier will give his life for his country without hesitation. He is a tough and brave soldier but when a cease fire is called he is gentle and humane he will bandage the wound of his enemy and carry him on his back to save his life. Such a soldier hasn‘t been seen before on this earth.”

--- General William Birdwood

The trenches have mostly filled in over time, but they still gave a sense of what it might've looked like back then:

By the end of the day I was feeling somewhat tired, and emotionally and mentally full, with a real sense of the scale and scope of things that had happened there. I'm very glad I went, and that we were lucky enough to get such a good guide for it.

Travelogue - Highlights: Part 2

On either side of going to Gallipoli and Troy, my friend and I saw a few more things in Istanbul. Here are the highlights:


Topkapi Palace

Topkapi Palace was the official residence of the Ottoman sultans from 1465-1856. It was rather impressive. Unfortunately I can't give you much in the way of photos, because a lot of the best things to see were the collections of weapons, jewellery, and so on. Here are a couple of some of the outside, though:

The Cistern

The Basilica Cistern is the largest of hundreds lying underneath Istanbul. I wasn't really expecting very much, but it was one of those times when you're unexpectedly wowed. The lighting they'd used helped a lot, but I think it would've looked pretty impressive even without it.

This is referred to as the Peacock-eyed column, for reasons which should be obvious!

The cool column prize easily went to the two that had Medusa head blocks at the bottom of them. No-one knows exactly where the blocks came from, apparently, but they're thought to have belonged to a late Roman period building.

The several squillion fish they had down there also added to the atmosphere!

Istanbul University

I've mentioned the university already, and how beautiful the grounds were, but I didn't manage to get any photos when I first saw it. This time 'round however, I managed a quick, slightly blurry shot through the main gate:

Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia is an old mosque now-turned museum. As much as we'd seen just about enough mosques to last a life time, we still wanted to go to this one, as it was meant to be impressive inside. It didn't disappoint. The only disappointing thing was having both my camera batteries go flat on me while I was inside: which was very strange at the time, given was that I was sure I'd charged both of them to near full! (It turned out later that there was a connection problem: there you go.)

Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul was very big, and had just about any sort of souvenir or item you could probably think of. Of particular interest to me, however, were the glass Turkish lamps they had. I'd seen one I really loved at a restaurant in Goreme, and ended up deciding that it might be worth trying to get one home safely, after all. After going through a lot of shops, I actually managed to find one that was very close, which was pretty lucky. The post office, unsurprisingly, didn't want to know about it, and in the end I managed to carry it safely through the last 3 weeks of travelling, without any additional damage. Additional, because the person who wrapped it in bubble wrap at the store decided to leave the heavy metal bob at the end of its chain inside of it. I wasn't able to do anything about it for a day or so, but fortunately it's just crazed a bit, which isn't too obvious. Touch wood, it won't get any worse if I keep handling it carefully!

Travelogue - Highlights: Part 1

Selcuk

Selcuk was a nice little town we visited in Turkey. The town itself was rather pretty, as were a lot of the ruins that were dotted around it:

This is all that remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The column has been reconstructed, and most of the archaeological remains have been spirited away to the British museum, but it was rather cool to see, nonetheless.

Haircut

"Wait a minute Julian: I thought you said you were only going to do the highlights from now on?!" Believe it or not, this actually -was- a highlight. Bear with me for a moment and I'll explain. :) By the time we'd gotten to Selcuk, it was getting about time for another haircut, and, after some translation assistance from the hotel staff, I was ridden into town on the back of a motorbike (no helmet, of course!), and dropped at a hair salon. My usual experience of a haircut in Melbourne is that I go to my very cool hairdresser, get my hair washed, cut, have a nice chat, and that's about it. In Turkey, it's more like an all-in-one therapy treatment. I was given a haircut, wash, and a short head, neck, shoulder, arm and head massage. They also burn away all the hairs on and in your ears with a lit wick. It's actually not that bad, as long as you don't mind the smell of your own burning hair! I'd also deliberately not shaved that morning so I could see what getting shaved with a cut-throat razor would be like. It definitely does the job, and it wasn't too uncomfortable, except for the one little bit they didn't put enough foam on. The only really uncomfortable bit was the aftershave: yipe! All up, it was nice and relaxing. I wonder if I could talk my hairdresser over here into offering a similar service??


Ephesus

The ruins of Ephesus weren't far out of Selcuk, and were extensive and very impressive. I've already bombarded you with a lot of Roman ruin shots, so I'll just put in the ones that stood out for this place in particular:

Yes, this is what you think it is. Yes, I wanted a photo. Yes, we also had a group photo with several of us sitting down at once. :P

The library, which apparently also had a tunnel leading to the town's brothel, just opposite!

A rather impressive ampitheatre:

Gozleme making

A Gozleme is the Turkish version of a pancake. It's basically a very thin, somewhat tough bread that you fill with cheese, meat, vegetables, fold into a thin parcel, then cook. I also had a chocolate one at one point, which was very nice! After our tour of Epehesus, we got a chance to try making them ourselves. This was one time when volunteering to go first (almost no-one ever wants to, esp. if it involves jumping off something!) was not as good an idea, though, as I hadn't had a chance to watch and see what I was supposed to be doing! We were supposed to try the rolling part of the process, which is actually somewhat different to handling bread dough, as you need to use a very light touch. I didn't exactly do a perfect job, but I didn't destroy it either, and one of the ladies finished it off for me. The pancake ends up being about the size of the tables you can see in these photos:

You then put your filling inside, fold it into a large parcel, and put it in to be cooked. When it comes to eating it, one is enough for most people!

Calcium Travertines

The calcium travertines at Pamukkale (which means "cotton castles" in Turkish) were rather cool. They're formed by hot, calcium-rich waters from mineral springs continually leaving deposits as they flow down the hills. Even if they weren't quite what I was expecting, they were still nice. You had to walk on them in bare feet, but this mostly didn't cause a problem, except for the occasional rougher part. In fact, the finely "rippled" texture of the ground actually made for a very good grip!

After sunset, I ended up walking back down in the dark with our tour leader, with our way only being lit by strategically placed floodlights. There was a very narrow water channel that ran down for quite some distance, and we opted to walk down in this, as it was quite warm, especially compared to the now-cool ground! We had to be careful though, as there was literally no space in the channel either side of your foot, and it was very uneven, both depth and breadth-wise! Walking back down in the semi-dark with our feet splashing through running warm water and chatting as we went had a nice feel to it, and really was a lot of fun.

Dinner in a Fairy Chimney House

You'll probably remember me talking about the Fairy Chimneys that we saw in Goreme the first time we were there, and me mentioning that people had made houses out of some of them. Thanks to a bit of overlap on our second trip we ended up back in Goreme, and also got a chance to have a dinner at a local's fairy chimney house. They were happy for us to walk around taking photos before dinner:

As you can see, it's really quite something! Dinner was very nice and I ended up next to the host, which gave me a chance to chat to him for a bit, even if his English was a little limited. It turned out that his family had  been living there for 5 generations. Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, these houses are worth a lot.

Hot air ballooning


The first time we were in Goreme, my travel buddy and I figured we'd see what our other group members thought of the hot air ballooning there, and do it ourselves when we came back, if they liked it. They did, so we booked ourselves in this time 'round, and got up before dawn (ack!) to make our way to the launch site. About the only times in my life that I've ever been up for dawn have involved some sort of exciting event. This one was no different, with the usual atmosphere of anticipation. We signed in at the store, were assigned a pilot, and then got driven to the site in a minibus, where we got off and waited for the crew to get our balloon ready. Watching a hot air balloon being inflated is quite cool (the first one was ours):

After clambering in and getting the "how to handle a rough landing without breaking something" briefing, we were released into the air by the crew. We'd been told that, unlike all other forms of flying, we wouldn't feel that we were moving over the ground, but that it was moving under us. This was absolutely true: it really felt as if we were hanging there motionless while the ground just rolled by underneath us, which was a rather unusual, but neat feeling.

As we drifted along, with our pilot seemingly enjoying getting us as close to the ground, trees, and rock formations as possible before pulling up the last minute, we saw a throng of other balloons in the distance, which really was a beautiful sight:

The problem with being up in a hot air balloon is that it's very hard to take a photo which would give anyone else the impression that you're actually in one, and not just standing on a cliff somewhere. Still, I did my best:

We were up for about an hour, and then started to make our descent. Impressively enough, the crew towed us in for a landing on the back of the vehicle the balloon had first been taken to the launch site on!

Back on the ground, we all had fun helping to tread the balloon flat so it could be packed up, with 3 of us stubbornly persisting even when we could see that it was going to come down over us. We ended up in our own little kindergarten cubbyhouse, which was kind of fun. :) Stuffing the balloon back into its container is pretty much like putting a sleeping bag away. We watched them do it, followed by several people taking flying leaps on to the top of it once it was done ("helping"??). The whole experience had been great, and as we got back on to the mini-bus to go back to our respective hotels, some of us started to feel quite tired, as the adrenaline began wearing off, and we remembered just exactly how early we'd gotten up.


Red and Rose Valleys

As we'd already been around Goreme a bit before, my travel buddy and I opted to go for a walk around a different area to the group when we got back. We went to the Red and Rose Valleys, which were definitely worth it. The walk was nice, with beautiful scenery:

One of the things I really loved was the way some formations almost looked liked marshmallow peaks, complete with pink-white colouring! (You may have to look at the enlarged versions of these two to see what I'm talking about.)

And that was pretty much it for Goreme. I'm going to step slightly out of sequence now, and wrap up all of Istanbul in the next post, even though Gallipoli and Troy came in between two parts of it.