Turkey - Days 4-5 Troy and the Bosphorous
Jan. 10th, 2020 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
niniane9-16-19 - Troy
I was supposed to wake up super early in the morning so that I could take the first train out to a stop in which I'd meet the tour bus that would take me to Troy. As it was, the call to prayer woke me up a bit late. I raced to get on clothing, make it to the Mamara (aka under water subway in Istanbul), and made it just in time for the first train. I got off to wait for my bus (I'd apparently made it with plenty of time!) and found a nice cafe that overlooked the station where I was supposed to be picked up. I ordered a cheesy spinach pastry that was soaked in butter and sipped tea (complimentary from the very kind waiter) while I waited.
Just for funsies, this was a picture of the Mamara in one of the Mamara tunnels. It's adorable. I love the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia on one side, another mosque on the other, Galata tower, and then a grinning Mamara train. Too cute!!!!
I got on the bus and it's...a long ride. It's a pretty ride, as it goes along the ocean, but they weren't kidding when they said it was 5 hours. (It didn't help that they stopped for 30 minutes for breakfast...which I didn't need as I'd already eaten, then lunch, which was okay, but not great. The most amusing part of lunch was probably the begging dogs. I threw a piece of bread to an especially cute one who ignored it. I found out why very shortly as the dog was served not one but five chicken skewers. Don't tell Fenrir. If she learns that Turkish dogs both get to roam around with other dogs all day AND eat delicious chicken, she'll flee and claim asylum.)
A spoiled rotten Turkish street dog.
Eventually we made it to Troy, which has a huge wooden horse and some placards outside. The tour guide then proceeded to talk for about 15 minutes about the settlement, which was interesting (there was a fishing village there around 3,500 BC, then a bigger one with some walls around 2,900 BC, followed by a large and moderately fortified city from around 1,700 BC to 1,250 BC, followed by a city that was heavily fortified, with everyone living in the heavily fortified part and stock piling food and weapons that was burned down from around 1,250 to 1,000 BC, followed by some Greeks, then an expansion that included a temple to Athena by Alexander the Great, followed by some Roman buildings like a tiny government office and an ampitheater). It's all quite interesting, but IT WAS NOT SEEING TROY. (And could have been handled on the bus just fine had he arsed himself to do it.)
The city strata, by time period. Note how the brickwork gets steadily more sophisticated as the levels rise. By 1250 BC, the Trojans were incredibly good architects.
The ramp for Troy II. It's amazingly sophisticated for something for a city from the 3rd millennium BCE. Incidentally, this was where Schliemann's treasures came from. (Not Homeric Troy, har dee har har.)
Me, doing my best Helen of Troy impression.
Then we walked around the ruins which are impressive in that, based on the stonework, you can actually tell which Troy it is, even as an uneducated observer. The fishing villages use roughly carved bricks + adobe. Then there's a cool ramp and city gate from Troy II. Troy VI/Troy VII has beautifully carved walls that use some special slots to allow movement during earthquakes, then some hastily constructed towers and a wall that was built nicely then filled in with not so great rocks. (Maybe because it broke? Maybe to reinforce it better than the original gate? The wall is the one that would be closest to where the Myceneans were attacking, if we follow Homer. So perhaps they damaged it and the Trojans filled it in, or maybe it was broken when the Trojan horse went through (according to legend, they removed part of the wall to get the horse in), or maybe they removed a weak gate and fortified it.
A stray dog and her whelps are Troy's current inhabitants.
The ridge in the rock allows movement during earthquakes without the wall falling apart.
Looking out over Troy. The area where supposedly Hector and Achilles fought is just over my shoulder. With that said, the Greeks and Romans added more stuff here, so it's not quite time period right for the Trojan war. It's AMAZING how much history there is here!
There was also an area where they'd narrowed the gate, put in a large (quickly constructed) tower and added another wall to make it too small to get a battering ram in to the gate. It's all, again, very clever and also REALLY makes it look like a city that's at war.
The monument for Gallipoli. The fight killed many Australians and Kiwis, thus prompting their fight for independence. Gallipoli Day is their Independence day. This meant that the first part of the trip was filled with Aussies and Kiwis paying memorial. My trip had one grouchy Aussie who had added this to his Gallipoli trip because, why not, and a bunch of Chileans who LOVE history and were vaguely horrified that the guide might wonder why a bunch of Spanish speakers (whose English was...not great. I vaguely felt like I should translate, but then also felt obnoxious about offering to do so, so didn't) were on a huge trip to see some old ruins. Like, duh, Chileans LOVE history. I'm not sure if this is true for all Chileans, but there were an astounding number of Chileans in Istanbul, so maybe Chileans truly do LOVE history.
There are also manmade tombs in the distance (supposedly the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus, although eh...Patroclus never appears in the Linear B script, so he's likely enough a fiction) and grand sweeping views of the ocean. (Since filled in, but you actually can figure out where all the wars would have been fought and it all looks...right.)
Then there's a temple to Athena that Alexander built when he paid a pilgrimage to Achilles. (Alexander the Great thought he was Achilles reborn and worshiped the guy.) A lot of it is still intact.
Part of Alexander's temple. It's crazy when something from the 4th century BC is almost considered modern!
In a period still later, there's a tiny ampitheater and government building, all made of marble by the Romans.
Sacrificial pits. One held water, another blood. This was from the Greek era. Behind it you can see the plains of Troy that Achilles battled Hector on (supposedly).
And everything, again, seems right. It's a highly fortifiable position, with sweeping winds that change direction yearly, allowing passage two and from the sea of Mamara.
The site is really well laid out, too, with nice descriptions of everything in English and Turkish. We couldn't read it, though, as our guide was RUSHING us through it. Even worse, there's apparently a brand new four storey museum that we “didn't have time for”. (Although we had time to stop at his gift shop for a half hour to buy stuff and a half hour for breakfast and dinner, an hour for lunch, and fifteen minutes of talk that could have been done on the bus.) It annoyed me so much. Clearly everyone here WANTED to see Troy...but we only spent maybe 45 minutes there out of a 17 hour day. Grr.
The other passengers were kind of amusing, too. There was a Chinese couple who mostly seemed to want to see the Trojan horse from the Troy movie and were sincerely disappointed that we didn't see it. Then there was a group of Chilean doctors (4 of them?) who were SUPER into the history and kept trying to translate the English into Spanish among themselves and taking pictures of the plaques to translate later. (Which was adorable.) They were DELIGHTED when they found a book in Spanish about the site. Like, they were the happiest tourists ever to learn that they could spend hours, and hours studying more history. (For all that I'm kind of mocking it, I'm doing it because of love. I, too, would be behaving this way under identical circumstances. I pretty much already was in circumstances that favored speaking my native language. So...)
Then there were two Australians who'd come for Gallapoli and decided to add Troy as an additional stop who seemed bored by the whole affair. So it was like, EXCITE, EXCITE, DISAPPOINTMENT, BOREDOM. But so goes so many things in life, I guess.
9-17-19 - Bosphorous Cruise
Today Lindsey and I decided to go on the Bosphorous Cruise. As the first doesn't leave until 10:30, we decided to have a leisurely Turkish breakfast, which consists of eggs, cheese, fried cheese, sausage, bread, fried donuts with honey and fruit preserves, and about a dozen different toppings for bread (most of which are buttery, oily, cheesy, or all three. I'm honestly surprised that everyone in Turkey isn't dead by 40 from heart disease as the average meal appears to be cheese wrapped in a thin layer of bread then fried in butter before being drizzled in olive oil, honey, sugar syrup, or all three. Adding nuts to all of these dishes is also quite acceptable. The higher the calorie count, the tastier the food!)
Service took forever, so we made it to the cruise with literally less than a minute to spare (according to the ticket. We got on and like, they hoisted up the plank.)
The cruise was fun, although I suspect I'd have liked it better if I had not taken the ferry all the time anyway and/or I was the sort of person who was not super into exercising. Mostly it went up the Bosphorous over the course of about two hours, stopping at a few ports. Along the way, there were palaces (Dolmhemnace, Byaerti, etc.), mosques, ruins, and lots of fancy houses. My favorites had boat garages or, in a very peculiar case, a bunch of fully dressed mannequins in the yard along with some replicas of Greek statuary (naked women). I suspect this guy's neighbors are just WAITING for him to move out or die.
The palace from the river is quite lovely.
You can see this from the ferry, but whateves. It's Maiden's Tower. There are many legends about it, and it's kind of picturesque.
A pretty mosque you can see on your cruise! (Note: You will see a lot of mosques in Turkey.)
An especially amusing looking yali. Turks like to summer along the Bosphorous (who wouldn't?), and have their fancy mansions there.(Because, again, who wouldn't?)
The Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, aka the last bridge that spans Europe and Asia on the Bosphorous. It's pretty.
We reached a fishing village at the far end and hiked up the hill to the fortress, which we couldn't go into, but could stare at, along with sweeping vistas of the Black Sea. From there we had a cup of tea overlooking the Bosphorous and Black Sea, then climbed down to have fish soup and bread with yogurt, which was good. Then it was right back on the ferry to ride back to Istanbul.
Cute fishing village on the Bosphorous that was made for tourism. Just saying.
Lindsey, having made it to the castle, looking adorable over the Bosphorous.
We fed fish at our restaurant and they swarmed. It was fun. I am childish like that.
Maiden's tower, on the way back.
A final view of Istanbul.
When we got off, we went to the upscale market to acquire the rug I wanted (so pretty!). The owner of the shop showed us some of his collection of embroidery, including some 19th century Pakistni pieces with mother of pearl sewn into the cloth, 16th century Turkish embroidery, and some other lovely things. He mentioned, vaguely sadly, that his father just wanted to get rid of the piece I was getting (it was marked at 13,500 Lira, or about $2,700...so I got it for a third of the asking price. In addition, it seems possible that if it had been on sale for so long that it had once been worth still more, as the Lira was recently devalued from around 2/$ to 5/$.) He also mentioned that he'd love a picture of my parents' rug and that, if I ever happened to need rare fabrics sourced, he was very good at it.
From there, we went back to the ceramics place where Lindsey bought a nice tea cup for her grandmother. We also browsed the nearby Carrefour, where I found the bottles of wine that Lindsey had found with Noah that are made using traditional methods dating back thousands of years. (She seemed rather annoyed, I suspect because they were MUCH cheaper in Carrefour than she got them for.)
After that, I wandered around Karakoy, ate ice cream, drank pomegranate juice, and bought a bottle of mulberry wine (it's quite good, although not extraordinary. Just very good.) Then I packed for Cappadoccia as we'll be getting up around 3:30 am to catch our flight. Fun.
I was supposed to wake up super early in the morning so that I could take the first train out to a stop in which I'd meet the tour bus that would take me to Troy. As it was, the call to prayer woke me up a bit late. I raced to get on clothing, make it to the Mamara (aka under water subway in Istanbul), and made it just in time for the first train. I got off to wait for my bus (I'd apparently made it with plenty of time!) and found a nice cafe that overlooked the station where I was supposed to be picked up. I ordered a cheesy spinach pastry that was soaked in butter and sipped tea (complimentary from the very kind waiter) while I waited.
Just for funsies, this was a picture of the Mamara in one of the Mamara tunnels. It's adorable. I love the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia on one side, another mosque on the other, Galata tower, and then a grinning Mamara train. Too cute!!!!
I got on the bus and it's...a long ride. It's a pretty ride, as it goes along the ocean, but they weren't kidding when they said it was 5 hours. (It didn't help that they stopped for 30 minutes for breakfast...which I didn't need as I'd already eaten, then lunch, which was okay, but not great. The most amusing part of lunch was probably the begging dogs. I threw a piece of bread to an especially cute one who ignored it. I found out why very shortly as the dog was served not one but five chicken skewers. Don't tell Fenrir. If she learns that Turkish dogs both get to roam around with other dogs all day AND eat delicious chicken, she'll flee and claim asylum.)
A spoiled rotten Turkish street dog.
Eventually we made it to Troy, which has a huge wooden horse and some placards outside. The tour guide then proceeded to talk for about 15 minutes about the settlement, which was interesting (there was a fishing village there around 3,500 BC, then a bigger one with some walls around 2,900 BC, followed by a large and moderately fortified city from around 1,700 BC to 1,250 BC, followed by a city that was heavily fortified, with everyone living in the heavily fortified part and stock piling food and weapons that was burned down from around 1,250 to 1,000 BC, followed by some Greeks, then an expansion that included a temple to Athena by Alexander the Great, followed by some Roman buildings like a tiny government office and an ampitheater). It's all quite interesting, but IT WAS NOT SEEING TROY. (And could have been handled on the bus just fine had he arsed himself to do it.)
The city strata, by time period. Note how the brickwork gets steadily more sophisticated as the levels rise. By 1250 BC, the Trojans were incredibly good architects.
The ramp for Troy II. It's amazingly sophisticated for something for a city from the 3rd millennium BCE. Incidentally, this was where Schliemann's treasures came from. (Not Homeric Troy, har dee har har.)
Me, doing my best Helen of Troy impression.
Then we walked around the ruins which are impressive in that, based on the stonework, you can actually tell which Troy it is, even as an uneducated observer. The fishing villages use roughly carved bricks + adobe. Then there's a cool ramp and city gate from Troy II. Troy VI/Troy VII has beautifully carved walls that use some special slots to allow movement during earthquakes, then some hastily constructed towers and a wall that was built nicely then filled in with not so great rocks. (Maybe because it broke? Maybe to reinforce it better than the original gate? The wall is the one that would be closest to where the Myceneans were attacking, if we follow Homer. So perhaps they damaged it and the Trojans filled it in, or maybe it was broken when the Trojan horse went through (according to legend, they removed part of the wall to get the horse in), or maybe they removed a weak gate and fortified it.
A stray dog and her whelps are Troy's current inhabitants.
The ridge in the rock allows movement during earthquakes without the wall falling apart.
Looking out over Troy. The area where supposedly Hector and Achilles fought is just over my shoulder. With that said, the Greeks and Romans added more stuff here, so it's not quite time period right for the Trojan war. It's AMAZING how much history there is here!
There was also an area where they'd narrowed the gate, put in a large (quickly constructed) tower and added another wall to make it too small to get a battering ram in to the gate. It's all, again, very clever and also REALLY makes it look like a city that's at war.
The monument for Gallipoli. The fight killed many Australians and Kiwis, thus prompting their fight for independence. Gallipoli Day is their Independence day. This meant that the first part of the trip was filled with Aussies and Kiwis paying memorial. My trip had one grouchy Aussie who had added this to his Gallipoli trip because, why not, and a bunch of Chileans who LOVE history and were vaguely horrified that the guide might wonder why a bunch of Spanish speakers (whose English was...not great. I vaguely felt like I should translate, but then also felt obnoxious about offering to do so, so didn't) were on a huge trip to see some old ruins. Like, duh, Chileans LOVE history. I'm not sure if this is true for all Chileans, but there were an astounding number of Chileans in Istanbul, so maybe Chileans truly do LOVE history.
There are also manmade tombs in the distance (supposedly the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus, although eh...Patroclus never appears in the Linear B script, so he's likely enough a fiction) and grand sweeping views of the ocean. (Since filled in, but you actually can figure out where all the wars would have been fought and it all looks...right.)
Then there's a temple to Athena that Alexander built when he paid a pilgrimage to Achilles. (Alexander the Great thought he was Achilles reborn and worshiped the guy.) A lot of it is still intact.
Part of Alexander's temple. It's crazy when something from the 4th century BC is almost considered modern!
In a period still later, there's a tiny ampitheater and government building, all made of marble by the Romans.
Sacrificial pits. One held water, another blood. This was from the Greek era. Behind it you can see the plains of Troy that Achilles battled Hector on (supposedly).
And everything, again, seems right. It's a highly fortifiable position, with sweeping winds that change direction yearly, allowing passage two and from the sea of Mamara.
The site is really well laid out, too, with nice descriptions of everything in English and Turkish. We couldn't read it, though, as our guide was RUSHING us through it. Even worse, there's apparently a brand new four storey museum that we “didn't have time for”. (Although we had time to stop at his gift shop for a half hour to buy stuff and a half hour for breakfast and dinner, an hour for lunch, and fifteen minutes of talk that could have been done on the bus.) It annoyed me so much. Clearly everyone here WANTED to see Troy...but we only spent maybe 45 minutes there out of a 17 hour day. Grr.
The other passengers were kind of amusing, too. There was a Chinese couple who mostly seemed to want to see the Trojan horse from the Troy movie and were sincerely disappointed that we didn't see it. Then there was a group of Chilean doctors (4 of them?) who were SUPER into the history and kept trying to translate the English into Spanish among themselves and taking pictures of the plaques to translate later. (Which was adorable.) They were DELIGHTED when they found a book in Spanish about the site. Like, they were the happiest tourists ever to learn that they could spend hours, and hours studying more history. (For all that I'm kind of mocking it, I'm doing it because of love. I, too, would be behaving this way under identical circumstances. I pretty much already was in circumstances that favored speaking my native language. So...)
Then there were two Australians who'd come for Gallapoli and decided to add Troy as an additional stop who seemed bored by the whole affair. So it was like, EXCITE, EXCITE, DISAPPOINTMENT, BOREDOM. But so goes so many things in life, I guess.
9-17-19 - Bosphorous Cruise
Today Lindsey and I decided to go on the Bosphorous Cruise. As the first doesn't leave until 10:30, we decided to have a leisurely Turkish breakfast, which consists of eggs, cheese, fried cheese, sausage, bread, fried donuts with honey and fruit preserves, and about a dozen different toppings for bread (most of which are buttery, oily, cheesy, or all three. I'm honestly surprised that everyone in Turkey isn't dead by 40 from heart disease as the average meal appears to be cheese wrapped in a thin layer of bread then fried in butter before being drizzled in olive oil, honey, sugar syrup, or all three. Adding nuts to all of these dishes is also quite acceptable. The higher the calorie count, the tastier the food!)
Service took forever, so we made it to the cruise with literally less than a minute to spare (according to the ticket. We got on and like, they hoisted up the plank.)
The cruise was fun, although I suspect I'd have liked it better if I had not taken the ferry all the time anyway and/or I was the sort of person who was not super into exercising. Mostly it went up the Bosphorous over the course of about two hours, stopping at a few ports. Along the way, there were palaces (Dolmhemnace, Byaerti, etc.), mosques, ruins, and lots of fancy houses. My favorites had boat garages or, in a very peculiar case, a bunch of fully dressed mannequins in the yard along with some replicas of Greek statuary (naked women). I suspect this guy's neighbors are just WAITING for him to move out or die.
The palace from the river is quite lovely.
You can see this from the ferry, but whateves. It's Maiden's Tower. There are many legends about it, and it's kind of picturesque.
A pretty mosque you can see on your cruise! (Note: You will see a lot of mosques in Turkey.)
An especially amusing looking yali. Turks like to summer along the Bosphorous (who wouldn't?), and have their fancy mansions there.(Because, again, who wouldn't?)
The Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, aka the last bridge that spans Europe and Asia on the Bosphorous. It's pretty.
We reached a fishing village at the far end and hiked up the hill to the fortress, which we couldn't go into, but could stare at, along with sweeping vistas of the Black Sea. From there we had a cup of tea overlooking the Bosphorous and Black Sea, then climbed down to have fish soup and bread with yogurt, which was good. Then it was right back on the ferry to ride back to Istanbul.
Cute fishing village on the Bosphorous that was made for tourism. Just saying.
Lindsey, having made it to the castle, looking adorable over the Bosphorous.
We fed fish at our restaurant and they swarmed. It was fun. I am childish like that.
Maiden's tower, on the way back.
A final view of Istanbul.
When we got off, we went to the upscale market to acquire the rug I wanted (so pretty!). The owner of the shop showed us some of his collection of embroidery, including some 19th century Pakistni pieces with mother of pearl sewn into the cloth, 16th century Turkish embroidery, and some other lovely things. He mentioned, vaguely sadly, that his father just wanted to get rid of the piece I was getting (it was marked at 13,500 Lira, or about $2,700...so I got it for a third of the asking price. In addition, it seems possible that if it had been on sale for so long that it had once been worth still more, as the Lira was recently devalued from around 2/$ to 5/$.) He also mentioned that he'd love a picture of my parents' rug and that, if I ever happened to need rare fabrics sourced, he was very good at it.
From there, we went back to the ceramics place where Lindsey bought a nice tea cup for her grandmother. We also browsed the nearby Carrefour, where I found the bottles of wine that Lindsey had found with Noah that are made using traditional methods dating back thousands of years. (She seemed rather annoyed, I suspect because they were MUCH cheaper in Carrefour than she got them for.)
After that, I wandered around Karakoy, ate ice cream, drank pomegranate juice, and bought a bottle of mulberry wine (it's quite good, although not extraordinary. Just very good.) Then I packed for Cappadoccia as we'll be getting up around 3:30 am to catch our flight. Fun.
