Troia, Gelibolu, Ephesus etc.

Sooo... Where was I? About to check out and head South? Basically Friday ended up being a write off thanks to a few choice pieces of bad information. I can't be bothered, but you can read about it on Peggy's blog, The Pegiad, if you want to know. The punchline is we arrive in Eceabat about 6pm without time to get to Troy. We got some food, hung out with some people and went to bed early to get Troy and Gallipoli done in a day.

Up early to catch the 8am ferry to Canakkale to get a dolmus (mini-bus) to Troy... Except more bad information means we have to wait 45 minutes for a bus and end up with less than an hour at Troy. Peggy studied the city and the history of its discovery so she was an excellent guide and I learned a lot on our speed tour :) We were worried about missing the ferry to make it to our Gallipoli tour so I pounced on an unsuspecting couple headed to Canakkale to ask for a lift. They spoke no English, we speak less than no Turkish (when I try to say thank you people just look baffled - that's anti-communication.) So the nice people took us back to the ferry and we were only a little late for our tour.

I was especially focused on seeing Gallipoli. It's such a huge part of our national history and identity, I knew it would mean a lot. As it turned out I was almost crying by the first stop. It was a moving, emotional experience on a beautiful coastline where thousands of young men died. I was especially shocked that a quarter of the Australians and New Zealanders who died were never found. Anyway, not so much a happy trip, but I'm glad we went and now I can really picture what we were taught in history class.

After that we had about three hours to kill before our bus. Our hostel (Hotel Crowded House) was great, they let us shower and hang out despite having checked out almost 12 hours earlier. We interneted, charged stuff, fixed my "f" key on my laptop, wrote postcards and updated diaries... and there was still more than an hour to go. Waiting sucks. Then we were told the bus would be late by about an hour. That turned out to be more like an hour and a half, and at that time ferries are only every hour so we finally left Canakkale two hours late, at 12.30am. Didn't bother us too much in the end because otherwise we would have reached Selcuk at 5am.

How long is this? How boring? If the answer to both those is "too" then you should have skipped ahead.

So today (Sunday) we arrived in Selcuk at 7am, got picked up by our hostel and got to check in about 8am, totally unheard of usually but I guess the room was already clean. We decided to hit Ephesus, an ancient city. It's huge, and fairly well preserved. It's not far from our hostel so we walked over the hill. It took about an hour but I really enjoyed getting off my arse and being active. There's been a lot of sitting lately!

Spent almost three hours walking around Ephesus. It's amazing to sit somewhere and think that 1000 years ago someone probably sat in the exact same place. The signs were really good so we didn't miss having a guide. Instead we went our own pace, resting frequently in the shade so Peggy's thermostat didn't overload. Ice cream, a dolmus back to town, some grocery shopping and a shuttle back to our hostel. Rock and roll.

Now we're deciding what to do tomorrow between nothing and Aqua Fantasy water park. I'll let you know what we pick