Anything would be a let down after Epheseus, but man, Troy is really hard to take. First off, there is a huge wooden horse inside of the entry gate to Troy. It is filled with laughing school children running around it and climbing inside it. Parents surround the thing to get a photo of their moppet inside the Trojan Horse. If you were expecting something regal and solemn (like Epheseus) here you would be sorely disappointed. It is a theme park grafted onto a major archeological site. It does not sit will with the visitor at all. The entry is like Homericland at Turkey Disney. It is a strange thing.
The archeology of Troia is amazing. There are at least nine cities on top of each other and each one is built on the remnants of the one before. It is not easy to believe what you are seeing is important since most of it is dun colored stone. But they do a good job of explaining what you are looking at and there are a lot of artist renderings of what the site looked like through the centuries.
Our tour ends tomorrow. We were supposed to go to Gallipoli, but our time here coincides with Anzac Day, which is becoming a larger and larger show of Australian nationalism each year. The hotel we were supposed to stay at is overbooked so we have ended up in a hotel 50 kilometers from the town of Çanakkale. We are supposed to leave here at 6 am to go back to Istanbul.
I have grown quite fond of my companions. The children actually behaved themselves quite well overall. It is hard because they are the only kids on the trip and their mother (who is strikingly beautiful, I forgot to mention) has her hands full with wrangling them. She does a good job with them. I forget sometimes how an education can be a hard thing for the teacher and the student. As much as it hurts to be asked some questions, I know that it is better that they ask me than someone else. They have a fierce intelligence these two kids. They are fortunate to have the parents they have and the brains they have. I hope they look after each other.
As much as I will miss them, I am looking forward to Istanbul alone. I want to know about the city as much as I can. I just want to look and look and look. I find myself getting caught up in figuring out tours and all that stuff. Tomorrow I am just going to get lost and see what I see.
