On the doorstep of Troy

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I got up this morning and checked out Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the one site that I wasnt able to get to in the previous days. It was the Sutan's castle and was built around the 13th century, and was quite pretty. It was a cool morning, and after I checked out the palace, it started to rain. I was glad that I was able to check out the palace, and it didn't matter because I had booked an afternoon bus to Canakkale.
The hostel was really cold last night, and I woke up feeling on the verge of a head cold. After checking out the palace I walked in the rain and got some fresh squeezed orange which took about 7 oranges to make, and the vitamin C seems to have worked.
So I spent the afternoon getting to Canakkale, which is quite close to the ruins of Troy. The bus took about 6 hours and we arrived around 7pm. The drive was really beautiful with lots of farmer's fields and beautiful landscapes. It is beautiful here. The hostel is a stones-throw away from the port where the ferry dropped our bus. It is also the site of a battle in World War I, in which thousands of Austrailians and Kiwis died, so many come to pay their respects. I am sharing a dorm room with 3 Aussies and 1 Canadian that I met on the bus. We are watching a documentary about the Gallipoli battle on a projector at the hostel. I don't plan on going to see the monuments. I'm tight for time so I have to choose what I really want to see. Tomorrow the Canadian girl and I will go to see Troy in the morning, as it only takes a few hours and then we will get on another 6 hour to Izmir and I will spend the night there before taking a one hour bus to see the what is considered the best ruins in Turkey: Eupheus. Then I will decide where to go from there.

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