Although I am not technıcally ın Troy right now, we did visit Troy (Truva in Turkısh) today. On the whole the site was quıte ımpressıve especıally gıven that fact that parts of it were built over 5000 years ago. Hightlights from the ruins included a cave (I think I have seen more caves in the last 3 weeks than I will probably see for the rest of my life), Nessie posing as Achilles clutching her heel infront of a group of tourists, and our picnic lunch (we ended up finding the most delightful little bench to eat it on aswell). We spent the afternoon at a beach just outside of Canakkale where Nessie and I were actually the only non-Turkish people. We managed to keep a group of children entertained for at least 45 minutes by ... read more

Today Nessie and I took the bus from our hotel in Pammukale to Selchuk which is where you stay to go and see the ruins at Ephesus. We had a good little bus ride and listened to a podcast we have been listening to on all our bus rides...Ricky Gervais. He's the guy who writes the original British version of The Office and his podcasts are absolutely hysterical. Not sure if you've heard about them, but they have this guy who is on the podcast named Carl Pilckington who is totally ridiculous. They spend most of the podcasts making fun of Carl's outlook on life and how absurdly stupid he is. We always get glances from other passengers as we are laughing to tears in unison. It makes the time go by quickly, especially because it ... read more

We started our day by visiting the ancient ruin of Perge. It was incredibly hot today in Antalya and Nessie and I decided to take public transit and then walk to the ruin. We were both soaked with our own sweat by the time we got to Perge. Turkish buses are not set up with enough ventilation (ie. windows) let alone AC. Despite that, I really enjoyed seeing the ruins. It would have been awesome to be one of the rich inhabitants of Perge because once a week you would get to visit the baths. The baths were set up like hammams/spas where you would do a little exercise, have a bath and then a slave would scrape a layer of skin off of you and rub you with olive oil. Skin cancer wasn't really on ... read more

Today Nessie and I had an easy start to the day. Nessie was feeling much better after 10 hours of sleep and lots of gravol and pepto (so much for the lady at customs laughıng at my drugstore...it all came in handy). The fact that our hostel room is a smoke free environment may also have helped wıth her nausea. We were sitting at the front of the bus for the 9 hour bus rıde (we had specifically requested since Nessie already wasnt feeling too hot), and the bus driver smoked a cıgarette inside the airconditioned bus about every 45 minutes. We smelt like we had been at a bingo hall when we got off the bus...Turks smoke everywhere. We headed to the Antalya Museum where we saw many sculptures that have been restored from the ... read more

Yesterday Nessie and I switched hostels to another little town in Capadocia called Uçısar. Our room as a fantastıc vıew of the valley and I took lots of pıctures. It seems lıke the type of vıew people would pay a lot of money for ın North Amerıca. Uçısar has a major french presence whıch ıs kınd of ınterestıng. Most of the restaurants are owned by French people and have French names. We decıded to eat at a restaurant called Le mouton rouge. The cuısıne was Turkısh but the atmosphere defınıtely resembled a Parısıen style restaurant. The owner has dual French-Turkısh cıtızenshıp and spends 7 months of the year ın Parıs. I got to put my French to good use talkıng wıth hım and another French couple after dınner. Nessıe and I mostly lıstened to the conversatıon ... read more