Troy and Pergamum

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I got up and finished packing my stuff up that had magically exploded out of my backpack that night, then went down for the free Turkish breakfast (not quite as good at the Apricot Hotels, but it still covered the basics : tomatoes, olives, cheese, cucumber, yogurt, rose hip jam, tea, etc) then it was on the road again!
We stopped at Troy which my Dad said would be a complete waste of time since it’s just a bunch of stones and you have to use your imagination. I actually found it kind of interesting with there being 9 Troy’s since they had to rebuild after disasters. At one point we were all standing and looking at a couple walls that were labeled with which one was from which Troy and there was a PVC pipe coming out of the wall of Troy 6 and one of the Aussie guys, Josh, said “look they invented poly vinyl carbonate in Troy 6!” and we all were like what? Then he pointed to the PVC pipe, it was quite funny. Dad should really come back since they are reconstructing some of it so you don’t have to completely use your imagination. One of the best parts of it is the fake Trojan horse they have there that you can climb into and take your picture.
Overall I think since Dad told me it was just a pile of rocks I was really expecting a pile of rocks, but there are still walls up and since they are reconstructing parts of it it’s really nice. So I liked it, it was also fun to hear the mythological and archeological versions of Troy. It is also interesting to know that Troy used to be a Port city, but the water is kilometers away now.
We then got back in our party bus and headed to Pergamum where we got to ride in the sky boxes up to it, one of the girls, Steph (Josh’s girlfriend) does not like elevators or sky trams apparently (which I can kind of understand with the elevators, the Turkish elevators don’t have automatic sliding doors, the elevator door is just like a regular door that you pull/push open, so you can see the floors going by as you ride in the elevator, I have found myself so many times arriving at my floor and waiting for the elevator door to open, but you have to push open the door yourself) so we were teasing her a bit on the way up.
Pergamum was really interesting to see the different structure of the stones to know which period it was from, the view from the top of the hill was spectacular (Turkey is just gorgeous) and the amphitheater was fun, a few of us walked all the way down and were just talking and the rest of the group could hear us just fine, the acoustics were still great! Then we had to get back up the amphitheater, step after step after step! We get to the top then Fatih says oh we have to go a third of the way down to get out of here, well you could have told us that when we got 2/3 of the way up! Instead of having us walk all the way up to walk part of the way down again. Fatih turns out to be a really cheeky tour guide!
We saw some Deep South Americans singing sermons and being really religious, I told the group not to judge me on those extremely conservative religious Americans, we all aren’t like that!
We then got back on the road since we were heading to Kusadasi that night and spending 3 nights there.
We unloaded our stuff and some of the group went for a swim, but we all decided that after dinner we were going out on the town, and luckily Fatih said he would take us out and Hassan would drive us! Sweet, it doesn’t get much better than that!
So we got into town and it’s about 9:45 and Fatih says it’s too early to go to the Disco so we sit down at a Nargile bar and order a few Narglies and beers and chat, I ask Hassan and Fatih if they play Backgammon and they were like of course! Then out of nowhere a backgammon board appears and Hassan challenges me to a game. Fatih comes and joins my team since I am still new to the game, but I like it a lot. My job really was only to throw the dice, and then Hassan (my opponent) and Fatih would then argue over my best move. I got slaughtered my first go, and then in the second game I actually made a few decisions! I almost beat Hassan but he won in the end. I kept asking Fatih how you say cheater in Turkish, we had a great time, then it was off to the disco, which turned out to be an Irish bar (Kitty O’Sheas) it was quite interesting since they had so many staff and they all were dancing on the dance floor in synchronized moves. We all sat down and ordered a few beers and they brought us popcorn, not a good idea for people who have already been drinking, it then became a game of who could throw popcorn at each other and get it in their mouths and quickly turned into who can throw popcorn into another person’s drink, luckily I had a beer bottle and could easily cover it with my hand. A staff came around and asked those of us with beers if we wanted glasses and we all quickly declined, he seemed kind of hurt, but a glass would have been harder to cover from the popcorn wars.
Soon enough we all were dancing and carrying on, the staff was showing us the proper moves to the songs and it was awesome. The dance floor got busy around 1 am and let me tell you our tour guide, Fatih, is a party animal! He can dance and dance and dance! We kept dancing till 2 am. It was a great night since we had a driver, who while on the way home Josh was yelling faster, faster! Then out of nowhere Josh yells, sideways! (Now it’s the running joke) It was a night I won’t forget, but it’s an early start for the next day, we are just lucky we are here for a few days, so I don’t have to pack up my bags and I can do some laundry and hang it out! Yay!
B

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Photos

PVC was invented! Troy 6
Its the white thing near the top