Re-enacting Gallipoli

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Our room at Anzac house hostel has no windows and therefore no daylight to wake us up naturally. We slept till around eleven when I got restless and checked the time. A room with no windows is a dangerous thing when you are constantly tired as we are.

Yesterday we had both agreed that going to Gallipoli was too expensive considering our lack of interest in it. We were both vaguely interested until we read that the majority of the trip consists of visiting cemeteries which for £22 each did not seem worth it. We had both agreed to look at tour agencies whilst walking around to see if we could find anything cheaper. We couldn't and we weren't entirely disappointed.

The plan for today was to get a dolmus out to Troy; however we were distracted by a parade/ceremony that was taking place in the centre for the day of the republic. We only intended to stop to see what was happening but ended up watching the majority of it. When we did decide to leave we realised there wasn't enough time to get to Troy so we went and checked out times for tomorrow instead.

We bought lunch from the supermarket. It definitely is not as cheap here as most countries that we have been to but they do have proper bread at last. We got some cheese, tomato, fruit and yoghurt and took them to the water front. Whilst there is a pleasant promenade along the waterfront it is very busy. We attempted to sit and make up our sandwiches on a bench by the water but too many people were staring and commenting so we went back and ate at the hostel.

Due to our substandard English education, neither Rob nor myself knew that Turkey had even been involved in either of the world wars. We decided to improve ourselves by visiting the fort of Canakkale which housed an exhibit on Gallipoli and had lots of military equipment etc. The fort was quite small but had an interesting history including being an integral part of defending the Dardanelles from intruders, (this included the British.) Turkey claims that by foiling the British attempt at securing the Dardanelles they stopped Britain from getting a safe passage through to Russia; lacking this support caused the collapse of the Tsarist regime. The exhibits were obviously slightly biased but definitely very interesting. The two best things were; a replica of the Nusrat which laid the mines in the Dardanelles and some fused bullets which occurred in the battle of Gallipoli.

We left the fort just as it was shutting and found that it was rapidly getting dark. We found an internet café that was a lot cheaper than our hostel and we sussed out accommodation for Selcuk which will be our next stop. We each phoned home and chatted to our parents and then got caught up in looking for cheap flights for our travels after Christmas. Sky scanner found a flight from Blackpool to Gerona (Barcelona) on January 21st and then another from Gerona to Marrakesh (Morocco) on the 28th. This in total for two people including taxes would cost around £75. Ryan air had an offer on their website and when we checked, it applied to our flights. In all we paid £55 for flights, taxes and baggage. An amazing offer.

At the hostel it was Rob's turn to shower and much to my amusement his experience was as traumatising as mine.

We had a large lunch and neither of us wanted to eat anything unless it was something tasty. On the front there was a café that was packed with locals so we decided to eat in there. We both had tomato soup with unlimited white crusty bread and then I had a vegetable casserole whilst Rob had traditional meatballs.

The bars looked on the whole unappealing and understandably we didn't want to go back to our prison cell of a room. The internet café we had been in earlier had computers with games such as Rise of Nations so we went there and played a couple of games on separate computers that were networked together and chatted to each other over Skye. Despite it sounding dull, we had a lovely evening and were both ready for bed when we eventually did return to our cell.

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