Kale, cabbage, and squash...Fallen apples and soldiers...Hellespont crossing.

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Today we crossed the Dardanelles after lunch in Eceabat. We are now in Asia, Anatolia, Asia Minor. Before the crossing, we stopped at the battleground on Gallipoli where the "the sick man of Europe," led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk defeated the Allied troops. Then down the coast to Troy--not a very impressive ruin but a 9-layered one. Troy 6 is the Homer/Brad Pitt layer which was looted by the German-American Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870's. We shared lots of laughs about the "job description" of his second wife: "She should be poor, beautiful, a Homer enthusiast, dark haired, well educated and possessed of a good and loving heart." He apparently found a 16 year old Greek who fit the bill!

Ataturk is everywhere--each hamlet has an Ataturk Parki and each home, a photograph. This pastel from the Pera Museum in Istanbul is one of my favorites.

On to Assos--a Rick Steves favorites--and dinner and lodging in a small fishing village near a portion of St. Paul's road.

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