Troy goes to Troy

This morning, we got up in our countryside hotel after being up from the roosters (those bastards started crowing at 3:45 a.m. and would.not.stop.) and drove southward toward Troia, or as most of us know it, Troy.



We again learned a ton from Indy. For example, the wall on the left is from the original city. The wall on the right from Alexander the Great. And there is a third wall even further right from Roman times.

We saw the city and learned how they lived. We learned that it is now 12 km from the sea, which means those farmer's fields down below are where Achilles and Menelaus fought. We also learned that the real Achilles was no Brad Pitt warrior, but someone who fled the war for good to go to Jordan to live as a woman in a harem. Apparently, Patroclus was quite a good friend!

And C-man wanted to adopt a cat who followed us everywhere and even named him Mr. Fuzzball.

From there, we got back in the car and continued south to Pergamon. This is the city where Paris' children fled to after Menelaus conquered Troy and stole Helen back. Paris and Helen had three children, and so these three children grew up to rule Pergamon.

These are Medusa's wishing trees that people still go to today.

And the aqua ducts that still stand down below, now in the middle of farmers' fields.

C-man was incredibly happy, because last week was a really hard rain, so Indy was finding shards of pottery and glass. He gave us a few of them that were of insignificance (2700 years old - and they're insignificant!), but kept a few jewelry pieces that he is going to give to the local museum. How he knows what each shard comes from is sort of amazing. It's really added to the whole experience. And we know he is real, because every single guide throughout the country greets him and then goes into this whole spiel about how lucky we are to have him as our guide - and to have him all to ourselves. We do feel fortunate.

The theater here is the steepest in the world, and seats 17,500 people. Apparently the way to tell the population of these cities is to count the number of seats and multiply by 5. Pretty interesting little tidbit, I thought!

This is the temple that was built for Trageda so that he would no kill those who lived here. Apparently he was a really mean guy who killed everyone, otherwise.

Then we took the cable car back down the hill (much to C-man's delight),

And made our way to our hotel. But not before we went to a "fashion show" at the local leather factory. No lie, they paraded us in, sat us down in theater-style chairs, and 2 women and 2 men catwalked their leather jackets to strobe lights and loud music. I kept looking at Beerman and asking if that was REALLY happening. And the worst part? I didn't bring my camera with me because I had absolutely NO idea it would be like that. Something kind of funny we've learned in Turkey is that the guides have agreements with local places. They get free food and clean toilets for their people if the people go through some sales pitch. It's like an American time share experience, but WAY cheesier.

Tomorrow, we explore Ephesus. That means Artemis' temple and Mary's house that she lived until her death. Apparently there is healing water at Mary's house. Beerman has decided we can spend all afternoon there and let me chug it if necessary. I can't wait.