I caught the bus from Alexandropoulis to Canakkale in Turkey. As soon as I crossed the border I was impressed with Turkey. My experience there was that the people had such pride in their work and were very friendly and happy and helpful, enjoying showing tourists their country. I went to Canakkale and was directed to the hostel. The hostel was closed for the off season but they gave me a room at their associated 4 star hotel for the hostel price. Ahhhh bliss!
The reason for visiting Canakkale was the proximity to the Gallipoli peninsula which I went to explore the following day. I was planning just to catch a bus out and make my own way around but there were no busses and I had to join a tour. I was glad to have done so though as our tour guide was very knowledgeable and pointed out many places of importance and showed us the trenches which are still amazingly evident as huge ditches despite being so old. The first thing that struck me when I arrived on the Gallipoli peninsula is how forgiving the Turks are. Despite my countrymen having invaded their land less than a century prior and so many people from there side being killed or wounded in a protracted stalemate of a campaign that in retrospect had no effect on the outcome of the war, these people are welcoming and friendly and hold no grudge. This is particularly pointed at ANZAC cove where there is a moving memorial from the leader of the Turks during the invasion. The memorial is for the allied soldiers and I must share it with everyone since it brought a tear to my eye because the Turks had suffered so much defending their homeland:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie here in this country of ours. You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well"
Ah, the pointlessness of war. If only we were all so forgiving.
The next thing that struck me was how absolutely beautiful and peaceful a place it is. The views are stunning and I found myself pondering while walking around that huge graveyard how lucky I am to be able to explore the world and see such beautiful places without having to join a war effort (whereby the effect of war can destroy such beauty at the time anyway!).
The tour showed me the sights of the landings and places where specific battles took place. Our guide was very good and informed us on many different stories. The tour ended with me feeling utterly exhausted but organizing myself on a tour to Troy for bright and early the following morning.
Our tour of Troy was really fun. Our guide very funny. He taught us all about the 9 different cities of Troy having been built and rebuilt on the same site over the last 5500 years. Archaeologists can actually pinpoint which one was the Troy described in Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" due to the change of the buildings being more within the walls during the war and then the buildings suddenly becoming Greek in the following Troy after it had supposedly been destroyed in the attack using the Trojan Horse (I still think that natural selection has a part t play in destroying that civilization if the stories are correct - fancy bringing a bloody big horse inside your gates that is big enough to house soldiers. And right after an army had tried to get in over many many years).
After the tour of Troy I was exhausted. But the tour guide was then taking the group for a tour of the Gallipoli peninsula and invited me to have a lift with them so I could walk around. I pulled myself out of tiredness knowing i would be a beautiful walk and I could have some time walking around with my music playing (and probably singing since no-one would be around and I now knew where the tours stopped). As it happens, another guy from my tour the day before, Clinton, joined me for the walk so I had a lovely walk around in a beautiful setting with good company. I withheld the singing for his benefit.
The next day I headed to Istanbul knowing that I only had one day to explore the city because the British Airways strike meant my ticket was changed to two days before. Again I was lucky for company because I met 3 girls at the hostel who wanted to explore the major sites the next day as well.
So the next day we headed out to the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, the cisterns and the palace. Then in the evening visited the grand bazaar and the spice bazaar (where I found out here are yummy flavours of Turkish delight that I love!). The Blue Mosque was beautiful but I could not stay too long. I always feel a bit weird being in someone else's place of worship. The Aya Sofia was originally Christian but then converted to a mosque. It is now a museum and quite amazing. As with other basilicas I had seen, it is amazing to see such artwork in mosaic. But the use of marble was also stunning and mindblowing. But the cisterns were my favourite. It just looked like something out of Indiana Jones going underground to a place with a watery lake and huge columns holding the ceiling up. All in all it was a great day.
That night I had too much fun at the hostel an basically stayed up the whole night before catching a bus before 5am to the airport for my flight to London where I had 4 days of catch up and fun and organization before flying to Delhi, India.
