Pergamon Tour, visiting Acropol, Asclepion, Theatre, The Agora and Ancient City of Pergamon. Followed by tour of Troy if time allows [where the long-suffering guide will repeatedly confuse Iliad and Aeneid, much to Carly's everlasting consternation].
So, to keep it simple, we went to Pergamon, city of really chilly wind on a really high hilltop. I would have abandoned it, too. That place was cold.
Shrubbery escaped from the set of Farscape:
Remember the rags-on-trees thing I mentioned in the last post? Same idea here:
Another theater:
Following Pergamon, we departed for Asklepion, alleged home of Asclepius, the master healer that Zeus eventually dispatched because Asclepius could bring back the dead and Hades throwing a fit becausehis kingdom was being depleted. Then Zeus stuck Asclepius in the sky as the constellation constellation Ophiuchus. Suitable recompense? You decide.
The Asklepion was a very short and somewhat uneasy tour: a military installation surrounds it on three sides, with sentries posted to make sure that no one takes pictures of the installation (one wonders about the decision process that placed a major base next to a major tourist attraction). So not only can you not take pictures for quite a lot of it, you can also hear gunfire from the base's range.
Yeah, mildly disconcerting.
Also, we were whirlwinding through it in an effort to make it to Troy (dude! Troy!) before dark, so really we had the nickel tour and got back on the bus.
A column with an inferiority complex:
Looks a little like the ruins of Skara Brae:
Hannah, rockin' the Unabomber look again:
Mattie. Bubbles. I sense wacky hijinks in the near future:
Can the Rotex Chaperone, having his Leonardo DeCaprio moment:
Following Asklepion: TROY. Where the guide repeatedly confused Iliad and Aeneid, to my loud, everlasting, and profound irritation...but it was still pretty cool. And the sun finally came out after two days of overcast, so that was good!
The horse. I hate this horse. The Aeneid describes a horse "woven" of either oak or pine or possibly both. Nowhere in that text is a massive outhouse with legs and a tail referenced:
Garet described this as his 300 moment. I didn't say anything. I was really proud of myself:
The view from the wildly inaccurate horse:
And, of course, the flags had to come out. Except Canada, who couldn't be bothered. Go figure.
Finally, we got away from the outhouse described as a horse, and to the legitimately historical part of the tour:
These diagrams and markers indicate the four stages and forty-six levels of Troy. Clearly, this site was designed to keep children from ever wanting to be archeologists.
This next section is for you noisy lot who were complaining that there were never any pictures of me on this blog. Here, Maeghan got hold of my camera, and refused to give it back.
I mean, really refused. Even when I was walking at her to wrest it from her viselike Candian grip.
Having eventually recovered my camera, Maeghan and I rejoined the group, with whom we wandered further before the rangers chased us out. Apparently it was closing time. We migrated to the hotel in nearbye Çanakkale. Now, some of you rather well-versed on pop culture will know that some moons ago, there was a movie with the rather self-explanatory title of Troy, starring the Farrell that isn't Will, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and a rather large wooden horse. After filming wrapped, the producers donated the horse to the town of Çanakkale, where it resides with the local moniker of "Brad Pitt's Horse." Maeghan and went on a late-night photography expedition to find it. It was pretty cool (and vastly more historically accurate. I hate it when the movies trump the museums for accuracy).
And tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel...things take a turn for the sobering at Gallipoli.
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