Wednesday, November 11, 2015

July 22, 2015 Canakkale (Kepez) Turkey - tour to Troy

Today we are going to dock in Canakkale- near the ancient site of Troy.
Canakkale is about 200 miles from Istanbul by ship.
This is one port visit that played a factor in taking this cruise. We will be able to take an excursion to the ancient site of Troy and then into the city of Canakkale to visit the museum.

Sailing into the port we were able to see the two monuments dedicated to the Turkish and ANZAC soldiers that died at Gallipoli.



 British
Turkish

Our ship was able to dock which made it easy to get off the ship and find our tour bus. The port is unimpressive- see photos. It did have a small gift shop which we visited when we returned from our tour.



 City views

Weather was sunny but very windy at the port.

Our bus ride to Troy was about 20 minutes. There is nothing but land/fields surrounding the site of the ruins.

The biggest surprise when we arrived at the museum was the giant Trojan horse. It was open to climb up and stick your head out the window for photos.


Our guide took us around the excavations explaining how the site was discovered and scientists are still digging.  The ruins are on a hill or bluff and have a view of the lower land towards the Dardanelles.
The tour of the site is via a path and wooden bridges over the excavated parts of the ruins. Fortunately there are handrails and benches along the path.









Visiting Troy was one of the items on my bucket list. It was an incredible place- per the guide the walled portion was not very big.  On the way out we saw a chariot and had to have a photo.

If you have a chance to visit Troy do it.!

Our next stop was the museum in Canakkale. It was not very big but had some nice artifacts.
The only drawback was all the descriptions were in Turkish! How can one read about what is on display if one does not read Turkish. I mentioned this to our guide who was an expert on Troy and he said the museum will be relocated to a location near Troy.
Hopefully the curators will update the descriptions by adding English.

Our ship was scheduled  to leave at 3pm so we did not have any time to go into the city and sightsee.

I really enjoyed this visit.

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