15 June...Turkey...Troy and Gallipoli

15 June
Up early for breakfast. Very nice, lots of choices.

We decided to add a tour of Troy in the morning, and then Gallipoli in the afternoon. Grace was tired as was Angelo, so they decided not to come.

Off in Troy tour...

We saw the Trojan horse....and heard tales about it. Our guide, Murat, spoke English very well, was funny and full of information. Apparently he is a history major.

Then we went to the ruins of the city of Troy. They have found 9 levels of the city. Up and down stairs and levels. We realised at this point that this would have been no good for Grace and Angelo.

We stopped for drink and bought book and had it signed by author. Apparently the author was Murat's history teacher.

There were people from Findley on bus, plus Tasmania, NZ plus USA.

Discovered peach juice in a can. Yum

Into Canakkle to drop the others off. We are staying with our guide for the Gallipoli tour.

The ferry leaves at 12.30 pm

A walk over to the ferry with our guide. We walked onto the ferry with the cars and up the stairs to wait for the ferry to take us to another town and then to Maydos where we had a 3 course lunch. All part of the tour cost. Then off to Gallipoli in a big tour bus, again with Murat. A 15 minute drive and then we will go by boat to see the landing place by sea as our diggers would have seen.

The boat trip gave us a view of what our soldiers saw as they landed. They should have landed on a beach about a mile south which would have been easier to get out. Not such cliffs.

We got out at each memorial Anzac and Turkish went into some of the trenches.

Saw how close the allies and Turks trenches were.

We signed the visitors book at Lone pine and was told the story of the 2 brothers, one died and his brother found a pine cone on his body and sent it home to his mother and it grew and a pinecone from this tree was sent back and this pinecone grew to be lone pine tree.

After the tour back into bus and stopped where we had lunch for a drink and then into bus.

Arrived back to ferry and back to Canakkle.

Hassle free travel agency is the name of the company
http://www.anzachouse.com is the website.

We went to the office and an employee drove us back. He had a sense of humour and pretended he didn't know where our hotel was!!

Doug seemed to know he didn't drink, so he offered him a beer!! The driver then turned off engine and pretended the car wouldn't go. We all laughed, but he had the last laugh I believe!!

We then had dinner and played cards. Grace looked really rested and had had a very relaxing day. They had made the best decision for them.