Today we deviate from the tour schedule that the others will be staying on. When we registered for the tour we made it clear we wanted to spend some time at Gallipoli. The others on the tour did not have a similar interest so we were dropped off at our hotel in Canakkale after our visit to Troy while the others continued on to Istanbul. This will come as no surprise but the entrance to the City of Troy is marked by a wooden Trojan Horse. Excavations of t...

A long way to drive today so only a few sites to visit. The first site is the walled City of Pergamon access to which is by gondola. Dating back to the 6th century BC there have been many rulers of the city including Alexander the Great. Some of the buildings have been partially reconstructed using original materials. The more impressive ones being the Temple of Trajan and the Sanctuary of Athena. In its existing form is The Hellenistic Theater. With seating fo...

Our second day in Kusadasi started with a visit to a leather factory. It started with the display of some of their 2012 collection along the catwalk followed by a short explanation of the business and list of some of the top fashion houses the supplied to in Italy and France. Of course we were to receive a discount of 50% off the marked prices and then a further discount when that discounted amount became USD instead of Euro. So a garment marked at Є1,000...

Today we head for Kusadasi via the ancient cities of Aphrodisias and Ephesus. Founded in the 5th century BC Aphrodisias was dedicated to the goddess of love – Aphrodite. It was the centre of the arts and in particular sculpture. The ruins are in pretty good shape with a 3km long wall still surrounding the city and the Temple of Aphrodite, which was at one time converted to a Christian Basilica, in relatively good condition for its age. There are numerous...

We drove all morning and just before arriving at Pamukkale we called into yet another World Heritage Site with two totally different points of interest. The first of these was white terraces of minerals left by flowing water. These terraces were 2,700m long, 600m wide and 160m high. We can only imagine that these terraces are similar to the Pink and White Terraces in NZ which disappeared after a violent earthquake near the end of the 19th century (and only this ...