Europe and Beyond

Friday 26th May A short drive this morning to visit Troy, site of the Trojan Horse.  We weren't too sure what to expect here but found both an Archealogical Site and a museum.  We went to the Archealogical site first and saw a 1975 replica of the horse itself, however it was being refurbished and was screened off.  We were quite disappointed, though could still see the size and it is enormous, around 25 feet tall (Nearly 8metres)  Walking the area was both disappointing and surprising.  Disappointing because there was little left of Troy besides some walls and foundations.  Unlike the other places we had been there was no major buildings or columns still standing.  Surprising because it turns out there have been many versions of Troy, each built on top of each other.  They are referred to as Troy I, Troy II, Troy III etc up to Troy IX.  Troy I dates back to 3000BC which each subsequent version being built on top of the ruins of the previous one.  By the time of Troy IX (85 BC) the

Tuesday 23 May We left Fethiye at around 9:00am and headed inland to Pamukkale.  We were stopped once on the way at one of the usual police road blocks and this time as well as looking at my licence he asked for our passports.  No issues though, we were on the way again pretty quickly. We arrived in Pamukkale at 11:55 and check in started at 12:00 midday, so that worked really well.  What wasn't as good was that our room is on the top (5th) floor and there is no lift.  The hotel dude carried one of our suitcases and I took the other.  The room though is quite spacious and has some views of the Travertines, so we are pretty happy. We headed straight out to those Travertines as they were partly the inspiration for this trip, thanks to photos from our friends Jo P and Tracey Hogan from 30 years ago.  The Travertines are created from Limestone that comes up from hot springs.  Though many of the natural pools are now dry it was still pretty spectaular.  The main problem was that you are