Day 3 of our Black Sea Empires cruise - Canakkle

Today we woke to see the ship docking into Canakkle, a port sitting at the entry to the Dardanelles. Canakkle, pronounced Channa-kalee, is in Turkey, and from here there are tours to Gallipoli and Troy. We've visited before and know that the town itself is very pleasant - you can read about that visit to Canakkale here..

Wooden horse at the entrance to the Troy site.  All good fun. 

Peter was an escort on the Troy tour. (I've bought a ticket), so we were down on the quay by 9 o'clock. The bus was filled by 9.30 and our Greek guide told us the mythology of Troy as we drove towards the ancient city.

Now to be honest, we weren't expecting much, and in truth there isn't much to see - just loads of walls.

You really can see 4000 yr old straw in the bricks!

The thing is, those walls are up to 5000 years old and parts are so well preserved we could see the straw in the ancient bricks. Troy has been built up on itself nine times. That's nine times the archeology, but as we were walking around the site there were plenty of markers indicating which age of Troy we were looking. (The Trojan Horse was delivered to the senventh city by the way).

Note the markers telling you which city of Troy the wall came from.  1 through to 9

Our guide explained different sections such as the differences between older and newer brickwork and the Temple of Athena where wells were dug to "take the blood of the sacrifices" . When you learn that up to 300 bulls could be sacrificed at a time, you could understand the need for the wells.

Temple to Athena in Troy.  The wells are for the blood of the sacrifices.  Ugh!

A couple of unexpected delights came in the form of a wild tortoise, and an owl.

And there were Roman buildings in the form of baths and an amphitheatre.

Roman amphitheatre at Troy

For many years I'd thought of Troy as only a place in story, never taking the time to find out how much of it was real. Today's visit has brought an ancient city to life in my head and I'm wishing I'd brushed up a little more on Greek mythology before I visited. Maybe I'll have a look in the library later.

As I said, there isn't much at Troy, just lots and lots of walls.  Kinda interesting really. 

All in all a pleasant an interesting morning out.

We got back to the ship about 1pm, and by the time we'd eaten lunch we'd worked out that a trip into Canakkle wasn't feasible as we had to be back on board by 3pm. So we took advantage and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on deck. In fact, we got so relaxed we had to go to the cabin for a nap!

7.30 was the lecturers meet and greet, where we chatted to one of the opera singers and a couple of the lecturers. Then it was dinner in the Veranda Restaurant, where three more lecturers kept us entertained. We were persuaded to broaden our horizons and went to listen to Barcarola, an operatic foursome for a program of songs. Not really our thing, but the highlight was the piece of music composed by the pianist, Marcus. Called "Wanderer" it was very evocative. An absolute delight to listen to.

And finally to bed. We are going to be up very early in the morning as the ship sails through the Bosphorous, past Istanbul at 6am, just as the sun rises - so we'll be there to see it with bleary sleepy eyes.

Tomorrow is our first sea day and Peter's first lesson. I wonder how many will turn up?