Turkish Delight - A city to launch a thousand ships

Ever since I read the tales of this city it is a place I have longed to visit. As a child I never thought I'd ever have the opportunity so whilst in Turkey this was the must see and personally the highlight of the whole trip.

Where then? Well if the post title hasn't given it away then this will...

 Yes - unmistakably Troy. This (rather dreadful) horse was put up to give the visitors something to photograph... You can if you want to climb up inside and stick your head out of the body. We didn't bother but it took a while to be able to get a clear shot like this.

 With some high anticipation I was half expecting the site itself to be a bit of an anticlimax but it was far from that.

True, the remains are less spectacular than some of the sites but given the quality of the "reconstruction" we saw elsewhere this was no bad thing.

The site is huge. And overgrown. But that didn't matter.

We saw red squirrels playing in the trees and tiny tortoises bathing in the hot sun.

 
Some areas are much tidier - a testament to the destructive archaeology of some of the earliest excavators who were seeking the legendary treasures of Troy.





Troy was indeed fabulously wealthy thanks to it's control of the shipping in the Aegean. If the winds were unfavourable as they often were, ships would have to remain in  port at Troy until they were able to proceed - sometimes months. This added to the wealth of the inhabitants.

Troy is actually multiple cities, in fact 9 of them, all piled on top of each other and the archaeology is confusing. Even the pros have to label each layer!

How anyone could say that there is nothing to photograph beats me  - this is the ramp into the pre homeric Troy 2.

and of course the inevitable amphitheatre! (Roman, Troy IX)