Ayvalik —> Çanakkale

We started our day with a short stroll in Ayvalik to see the local Planeterra project, the G Adventures funded community outreach program.

This particular project is called cop(m)adam which directly translates to ‘stickman’ for men or ‘garbage lady’ for women. The focus of this project is upcycling used products such as old fabric, chip packets and bottle caps to create new products such as bags, pencil cases and cups. It was very cool to see some of these products and know that some of our tour cost is going towards another great initiative from G Adventures.

We then made our way to the ancient city of Troy to explore the historic town. This site was originally excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in search of the ancient city of Troy which features in the legend which is captured on Homer's Illiad Odyssey. Schliemann discovered the site and then left with many of the treasures overseas in the 19th century (some of which have still not been returned to Turkey).

There are in fact 10 different ‘cities’ at this site which span around 3500 years of civilisation starting back in 3000BC (during the Bronze Age). This makes the archaeological site quite unique! Since then, after war or natural disasters, the city was rebuilt on top of the old one giving many layers to the city. The legendary city of Troy where the wars occurred was probably the 6th city - though we will never know whether the legend of the Trojan horse was in fact real or not! No wooden horse has been found from this story.

We saw the mudbricks which have been discovered from the various cities and explanations about clues as to each civilisation. In the 12th century BC, the Greeks came to Antolia (modern day Turkey) and the city became Greek after the so-called Trojan war in this period. Hazal told us about the different layers and the techniques used by archaeologists to inspect the layers and understand more about these ancient cities. We also saw how much of the site was destroyed by Schliemann when he initially discovered the site.

It was really interesting exploring the different layers of the city but unfortunately the "replica" Trojan horse was under repair so we didn’t get to see it (though we did take a photo of its head!)

We had a quick lunch on our way to our next town for the night, Çanakkale, and arrived around 4pm. We freshened up before heading out for dinner, first with a surprise visit to the Trojan horse! This is the exact horse used in the movie, Troy, and is on display along the harbour for all to enjoy.

We then went out for a nice dinner of lentil soup, pide, wine and beer before going to get bubble waffles for dessert which were so yum! We ate them as we walked back to the hotel to go to bed to rest up for our last full tour day tomorrow.Read more