Turkey And Greece 5-11/4/09

Hi everyone,
How is everyone going? The past week we went to Turkey and Greece. Some of the sites we went and saw were amazing. But as soon as we got off the plane in Turkey we hit problems. Mum's bag wasn't there witch was a disaster for her but we didn't really care that much. It turned up at lunch time the next day any way.

The next day we started the first day of our tour in Istanbul, that day we saw the Aya Sofya, it is a massive mosque that was built in the 6th century.Then we went to the Topkapi Palace. It was where kings/sultans lived and it was looking over the harbour you could see the bridge that lead to the Asian side of Istanbul. Then we had to have lunch, for lunch we had a nice soup and bread and chicken and pork kababs , it was pretty good but a bit pricey I thought for what we got. Then we went to the Hippodrome, it had a obelisk in it, it wasn't that interesting. Then it was the Blue Mosque it was much like the Aya Sofya, so we only spent 10 mins there. Later that night Paul our guide took some of us out for a drink we thought we were just going to walk down the road a bit but he took us half way across the city.

The next day we had to get on a bus to take us to Gallipoli. When we got there we stopped firstly at the Museum it was good it showed the things that the Anzac's wore and the English and French. Then we went to Anzac Cove where the Anzacs landed you could see how ruthless and unkind the landscape was there. There was about 50 meters of flat stuff then sheer cliffs and then a gully after that another hill and so on it was incredible that people did that in the dark and they were being shot at. When we were there we saw masses of Graves and they were all young. After that we caught the ferry across the Dardanelles to our hotel, it was pretty average.

The next day we went to see Troy It wasn't that interesting it was just ruble. Then on the way to the Acropolis of Pergamum, the bus took us through a mountain and we saw a Truck that had jacknifed and was in the bushes looked nasty. Then we saw ones that had rolled down the slop of the hill it looked even worse. Then when we got a great view from the top we could see some of the Greek islands. It looked remarkable. Then we got to the Acroplis of Pergamum. It had a temple and a massive theater. The temple was just a couple of collums but the Theater was impressive. Declan and I ran down it, I can tell you it wasn't that impressive trying to run up it. After that we went to our hotel, it was really good it had two pools and a table tennis table and a pool table. I played Andy and Terry ( guys from our tour) in table tennis and I destroyed them but they were pretty good. But when I played Craig ( Another guy from our tour group) he just beat me. When I played them in pool I wiped the floor with them all but dad. But dad cheated because I could of won the game but he hit the pool cue.

The next day we went to a place where they made carpets it wasn't that interesting and we didn't buy anything. Then it was off to the Temple of Artemis it is one of the 7 ancient wonder's of the world but it was just one column standing there it would of been better in it's hey day. Then we went to Ephesus it was a old marble street with ruins on both sides and a library at the end on the sides it had old baths and toilets and houses, and there was another theater it was much like the one in Pergamum. Over all the Ephesus was great.

Then next day we boarded a fairy to Samos in Greece and I will tell you all about that a bit later I hope you liked reading this blog and I hope it wasn't too boring.