Tuesday 24th November – Erdek to Troy – “Teeny, tiny Troy”

We made the mistake of not having enough low denomination notes with us and when it came to pay for the camping, instead of getting change, he said thank you and also took the 10TL note I had unfortunately left in my hand, gesturing the extra money was for the food and showers.  Lessons learned, but it left a slightly sour taste in our mouths - what we thought was great hospitality turned into the feeling of getting ripped off.  At least the sun was out.

It took about 3.5 hours to get to Troy along fairly fast, although slightly bumpy, roads.

We’d been warned there wasn’t much to see, but we thought we should pay a visit to this famous city (or what was left of it), and we had a pleasant time wandering around with the place pretty much to ourselves.  Whilst we appreciate there was considerably more to Troy than the fortified area, calling it a city seems a stretch - the place is really small.  The most intact bit of it was its teeny, tiny Roman Odeon,

although there was also a mock Trojan Horse to climb on if you felt hard done by due to the lack of anything else there (a German treasure hunter called Heinrich Schliemann apparently trashed much of the site and nicked all the good stuff in the name of archaeology in the late 1800’s). SPOT

After the unfortunate experience re last night’s camp site we thought a bit of wild camping was in order and managed to find ourselves a beach side spot which is lovely, although Turkey does seem to have a huge litter problem and this site is no exception.  At least we’re not knee deep in plastic bottles as much of the coastline appears to be. SPOT