Turkey part II

After breakfast ,We visited the ruins of Troy. Yes the famous Troy of Homer's Iliad. While going through the itinerary when I came across this part, I had thought this is some other place which is similar to the one in the Greece. I have never been to Greece so thought it logical that Troy to be in today's Greece. I was surprised to find out that The actual Trojan war for the famous Helen of Troy took place at this place and this was part of Greece in ancient times.
( I was pleasantly surprised to note that Homer the author who wrote this famous epic is from a neighbouring place called Izmir.) We saw the ancient ruins which are still being excavated and is a world heritage site. A model of wooden (Trojan?) horse has been kept there for the purpose of photo sessions I suppose and we were all very thrilled to have visited such a historically important place.
We were next taken to top of a hill where ancient kingdom of Acropolis is situated. Acropolis is nothing but a city built on a hill top which is built for the purpose of safety specially from enemies. This is also a Greek structure and it is supposed to have been built around
1st century A.D.
We proceeded to a place called Kusadasi for night's stay and next morning visited the house of Virgin Mary which is also on a hill. It is said that Virgin Mary was brought here after the Crucifixion here by St. John . This is considered as a Holy place by the Catholics and Roman Catholic Church at Vatican has approved this as a holy place.
We proceeded to a place called Ephesus. This is an ancient city and the ruins of which have been very well preserved. There is a temple for Goddess Artemis considered as Goddess of family. (this goddess was unique to ancient Turkey but later accepted in the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses) Saw the statue of Goddess Nike from which the symbol for the famous Nike shoes have been adopted. We saw the ancient library structure and then the magnificent
Amphi Theatre which could hold 25000 people at a time. This is one of the most beautiful ancient structures I have seen.
We then proceeded to a place called Pammukale where we can see the white cascade like natural phenomenon. It is calcium carbonate deposits on a hill where you can see the amazing white snow like deposits over which the spring water flows. It is a lovely natural phenomenon. We could walk on them with bear foot. Tejas enjoyed walking down the hill on his own with energetic Mrs. S and the young and energetic S. This walking is supposed to have medicinal value. Incidentally, this is the spot where the shooting of the song 'Konjaneram Konjaneram' in Rajanikanth's, Chandramukhi has been picturised.
We were told that preivously many hotels were built very near this natural phenomenon and the place started turning black due to pollution. So the Government moved all the hotels away from this place and now the natural spring water is made to flow in different directions every day so that the white colour is retained and the whole thing is preserved properly. It is heartening to note that some action has been taken to restore such a beautiful site.
We proceeded to the hotel. There was a pool which had the water from the hot water spring with medicinal value and also lot of mud which was also supposed to have medicinal value. After dinner Tejas enjoyed getting into this pool and smeared the mud on himself and for once I could not say anything.

My Turkey Trip

I have been wanting to visit Turkey. The reason being that some how the name 'Istanbul ' has a fascination for me. So when we all planned a trip to Turkey I was very excited. We had joined a tour program with 'Parlo' under which everything is taken care of including stay, food and sight seeing. We were 25 in our group and 13 of us were our friends.(5 families) . Me, hubby dear and 'T' were from our family. We started from KL on 22nd May 2009 evening and reached Singapore. Our flight was in the night and we reached Istanbul on the morning of 23rd. We had a transit halt in Dubai and the airport was excellent with such big and wonderful shops.
We freshened up in the airport itself and immediately the tour started. We had a good breakfast in a local restaurant and were taken to the old city where the centre of the Byzantine and Ottaman empire called Hippodrome is situated. This place is full of historic buidings and where ever you turn you can see historical spots. It is maintained very well.
We saw the famous Blue Mosque which gets it's name from the blue colour tiles inside the Mosque. It was quite different from the other mosques I had seen in Malaysia. We went to a crowded local market and returned to an excellent hotel for the night stay.
Next day after breakfast, we packed our bags and left for some more sight seeing in Istanbul. Our long journey of about more than 1000 kms within Turkey in the wonderful Bus started. Our guide was one Mr. Ali Ishan who was wonderful with a lovely sense of humour. He filled us up with lot of info. as well as jokes.
We went on a small boat ride on the Marmara sea and the Bosporus straits which divides Europe and Asia. Istanbul is the only city which is both in Asia and Europe. We could see from our boat both sides of the city the European and Asian.
Later we visited the Ayasofya which is a Museum. It is very interesting to note that this was one of the earliest churches built around 5th or 6th century AD. After the conquest of Istanbul by Ottoman Turks this was converted to a Mosque by building Minarets and a Dome. The Christian mosaics were plastered over inside the church building.
When turkey became a Republic in 1930s it was converted to a Museum and now it is no longer a worshiping place. They are trying to retrieve the mosaics inside.
We left Istanbul after a good lunch .(through out our journey we got quite a good food that too vegetarian food, we could get yogurt every where and also lot of sweets for dessert.)
We travelled to Canakale and crossed the Bosphoros Sea in a ferry (our bus went inside the ferry) to cross over to the Asian side of Turkey.
We halted for our night in a hotel next to Aegean Sea. I was thrilled to look at Aegean sea which felt very familiar as we have heard about the sea a lot of time in Greek history.