Turkey Traveller

The modern town of Bergama is not particularly picturesque town and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a destination from which too base your holiday, however it has a fascinating history making it perfect for a day trip.  The older part of the town has some old style town houses and its not overly touristy so can be a nice place to observe the Turks going around their day to day business. Attractions at Bergama include two large archaeological sites, a museum of archaeology and a gargantuan brick temple earmarked as the throne of the devil in the coming Armageddon. Museum of Archaeology in Bergama The museum at Bergama is well established having been built on the orders of Fevzi Çakmak in 1932. Recently it has been refurbished to a high standard. The exhibits are mostly from nearby Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman remains. Outside the front of the museum there is a collection of sculptures and decoratively carved Islamic tombs and grave markers. Inside there are m...

The Bonjour Pansiyon in Ayvalik is an interesting bed & breakfast situated in a restored house that Formerly belonged to the French ambassador to the Sultan. The house is deceptively big and somewhere in this building there are 12 rooms. Restored to a high standard with lots of interesting original features and added decorative items gives the place a romantic old world feel. The ceilings have also been decorated with some authentic looking frescos. The rooms are basic as you would expect, nicely decorated and include air con/heating. There are shared bathroom facilities throughout the pansiyon. Breakfast is served in a walled courtyard and includes, bread, local olives, cheese, eggs, Turkish fried bread, jams, honey and hot and cold beverages. We paid 45 YTL per person per night including breakfast, the pansiyon is located about 5 minutes walk from the otogar (bus station) at this address Fevzi Cakmak Cad. Cesme Sok. No:5,  .

The ruins of Troy (referred to by one writer as the ruins of ruins) are not going to be the most impressive archaeological site you will have the opportunity to see in your time in Turkey. However they will be one of the oldest, and their immortalisation by Homer accounts for a lot of interest. The site is actually much more than just the ruins of Troy (Truia, Truva) in the location are the archaeological remains of 9 cities all layered one on top of the other, this in itself makes it all but impossible to get a proper feeling about how any of these cities would have looked because all the ruins are intermingled with each other. The first excavation of Troy in 1870 was carried out by a German called H. Schlieman, sadly his obsession with discovering the Troy of Homer’s Iliad and the treasures of King Priam were to prove destructive and much of the archaeological evidence on the upper layers was destroyed, lost and looted. However up until this point the Homeric Troy was largely consid...

Çanakkale (pot fortress) is a small seaside town in the Çanakkale province; the town is located on the Asian side of the Dardanelles straits that connect the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean. Çanakkale's most famous landmark is the nearby ruined city of Troy (Truva) because of this you will see a large wooden horse as you walk along the promenade originally used for the film version of Troy and later donated to the town.The promenade is pleasant for a stroll and there are many cafes and restaurants in which you can sit and watch nautical traffic meandering up and down the Dardanelles, which is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The Dardanelles straits have always been of huge strategic importance as it provides the only access to the black sea. You can get frequent ferries from Çanakkale to the Gallipoli peninsular (Gelibolu) on the opposite side of the straits, the site of the tragic battle of Gallipoli in WWI. The town’s hotels fill up around April the 25th every year ...