Çanakkale Weekend

Wow! First of all let me apologize to you loyal blog followers about the lack of updates over the last three weeks. It has been exam time, which has not been particularly fun.

So about 3 weeks ago (weekend of March 20-22), Ohad and I went to Çanakkale. For those of you that don't know exactly where that is, it is a Turkish town situated on the Dardanelles near the Aegean Sea.

The trip started with Ohad and I making our way to the otogar (bus terminal). When we got there, thre were over 150 different bus companies between which we could choose! It was crazy. After wandering around and being harassed by various salesmen, we finally settled on one (surprisingly this company operates busses to Çanakkale every hour despite the fact that its a 5 hour trip to get there! So we get on the bus and there is some sort of Turkish soap opera playing. They serve us snacks/drinks and we begin the long haul. Turkish busses are definitely nicer than Greyhound in the US. I would definitely recommend it as a form of travel. The roads were great around Istanbul, but deteriorated once we left the city area. By the time we got to the Gallipoli peninsula the roads were a bit bumpy and narrow, causing the bus to go much slower.

At about 2am we arrived in the town across from Çanakkale. The final leg of the trip is a 30 minute ferry ride across the Dardanelles, which was very nice. The air was quite chilly! When we arrived in Çanakkale, we were told to find a hostile, the ANZAC hostel to be exact. At the harbor we saw signs pointing towards the ANZAC and went inside. When we got there, we requested a room and the receptionist told us the room would be 60 YTL (30 per person per night or about $20). We then realized that we had stumbled upon the ANZAC hotel and NOT the ANZAC hostile. We decided we would stay and booked the room. This hotel room was the best $20 room I could have imagined. There were three single beds that were relatively comfortable, controlled heating and air, our own clean bathroom, and most importantly satellite television. Additionally, it included an all you can eat breakfast buffet every morning. For 20 bucks, I would say that it was one hell of a deal.

The next morning (Friday morning) we got up at about 8:30am to start the day. We enjoyed the breakfast that was included in the hotel that contained some regular breakfast stuff with some added bonuses that were special to the region (Aegean tomatoes, Ezine cheese, etc). It was a pretty good breakfast. Then we were off to get a dolmuş to Assos (an old Greek city on top of an extinct volcano where Aristotle once lived). The domuş only cost about 15 YTL ($8) for about a 2 hour ride. Not too shabby. The dolmuş didn't actually take us to Assos, but to Ayvacik instead. In Ayvacik, we had to wait 2 hours for the next shuttle to Assos...so we decided to walk around a bit. We stumbled upon a huge open air market (Friday is bazaar day in Turkey) and strolled around there for a bit...taking in the sites of the market, the town mosque and the surrounding beautiful mountain scenery. We returned to the bus station and enjoyed lunch. I had lamb and rice...(kuzu ve pilvav) and it was quite delicious.

We then got on the bus and headed south for Assos. The roads became small and curvy as we went further into the mountains. The scenery was magnificent and there was actually small patches of snow on the ground from Thursday's snow even though the temperature was in the mid 50's (about 12C). After a 30 minute dolmuş ride we finally made it to the outer limits of Assos. The driver first took us to the bottom by the sea because I misunderstood his Turkish. Luckily, I was able to use my broken Turkish to indicate where I wanted to go. However, the ride down allowed us to experience the road that winds around the mountain down to the harbor. The road itself has no railing on the side and its a cliff straight to the Aegean Sea. Its wide enough for about 1 and a half cars and supposedly accomodates two way traffic. It was quite a scary drive.

The driver then drove us to the top of the mountain again and let us out. One of the neatest things about Assos is that it is one of the only cities in the world where the people still live in the same place as the ruins. As you stroll through the town there are remnants of ancient Assos integrated into the town itself. The top of the mountain, however is left strictly to the ruins. Ohad and I walked up and entered. One excellent thing about Turkey is that they do not charge students for entry into ancient sites and museums as long as you have your Muze Kart. We go inside and at the top of the mountain is the ruins from the Temple of Athena. There are still columns standing and its actually pretty cool. We walked around up there and took some pictures and then climbed down a bit and around the upper parts of the mountain. When you look down from the top, towards the sea there are many more ruins (an old ampitheater, city walls, etc), but no way to get there. The gate at the bottom of the hill was closed with no one inside. We did however notice that close to the entrance (but about half way down the mountain, there was a break in the fence). We noticed that if you were to sneak in through the fence you could hike down to the other ruins and get a closer look! Whether or not we were actually allowed to do that, I couldn't tell you, but we did anyway.

As we entered the fence, there was a dog and he kinda started walking in front of us. Oddly enough, he was showing us the correct path to get to the ruins! He sort of became our guide dog. It was pretty neat. After a bit of a hike we reached the ampitheater and other ruins and walked around and took some pictures. Unfortunately, (probably because we weren't supposed to be there) there were very few signs telling us what everything was in ancient Assos so we had to use our imagination. Then we hiked back up to the old city walls and checked those out (along with some sarcophogi outside the wall) and hiked back up to the upper part of town. We then got on a van back to Ayvacik and got back just in time to catch the last bus to Çanakkale. Talk about good luck (which I think I deserve a little bit of after the way my trip started!)

On the way back to the hotel, we grabbed some dinner and I decided it was time to try a new Turkish dish. Lahmacun is known here as Turkish pizza. It's not quite the same. The bread is a bit more crunchy and they put all sorts of things on it depending on what you want. I actually wasn't a huge fan, but the point was that I tried it. After a very long day of traveling and sightseeing, Ohad and I retired back to the hotel.