On The Road

A short ride from my campground in Alexandroupoli brought me to the Turkish border. I had heard much about the Turkish bureaucracy and drawn out customs procedure and thus was very pleasantly surprised that it took only 15 minutes. The customs official thought I wasn’t the brightest though. I have a little New Zealand sticker on my bike (I live there) and he pointed out that I am a day late for ANZAC day and the big bike convention on Gallipoli. He didn’t believe me when I told him that I didn’t want to go to either one of these. I also kept trying to push my carnet de passage on him. I had heard that otherwise one has to pay a fee for some other piece of paper. Since I have a carnet for Iran anyway I thought I should use it. Turns out none of this is required. He just entered the details in a computer and put an extra stamp in my passport. No fee at all. I’ll see how it goes when I try to leave.

Countryside near the Turkish border

Another short ride brought me to Gallipoli, where I paid my respect at the NZ monument at the Hill 60 battle site and at ANZAC cove. Workers were busy removing the grandstands from the dawn ceremony the day before. Today the whole area was practically deserted.

Hill 60 New Zealand Monument

ANZAC Cove

Monument with view of ANZAC cove

I took the ferry to Canakkale and continued on to the ancient city of Troja.

I got a room in the village next to Troja, unloaded my bags and went for beautiful sunset ride on the dirt roads in the area.

Countryside near Troja

Later we had dinner at a small restaurant with the owner of the pension and another guest. The owner was a great host and gave a great introduction to Turkish culture and hospitality.

I got up early for a pre breakfast visit to Troy. It was only a short stroll from my Pansiyon in Tevfikiye to the gate. The site is rather small and quite confusing because so many cities have been built on top of each other over the centuries. It’s quite hard to make out what belongs to which period. Certainly nothing like the Troy depicted in the movies. However, there is enough there to tickle your imagination and it was certainly nice to sit there and have it to myself before the buses rolled in.

Amphitheatre in Troja

The cheesy Trojan Horse gets more attention than the ruins from some of the tourists.

The coastal roads from Troy, dotted with some more ruins, looked promising on my map and I decided to take the scenic route.

I first drove to the ruins of Alexandria Troas.

The bath of Alexandria Troas are not fenced in and I could ride right up to it and walk around as I liked. I felt like a little kid on a big adventure playground.

Following the coast brought me to Babakale, which has an old fort and scenic harbor. Somehow I forgot to take a picture.

Poppies everywhere

A short time later I passed a scenic mountain village on the road to Assos

Assos, of “Aristotle lived there” fame, looks very impressive from a distance.

The cobblestone streets leading up to the ruins are lined with small restaurant and shops. An ideal place for a tea.

I explored the ruins for about an hour

before heading down the hill again, where I came across one of the old East German MZs still in use in Turkey. I used to have one myself.

An old bridge could be seen from its modern counterpart as I was leaving town.

The ride was nice until I entered the main highway again.

From then on I could witness the Turkish version of the now past real estate boom, with largely empty cookie cutter houses lining the highway in all its concrete ugliness. My goal was to reach Bergama and I had to hurry to make it before sunset.

When I reached Bergama I decided to have a look around the ruins in the dawn light. I had a scary moment coming around a turn, when I saw line strung across the road. A kid’s kite had blown over the fence of the Pergamum site and he was tying to retrieve it, blissfully unaware that his kite line almost decapitated me. Luckily I wasn’t going very fast and left only skid marks on the road.

I settled into the nice Boeblingen Pensiyon in a quiet part of town.