Today starts my 7 day tour of Turkey. There are 9 of us in the tour: a family of four from New Zealand, 2 girls from South Carolina, a couple also from America, and me.
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| Our tour van. |
From the list of cities on the itinerary, the only ones I could recognize, and also look forward to were Ephesus and Cappadocia. The rest of the cities and places didn't ring a bell to me, so I wasn't expecting much. However, as soon as we started our 4.5 hour drive from Istanbul to our first stop, Gallipoli, our tour guide started giving us a brief history of Turkey, starting from Mesopotamia, introducing the various civilizations such as Lydians, Hittites, Ionians, to the Roman Empire, and ending with the Ottoman Empire. It's the stuff I've been trying to read up on, the stuff I've been so interested in. Instantly I knew I was going to love this tour.
First on the agenda is Gallipoli. This was a World War I battle site, and because I'm not a WWI junkie, I wasn't really interested in it and had my expectations set way low. However, the guide explained the Gallipoli campaign very well, and more importantly, all the relevant events that lead up to that point, that I became more and more interested in this site, and about World War I in general.
When looking at a map of Turkey, you see Istanbul straddling the Bosphorus, but to the southwest, you see yet another narrow body of water. I've always wondered why this isn't wasn't talked about as much, as it seems logical that this is the gateway to Istanbul by the sea. Well, Gallipoli was the answer to my question.
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| View from one of the hills. |
What you get from reading Wikipedia articles on various historical events are condensed information on what happened. The participants are listed with detachment, and casualties are presented as mere statistics. But when you hear the accounts from a Turk, when you see the waters that these soldiers sailed across, and when you step on the soil that these men and boys fought and died on, the history feels real and the struggles of the soldiers more palpable.
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| Monument for the Kiwis, with Mustafa Kemal Attaturk standing by. |
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| There are lots of memorials and cemeteries in Gallipoli. It would take at least a week to see them all. |
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| Moving words of Mustafa Kemal. |
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| Statue of a Turkish soldier carrying the wounded ANZAC soldier. |
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| More cemetaries. |
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| View from one of the strategic hills. |
After Gallipoli, we took a short ferry ride across the Dardanelles into Çanakkele, where we checked into our hotel. The sea was very calm, and the swim refreshing. Tomorrow, we'll go back to ancient times -- Troy. But from today, I have a greater understanding of Turkey's modern history, and Gallipoli was an excellent way to start this 7 day tour. The guide said that Istanbul isn't even the highlight of Turkey. I'm very excited for the coming days and really glad I booked this tour to end my month long trip.
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Sunset in Çanakkele. Across the Dardanelles, you can see the Gallipoli peninsula.
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