Centuries ago, Troy was on the water, which we all know from “The Iliad,” right? But, it's filled in. The landscape all around is very pretty, mostly cultivated grasslands, not many trees, acre after acre of bright yellow flowers filling in anywhere that isn't planted. It is very easy to tell when you approach Troy that they built up a hill, raised up a city so as to better protect themselves from enemies, showing up over land or in ships.You park in a dusty lot, pass the unavoidable wooden souvenir stands that accompany anything historic but not recently iconic in Turkey, then there is a miniature golf course. No, wait, that isn't really true. It only looks like the giant wooden horse inside the turnstiles must be hole No. 5. It was, however, big enough to climb inside, so I crawled in alongside the other children. No one knows what the Trojan Horse looked like because Homer wasn't all that specific. Nevertheless, as Jeff pointed out: "People showed up. They wanted a horse, so the Turks built them a horse." Turks are very practical like that. You see a lot of "wow, there used to be dilapidated buildings there; now there's a park! Two weeks ago there were houses!" People build illegally; the city tears it all down. They build illegally again half a mile away, and the neighborhood gets a new park. I do not think long-term planning is prized all that much here. There are earthquakes.Constantinople /Byzantium/İstanbul endures.
Troy itself is a bunch of trenches, through the sides of which parts of walls appear. There are like 12 Troys. I believe Troy VI or Troy VII is "Troy," from “The Iliad.” Helen, Hector, Priam, etc. "Ilium" was an old Greek name for Troy, so I finally know where Homer got his title. I will admit I kept looking for unbelievably pretty girls all day I could use for some kind of Helen joke, but actually I do that all the time. So, Helen really winds up a kind of convenient excuse. Anyhow no one bowled me over. I was just horsing around.
Otherwise Troy is lots of dirt paths and wildflowers and happy bees and beautiful sunshine. Yeah they had pictures of what Troy No. whatever looked like, but it was hard to get too excited about it. Most of this again is speculation, which is too bad. Because I guess Homer talked about "the unbelievably beautiful walls of Troy" a lot. I saw white marble brick (pretty old) and crumbly red mud brick (unbelievably old, 4,000-5,000 years old), but while some of it was very well put together, none of it I'd call beautiful. Of course, Homer was blind. He would've had to rely upon what people told him about the walls. Maybe the ancient Greeks and Trojans were also fond of stupid jokes.
In the end, what we did was pretty much circle the Sea of Marmara counterclockwise then take a ferry back to İstanbul to avoid the last 25 percent. The coastline was very pretty; it was the Dardanelles. The very end of the Gallipoli peninsula was probably the prettiest; they have a beautiful tall stone monument there to the fallen Brits and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs), all of whom are listed by name. Everything was immaculate. The Brits are allowed to maintain the graves, and they do an outstanding job. Puts us to shame. Sometimes I think Americans are not good at veneration, never more than when history demands it of any decent person. We make excuses a lot. Excuses are habit forming.
