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Day 38: In Canakkale, there are two things to do. The first is to visit Gallipoli. The second is to take a trip to the ancient ruins of Troy, a few kilometres south of the city. Our time was limited so we opted for the tour offered by Hassle Free Tours operating out of Anzac House, Canakkale. Their Gallipoli tour was outstanding; the Troy tour was not.

Sitting on the coast just south of the entrance to the Dardanelles, the naval gateway to Istanbul and through to the Black Sea, and across the Agean Sea from Greece islands, Troy’s location was superb.

However, it is said that Troy was such a rich city in ancient times because it was founded before the invention of technologies to allow ships to sail into the wind. So ships arriving at Troy would have to wait, two days, a week or even more, until the wind changed to allow them to get on their way. As a plaque at the site told us: “The winds made them rich.”

I put two and two together and concluded that the conditions were absolutely perfect for ancient Troy to be a first class tourist trap.

Take a look at these snaps and tell me if anything has changed? The modern centrepiece is a ten metre high artist’s impression of what the Trojan Horse may have looked like. Visitors can climb inside. It’s the Big Pineapple of Greco-Roman history.

The Roman ruins on the site are of the kind that tests visitors’ imagination of what the city might have looked like. Of greatest interest is the fact that the city was built and rebuilt on ten or more occasions so you have city walls from different periods interlinking with each other.

Apart from ruined walls, and the big horse, there’s not much to see. One for the archeology buffs.

Kate (apparently an archeology nerd) writes: It’s true that most of what remains of the great cities of Troy is walls. But what these walls have seen! Staring up at the huge stone walls of Troy 6 (the city most likely to be at the centre of the Trojan War commemorated by great epics such as Homer’s Iliad and Brad Pitt’s Troy) you can imagine the mighty Greek army camped at the beaches, full of heroes unable to take a city with their brawn, relying on Odysseus to end a ten year, gory battle through his wits.

The other poignant part of visiting of Troy is that it foreshadows the fate of Galliopli, thousands of years later. Capture the Dardenelles and you control the route to the Black Sea. Staring at the opposing shores, it seems a shame that such beautiful places could be the site of such bloody battles.

Andrew writes: As I said, one for the archeology buffs.