The famous city of Troy (or Troia in Turkish) lies an hour or so south of Çanakkale. We had visited the Trojan horse built for the Brad Pit featuring Troy movie that morning in Çanakkale before heading to the ruins.

City of Troy (Troia)

As we had heard, the ruins had not been very well preserved. The site was discovered in the late 1800s by an excavation led by a German merchant, Schliemann. Until then, there was very little known about whether Troia, described in Homer’s Illiad, had existed or not. When Schliemann’s first excavation uncovered the ruins which he claimed to be Troia, it was immediately thought that the relics and ruins related to the famous stories and poetry of Troy, however as more archaeologists discovered more about the ruins, they realised the site contained layers of ancient ruins across several generations (over something like 2000 years) of Troia cities which they named Troy I to Troy IX. Schliemann’s discovery was related to the Troy II period. It is now widely accepted that the epic Greek story of the Trojan War would have likely been during Troy VIIa.

Anyway despite it being low season we saw at least three Japanese tour buses. Some of the Turkish guides even spoke fluent Japanese. As we were leaving a young couple approached Travis and asked if they could hitch a ride with us to the main road. They were both in their early twenties and very friendly. We found out the girl was Spanish and the guy was Slovakian (can’t remember their names), and their next destination was Pergamon, same as us. They were travelling Western Turkey via public transport and hitchhiking, and using CouchSurfing as accommodation. Ah, to be students! So we gave them a lift to Pergamon, another three and a half hour drive away.