Pammukale to Canakkale. 27.7.2010

Troy

We drove towards north towards the coast and covered some distance. We skipped the Roman town of Ephesus as we had seen Palmyra (Syria) and Jerash ( Jordan) and decided to go to Troy instead. This year my son Thomas had actually done his school assembly about the Legend of Troy from Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad. In this legend (of which there are many versions) the city of Troy is besieged by the Greeks for ten years. Towards the end, the Greeks offer a present to the Trojans, a wooden horse and promptly depart in their ships. Even though some of the Trojans warn against it, the wooden horse is brought into the city. During the night, the Greek soldiers who were hidden inside came out to slaughter the inhabitants of the city. They set fire to Troy signalling the Greek war ships to come back. Troy was defeated.
Thomas pretended to be a Greek in his assembly and had to hide in the vaulting horse(used for PE).
In Troy, the kids enjoyed climbing in and out of the wooden horse replica and meandering around the ruins. These ruins were not discovered until the 19th century when a handful of historians were convinced that Homer had based his story on the events that happened to a real city.