turkish delights

hi all! *waves furiously*

so after my last post of disappointments and madness, we finally got to turkey!!!! but not after finally making sure that we could in fact get back into Greece. turns out that so long as you're going to Turkey you can buy a multiple entry pass valid for 90 days. Our last days at Hotel Votsala were amazing and on our last night we prepared farewell presents to the staff of Votsala, as well as out teacher Sofia, and Iannis our guide/hotel owner. My contribution for the thank you ceremony was a slide show of all the fun things we did on Lesvos. Everyone loved it. the beauty of creating the slide show is that I had the final say, needless to say there are only a certain number of pictures of me in it.

Iannis and Sofia decided, along with Janette (the bar tender from votsala) and Demetri (Iannis' friend) to come along with us. we took the 8:30AM ferry to Ayvilik, Turkey and then drove to Assos. From Assos we visited Troy as well as the local ruins of Assos, which are mostly remnants of Byzantine (i.e. late Roman) and not Greek but they were amazing non the less. Even more amazing is the way the Turkish government treats the ruins in comparison to the American and Greek governments. As you can see from the picture below, the Turkish government just lets us run rampant in the ruins. This was the remains of a temple, I believe dedicated to Athena. We climbed all over it. It was so refreshing to actually be able to walk among these beautiful ruins and feel the power that they convey still today. There was also an acropolis with a mosque on it where we watched a sunset, here's a picture of me in front of the sunset on top of the acropolis in Assos below and to the right.
We were staying in this beautiful little hotel with amazing food and atmosphere. On our second day we went to Troy and then on our second day we went to Pergamon. Both were amazing. Below are pictures from Troy. Carolyn as Achilles kicking mine, aka Hector's, butt and she stands victorious over my dead body. The one to the left is a picture of Hilary and Nate Kugler as well as Chris, Clariece and Rianna in a model Trojan horse. Troy was amazing. Almost all ruins were buried and then excavated downwards and there are even more ruins underneath. The coolest part was that there were both Greek and Roman walls right next to each other. So Clariece and Rianna geeked out over the Greek side, and I geeked out over both the Greek and Roman walls. We even saw the place where the legendary battle probably took place.

Today we went to Ephesus which was amazing. Not only did we get to really get into the ruins, but the ruins that are left there are amazing an d very intact. There will be pictures up tomorrow because my camera died while we were there.

Tonight was awesome. I went out with Rianna, Helana, Gussi, David, Amanda, and Carolyn to this amazing hookah bar and hung out with the people from the hotel Votsala on Lesvos who decided to join us in Turkey. We spent about 4 hours there, just drinking, smoking, talking, laughing, dancing, and talking with the owner. It's been the best night I've had in a long time.

So, I'll end this on a high note, with very high expectations of my free travel to Istanbul and a good long night of partying under my belt.