We left around 8:00 towards Pergamon Ancient City Pergamon Antik Kenti, another of Türkiye’s World Heritage sites – Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape, still in the city of Izmir | İzmir (in Türkiye, “city” and “province” are interchangeable, apparently). The origin of the city dates back to the 8th century BCE – though there were legends about a mythological foundation by the son of Heracles. Pergamon flourished and became the capital of its own kingdom, until it eventually fell in Roman’s hands. The most important archaeological area is the acropolis – though the Great Altar, which is currently located in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin, in Germany. I had had a tired / silly moment the night before and packed the camera battery charger with the battery still in it, and I almost had a heart attack when the camera would not work. Fortunately, it made a lot of sense after I opened the battery receptacle.

We did not get to go to the Upper or Lower Acropolis, but we could see the theatre, one of the steepest theatres in the world – built in the 3rd century BCE with capacity for about 10,000 people. We stayed down at the foot of the acropolis, in the Sanctuary of Asclepius Asclepieion [Ἀσκληπιεῖον] – a healing temple dedicated to the demigod Asclepius, the demigod who learnt the art of medicine from the centaur Chiron and became the first doctor in “history”.

The Asclepieion worked with a holistic approach to patient care, giving thought to tranquillity, water, and activities such an art and theatre performances. The theatre is one of the best-preserved structures in the Asclepieion of Pergamon, though there are many others – such as 70 metre long cryptoporticus a tunnel that connected the baths, sacred pools – with a healthy population of frogs and tortoises – and fountains. I also found a lizard chilling out – or baking out, considering the temperature (remember, I had packed for… autumn, not for almost 30 ºC at noon every day…). Some famous ruins include

I wandered around for as long as I could, but again here was no time to explore everything – though this time I came pretty close. We left at around 12:30. This was the only visit we had on the day, as we were directly driven to the hotel in Çanakkale. On the way, we saw the Red Basilica Kızıl Avlu just before leaving Izmir, and glimpsed the island of Lesbos from the bus.

Iris Hotel was in the middle of a residential area – to the point that the bus barely passed through some of the streets. There was nothing interesting around to see in kilometres, so to… compensate, I guess, the hotel had a small mini zoo of deer and fowl.

Behind the hotel there was a private beach with a stunning sunset, but nothing around to explore or do. Çanakkale is located to the west of Türkiye, at the end of the Dardanelles Çanakkale Boğazı, the natural straight that joins the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, just south of Istanbul. The sea was warm, but I only got in up to my knees. At night, I watched a monster movie in Turkish. That… was an experience.