Day 12 8-24-2011

Today we started off early and made our way to the breakfast buffet there they had a honey on the wax. An instant five star in my book. Then then we went on our way. by this time my camera was completely dead and there was nothing more i could do to rescue it. The first place we stopped at was the a jewelry store. They told us how lots of places sell fake imitations of the amethyst and that the way to be able to tell if it is real is to take a hammer and crack. if it is blue all the way through then it is real if it is blue only on the top then it is a fake. Then he told us that the places that have the real stones have papers from the government stating that these are legitimate stones. They also showed us some silver bands that was actually silver tied in knots making it look as though it was cloth.

After the store we made our way to ruin the first thing that we saw was a female dog that look as though it had just had puppies. Then we turned the corner and there was ten of them all sleeping on top of each other. One of the gatemen picked one up and showed him to us then he told us "this is the trouble one, this is the one that we are keeping."

As we walked through the ruins we passed a military zone and they were practicing there marching band getting ready for national day. We looked at the amphitheater then went through the tunnels and we came to the worlds first psychiatric hospital there they had the people walk around in the circular building. They did this because it helped to relax and heal the ill. our guide told us that they would not accept any one that was terminally ill. because they did not want their death on there consciousness.

There was a story of a man that had come to the hospital un-able to walk and they did not accept him but they gave him a bowl of milk and told him that if he got better that they would let him in. but he had to stay out for the night.

The next day they came back looking for him, but he was gone and in his place there was snakes and an empty bowl. then they found the man walking around and they conclude that the snakes had healed the him instead of killing him. that is way some icons had snakes that meant healing.

We made our way to our last stop and there we made our way to troy. The person who discovered Troy believed that there were clues to the where a bouts of troy from homers poem the Iliad. He came from Germany and became a merchant in turkey and then he would build up money then search for a place with a ramp. This was because I knew that there had to be a ramp in order for them to bring the horse into the city. he kept looking and looking for a couple of years. Until one day He found a ramp and then he continued digging until he started to find gold jewelry. He gave them to his wife and told her to wear them then they left turkey. they made an announcement that they had found troy an he put the artifacts that he took out of turkey into a german museum. During the world war Russia went into Germany and raided the museum the artifacts were stored in. So now they are in Russia.

As it turns out our the city the german man found was not troy. but he wasn't wrong. the city he found was actually 4 or five cities that were built on top of each other then buried with time. The top layer was the newest city and the bottom layer was what is thought to be troy. the Iliad was written in the 12th century and in it, it talks about a war that went on for decades at troy. Historians thought that this battle really took place, and that it was around the 12th century when it homer wrote it. it turns our that the city was not called troy and that the events that took place there and in the story were actually around 2000 BCE. so the story of troy was even older then they thought.

after troy we went to our hotel and there we went to the beach and looked out at the aegean sea. some of us swam, but it was very cold.