Oh no we found some Greek/Roman/Byzantine ruins

Day 8 01 September 2010

Spent today wandering the site of Pergamum, which was expanded under Eumenes II (197-159 BC) who built a library of over 200,000 volumes which rivaled the library at Alexandria.

Seating for 10,000 with a view.

Series of barrel vaulted chambers to make a terrace/retaining wall.

Pristine Roman mosaic floor laid in the 1st century AD, excavated in the 90’s.

On our trip in Turkey so far we have seen thousands of 3 to 8 story concrete apartment blocks, but we think the traditional Ottoman wooden/masonry home like this 250 year old version are a little more photogenic.

These older homes require more maintenance and lack modern conveniences and therefore are falling out of favor and into disrepair.

We think these are Santa Claus Melons, they are present at every produce market and street stand we see.

We have been enjoying the spicy peppers available as condiments or sometimes in stew dishes.

One can not travel through Turkey with seeing the image of Kemal Ataturk. A power vacuum resulting from the defeated Ottoman empire after WWI provided an opening for the Greek Army to invade present day Turkey. General Ataturk fought to regain lost lands that had a majority Turkish ethnicity. As leader of the new Turkish Republic Ataturk worked to strike a balance with the western cultures, including modernizing dress, instituting western legal codes, removing Islam as the state religion, replacing the Arabic alphabet with modified Latin script, simplifying the language to resemble Esperanto and changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul.