Çanakkale
Turkey
11 November 2009

Dear DrMuscarella

Cc:  Family and friends
 
Thank you, Oscar, for encouraging me to travel to Çanakkale to visit the ruins of Troy.
 
The guidebooks praise the hilltop view to the valley and the Dardanelles – the strait that connects the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea.  And the ruins themselves, even for a non-professional, are impressive.  What is truly seductive is that when I gaze into the archeological dig, I look down into 5000 years of human settlement in this area.  (“Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”)