Bergama and Pergamon

This morning, we woke up at 8:00, showered, and went downstairs for breakfast. Since it was a pension, we were 2 of only 4 guests and we got to talk (albeit haltingly) with the two cooks. As before, it was a big spread and more than we could eat, but we enjoyed (some of us more than others––Marcos missed his chocolate cereal) the fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and several kinds of cheese along with meyve suyu (fruit juice) and çay (tea), a hardboiled egg, and bread with jam. And fresh simit! This rendition was much better than yesterday's, slightly sweet and moist. It reminded me of challah, actually! Delicious, sesame-encrusted challah.

stone from Pergamon Acropolis

Once we found our pension in Bergama (the name of the town, approx. 3 km away from the ruins of Pergamon), which as always was somewhat of an adventure on narrow streets, the owner welcomed us with hot tea and cake, after which I went up to our room and took a nap while Marcos visited the Asklepion (an ancient medical center). Later in the afternoon, we had another cup of tea and then left to find the cable car station to go up to Akropol (the Acropolis). We initially walked in the wrong direction, but a very helpful (and talkative) shopkeeper pointed us the right way, and we eventually found our way there. Cable cars are awesome, and this one was extra cool because it was super windy so the car rocked back and forth like a ride at the fair!

Marcos' first time on a cable car!

View from inside the cable car

Different view

We'd neglected to bring a map of the site, and to buy one at the entrance, so I pretty much just wandered around and imagined things. There's a huge theater dug into the side of the hill, made much higher and narrower than other theaters of the time due to its location. Pretty neat! Here's more pictures of things, just don't ask me what they all are…

I dunno. Pretty arch? And cute town in the background

Aqueduct, I believe?

See if you can spot the Tibalu!

Part of a temple 

Intricately carved tops of columns

So ramshackle :(

Stairway down to the theater

Tibalu, enjoying the view

It holds 10,000 people! And it's very, very steep.

Like Troy, Pergamon was very, very windy, and also a bit sandy/dusty, so if you were in the wrong place you would get whipped with little grains, and y'all, it hurt. Generally, though, the wind was a good thing, keeping sweatiness to a minimum! 

In front of some ruins 

Pardon my hair, Marcos

The site closed at 7:00, so we headed out around 6:40 and, not knowing whether there was a separate path for walkers or not, started walking down the road. It was very long, and I was very tired, but eventually a car came by that had room for us and agreed to take us down to the bottom of the hill. It was two Turkish dudes who didn't speak any English, so we had very stilted, very limited conversation, and once they dropped us off they asked to have our photo taken and to become friends on Facebook (awww). So that was successful! (Still need to get the photos from Marcos' camera.)

This fellow lost his head over how delicious
Tibalu is!*

We walked back about half a mile towards our pension but stopped for food at Çiçeksever, which had gotten good reviews on Tripadvisor. I got the beefsteak, and Marcos got the meatballs, but we split them both. I forgot to take pictures until we'd already eaten half of it, so...sorry about how unappetizing this looks.

köfte!

biftek!

The meatballs were much better than those we had in Ayvalık, somewhat spicy and very flavorful, and the beef was good as well. I asked for vişne suyu, which they brought me in a juice box. With an elephant made out of fruit on the front. It was pretty great!

Aaaaaah it's a sour cherry elephant!

Gotta get out those last drops

I also stopped and got some baklava on our way back to the pension; it was 3 TL for 4 pieces, which was not nearly as good a deal as the goodies from Çanakkale, but it was quite delicious nonetheless. 

Once we got back to the pension, we showered (where the shower and toilet were in the same room, which weirds me out [and reminds me of China]) and I did some blogging and we went to sleep. All the walking had really exhausted us!

*No compensation was given for this ostentatious placement of Tibalu, and my mother might rather I not, but I brought the bag with me and it is going to be photographed everywhere. Assuming I don't get hungry sometime and eat it all.