A Trip to Turkey: Day 4 Pergamum to Izmir | Bill Kwok Photography and Design

Day 4 takes us on a drive from Canakkale to Izmir, a city believed to be the birthplace of Homer. Along the way we toured Pergamum, a powerful kingdom during the ancient Hellenistic period and visited the Asclepion, the ancient Roman spa center. I had a few minutes before our tour bus loaded up to leave for the day. I decided to get a few more shots of the Trojan horse and the surrounding area of Canakkale. As I was shooting photos, my wife and I were approached by a Turkish girl who asked us in broken english if she could take a picture of us. We didn’t know why but we said sure. She then proceeded to take a selfie with us. Then it dawned on us that a lot of Turkish people haven’t seen a lot of Asians ( or so we’re guessing) and she wanted to remember this moment. However, I’m going to go with the excuse that my wife and I are just so damn good looking!

The nice thing about Pergamum was that there weren’t a lot of other tourists there so we had the uncrowded freedom to have a look around.

If you think gas is expensive in North America, wait till you go to Europe? These prices work out to be about $2.14/Liter or $8.10/gallon Canadian for regular unleaded!

We visited a small village populated with less than 500 people to have lunch. Our tour group broke off into smaller groups and went off with different families for a home cooked meal. Our meal consisted of a soup, eggplant and couscous, baklava, and yogurt. The hospitality was fantastic and was much appreciated by the tour group. We said our goodbyes and carried on towards Izmir.

With the three lovely ladies from New York and Florida. Jenny, Grace and Reina!

As we got closer to Izmir, there were these distinct twin towers being built. Quite a modern design considering from what we’ve seen around Turkey. We didn’t see a lot of skycrapers during our stay in Turkey. In all honesty, I didn’t even notice that until I got back to Vancouver after the trip.

As we got to our hotel, we checked in and dropped the bags off. It was still light out so we decided to go for a walk towards the water a few blocks away and catch the sunset.

The sunset was beautiful. But it was also really windy! Of course, being an Asian couple in Turkey, we stood out like a sore thumb. As we started to head back to the hotel, we were approached again by a young man who wanted to take a selfie with us. Second request of the day…

After a buffet dinner back at the hotel, we went out again into the cold Turkish night. We came upon this bar. I’m sure there’s some pretty major legal ramifications here somewhere.