The day dawned a litle hazily. There was the brief promise of full sunshine, but then it turned mostly cloudy. This was a pity, because sunshine is the amateur photographer's best friend and we were to be visiting some wonderful places, starting with the ancient city of Pergamon, with it's amazing Acropolis and vertiginous theatre. The next stop was to be the very interesting Asclepion, both of which are located in beautiful countryside.

This was the view from our cabin early in the morning.

We were a quite amused by the advert on the hoarding, carefully worded to refer to Izmir as the best cruise destination of Europe!

Once we got back on the road, it wasn't too long before we reached the town of Bergama and we were driving up the hill towards our first stop at the base of the Acropolis.

Geoff was delighted (not!) to see that we had to take a cable car up to the top...

This model shows how the site might have looked, but it is only by wandering about the remains that you get a good idea of the scale of it and of the levels. For example, the theatre shown in the model is, in reality, built on an almost precipitous slope, which isn't clear in the model.

This drawing of ancient Pergamon, by a 19th century German archaeologist, gives a better idea of the site, in my opinion.

On the upper part of the Acropolis, evidence of the following structures still exists:- The Hellenistic Theatre with a seating capacity of 10,000 and the steepest seating of any known theatre in the ancient world The Sanctuary of Trajan (also known as the Trajaneum) The Sanctuary of Athena The Library of Pergamum The Royal palaces The Heroön - a shrine where the kings of Pergamon, particularly, Attalus I and Eumenes II, were worshipped. The Temple of Dionysus The Upper Agora The Roman baths complex Diodorus Pasporos heroon Arsenal

Close to the site of the Great Altar is a side access to the theatre, which is roughly half way between the top and the bottom of it. Even from this vantage point, it still seemed a long way up and a long way down!

Remains of the Temple of Dionysos on the north side of the theatre.

Some groups went to lunch before the next scheduled site visit, whilst others (including our group) were taken to visit the Asclepion first. Unfortunately, it took some time for us to get to the Asclepion because of roadworks (we think) and we somehow went through the centre of Bergama a couple of times before our driver eventually found an alternative route. Part of the "Red Basilica" can be seen in this photo.

After visiting the Asclepion, we were feeling quite peckish and looking forward to our lunch at a restaurant in Bergama. Sadly, it was a rather disappointing experience. There was plenty of food available, but it was buffet style and most of it was luke-warm. There was also a bit of excitement when water came cascading down the stairs at the back of the restaurant, causing a mini-flood near the buffet table. We were looking forward to getting back to the luxury of our ship! The colourful steps were next to the restaurant.

On the way back to the ship, we tried to capture a flavour of local life, including a curious mix of modern shopping malls and roadside garden objet for sale... well actually, there seemed to be thousands of garden gnomes for sale at frequent intervals along the roadside!

The outdoor escalators looked a little unusual.

It took us a while to work out was "Jandarma" meant, because we had seen quite a few references to the term. We later found out that it is a governmental armed security and law enforcement force, responsible for the maintenance of public order in areas that fall outside the jurisdiction of police forces (generally in rural areas), as well as assuring internal security and general border controls ...amongst other things!