Mr. Asia, meet Mr. Europe

After seeing Troy on Wednesday 14 November, we drove for a short while to take a ferry across the Dardanelles strait from the Anatolian (Asian) side of Turkey to its small European side. This reminded me of Thingvellir in Iceland where the American and European plates meet. So, after over a week on the Asian side of Turkey, I returned briefly to Europe again.

Europe seems like a rather lame continent. Really, it's just a peninsula of Asia, like India or Arabia. But since we westerners derive culturally from Greeks and they valued the distinction between "Europa" and "Asia", I suppose we're stuck with it.

On the west side of the Dardanelles is Gelibolu, better known by its English name Gallipoli. We didn't stop there, so I heard about but did not get to see the WWI memorial.

Here are more pictures of my ferry ride across the Dardanelles.

From there we drove into the heart of Istanbul. In many places along the way, you could see mountains in the background that were part of Greece.