Gallipoli and the Boomerang Bar,

Hey hey,


So a few days ago we got to Gallipoli. After I wrote last, we got on the ferry and crossed the Dardanelle channel to a town on the other side called Ecabat. When we got there, a man from the Crowded House Hotel met us and told us to wait in the lobby until our guide arrived. If you’re ever going to visit Gallipoli, you have to stay at this place! It’s brand new, comfortable, modern, and has Australiana stuff all over it! The guys there were really helpful and while were waiting gave us heaps of info on places we could stay in the next couple of towns we were going to. Their names were Paully and Simon. And they’ve hung around Aussies a LOT.

Anyway then we got told that we were having a private tour because we were the only ones to come on the tour that day, so we had our guide and a little taxi all to ourselves. It was fantastic, and our driver knew so much about the Gallipoli campaign and told the stories so well. I wish he could’ve been my history teacher in high school... I probably would have remembered stuff a lot better. Because it’s winter here too, it’s dead quiet so we saw all the sites by ourselves, which was great.

It was a pretty somber experience being there. I didn’t have any family in that battle or anything, but it was still really emotional to look at graves of 20 year old men, and go, ‘that could have been my brother or my friend’. It’s hard to describe. But what is really amazing is the friendship the Turks and Australians have now, even though all that time ago they fought and killed one another. Turks love Australians here. Well in this area anyway. The words of Attaturk were pretty amazing too...

So after Gallipoli we headed back to the Crowded House Hotel to wait for the next ferry. The guys there ended up giving us a beer and chatting to us and asked if we’d like some dinner. So we walked up to the Boomerang Bar and they made a salad and cooked fresh fish on the open fire, which was soooooooo yummy, and we tried Rake, a Turkish drink kind of like Absynth, and tastes just as awful. We both had one sip each and handed back our glasses. These guys were great and they had so much helpful advice for us!

After that we headed back to Cannakkale on the ferry and had an early night.