Tuesday 24th – Day 11: Back to Istanbul
We head out on the last leg of our tour. When we get to Istanbul we will have completed over 2,750 Km in the bus. We are on the road at 9 and have an hour trip to the ferry where we cross the Sea of Marmara to the out skirts of Istanbul. It is a half hour trip on a ferry similar to our crossing of the Dardanelles. We stop along the way for a refreshment stop and get into central Istanbul around mid day. The traffic certainly slows down as we head to the Grand Bazaar for some shopping, This is apparently the biggest under cover bazaar in the world with tourists coming in especially for it. We were told it was just a mad house and if you said hello to a shop owner you were hooked. This all proved to be hype and we were not hassled by the store owners at all. We didn’t buy anything either as it was all pretty much the same stuff we had been seeing already.
We took up one of the options of a cruise on the Bosphorus river. This is the bit of water between Europe and Asia and of course is right in the middle of Istanbul. You have the Sea of Marmara at one end and the Black sea at the other. It is a fascinating cruise looking at all the flash houses, palaces and hotels along this coast line. We went under both the bridges built across it. It is also a busy piece of water with ferries crossing and ships traversing.
It is back to the hotel where we started in (Holiday Inn) Istanbul to get ready for dinner at supposedly a famous night club called the Kervavsaray with belly dancers and folk dancers and an impersonator who got up some of the audience to share his jokes and songs etc. What a great laugh we had at this part of the show, we finished up dancing to ‘real’ music before our tour guide forced us to leave. Some of our crowd were not wine drinkers so we did get to drink their allowances also!!!!! The show was good but we were packed in like sardines and it was impossible to watch the show and eat your meal if like me you had your back to the stage.
Wednesday 25th – Day 12: Last day of the Tour
Another 9 o’clock start as we head over to the old town for sightseeing. It is another hot day and very pleasant wandering around looking at some of the monuments and obelisks as we soak in the history. We do the Blue Mosque where we take our shoes off and the girls put on scarves. It is a magnificent building with a huge dome supported by half domes. There are lots of beautiful stained glass windows.
Next is the Hagia Sophia a former Orthodox basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum. It was famous for its massive dome, and was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years.
We are all starting to get churched out by now and we wander off and find some lunch and then I head off to look at the Basilica Cistern. It costs me an extra 10 lire to view it but worth it. It is a huge underground structure which used to provide water to some of the buildings on the hill. It had a capacity of nearly 3,000,000 cubic feet of water. The ceiling is supported by 300 odd columns, some of them carved. There was an upside down Madusa on one of them. It was then a rush to get back to our meeting point for our visit to the Topkai Palace.
This was an Ottoman Palace built around the 15th century. It covered a lot of ground made up of four main courtyards. We wandered around here for about 2 hours looking at the palace jewels, one the biggest diamond in the world, much too big for our fine fingers, old clothing of the time, and the harem, library etc Ngaire even found the room where they turn blokes into eunuchs, yuk.
Back to the hotel to get ready for our farewell dinner at a restaurant looking over the Bosphorus. A beautiful view, a nice meal and our tour was virtually over. It was all goodbyes as some were leaving the hotel at three the following morning to catch early flights.
We went back to our hotel room to listen to music booming out at us from what must have been a nearby nightclub but it finished at eleven so not sure. At about 12.50 we got disturbed by an almighty boom and then what sounded like fireworks. I saw smoke rising from the street at the front of the hotel so hoping it was fireworks and not associated with the riots we had heard about.
Thursday 26th – On our own again
With no rush and in our top rated hotel we are looking for a relaxed day today. We do have to change to a new hotel though as this one was part of the Trafalgar package and us poor Kiwi’s can’t afford the NZ$400 per day for this place. We have breakfast with Jan and David from Melbourne. I forgot to mention that this was the only place that has served us bacon in the whole of Turkey. No fried eggs but yummy although a bit salty bacon. We say our goodbyes to a few folk still around the hotel, put our bags in storage and are off for a stroll in the New town (I Guess) where they have shops and stuff more akin to home. We really just wander as we are full up on historical sites and stuff and get back to the Holiday Inn about 2pm. We book a van to take us to the Orka Royal Hotel back down in the old city area, in fact just below the Topkai Palace. Renee we decide that you have really done a great job in sorting out hotels for us both in quality and location. The taxi van ride is a two in one deal as it is as exciting as a River Rafting adventure. Our driver swapped lanes at least every thirty seconds, no gap was too small for him to charge at, horns blasting as we went. But then he didn’t have a clue where our hotel was, the traffic was thick and he had to ask people directions. We must have over shot the street and we ended up getting dropped off at a street a couple of blocks above it. He pointed out a sign I couldn’t see and said there it is I let you walk from here. He then had the cheek to charge us 10 lira more than the hotel said it would cost. All part of the experience as we head down this cobbled street dragging our bags. We found the hotel on this street that had been closed for a reconstruction which may have been part of the taxi driver’s problem and it did make us wonder what the hotel was going to be like but all turned out good enough for a 7 maybe 8 rating.
We dumped our bags and went off for a walk. We found a park below the palace and spent some peaceful time wandering through that and coming out on the coastline before finding our way past the main railway station back to our hotel.
We went up to one of the restaurants we had passed towing our bags earlier in the day for dinner. I had some lovely lamb chops. After dinner we strolled back to our hotel. It had a pool on the roof of our hotel and beautiful view over the sea and we decided that we would head up there tomorrow evening for happy hour.
Friday 27th – A wander around the Spice Markets
We have a relaxed start to the day with a leisurely though not exciting breakfast. We set off about 10am to find the spice market, just wandering in the general direction that people keep point us towards. We found a swag of garden shops which were interesting. We didn’t know you could buy Strawberry seeds. Just as well we aren’t allowed to bring them into NZ TA otherwise you wouldn’t of had a chance next summer as the strawberries over here are yummy. The Spice Market was just next door and it was much more interesting than the Grand Bazaar as you could almost buy anything here from hardware to Viagra. We split up and met back at a café area for lunch. Again there was not a lot of interest in selling you stuff and when it was time for prayer some of the shops closed even although there were people in them.
We were going to meet Doug and Ngaire back at the hotel for 4 o’clock happy hour and probably got back about 3. Unfortunately the temperature had dropped and the wind had come up and there was a bit of rain about. Ngaire’s reckie of the roof top suggested it was too cold up there and just a couple of people huddling under a rug drinking tea. I tried to catch up on the blog while the others went out and brought some wine.
Dinner was pork chops again but they were not as nice as the night before.
Saturday 28th – We begin our journey home
We wake to another not so good day. It is promising rain and trying hard but it doesn’t on us anyway. We decide to go for a wander along the waterfront. It is a busy place, ferries are coming in, guys were catching anchovies and mackerel by the bucket and boats all over the place. Everyone is trying to sell us tickets for a trip on the Bosphorus. We could have had a trip for 10 lire instead of the US$40 we were charged by Trafalgar. We may not have had the commentary in English but I would be surprised if it wasn’t. We wandered around a bit, did the common search for a WC thing before getting back to the hotel for our mid day taxi van to the airport. The driver was another Stirling Moss want-a-be (they must all go to same driving school) and had us at the airport in under half an hour. To drive in Istanbul you have to be super confident and not be put off by the cars tooting at you.
We have three and a half hours until our flight so dump our bags, grab something to eat and go into the lounge to wait. Our plane is an Airbus 321 and Doug ends up sitting across the aisle from the rest of us. Our flight to Munich takes just over two hours with a snack of Pasta and wine for some of us where we have a four hour lay over before flying out. We have sat on our bums quite a bit over the last two and a half weeks, tummys and butts tell the story…. We next have a 12 hour Flight to Singapore and arrive there at 3.50 in the afternoon. Yipee!!!!
Sunday 29th – Singapore
The flight was reasonability uneventful and in a Lufthansa Airbus A343. Margaret and I were against the Window and the plane configuration of 2-4-2 meant we only had our selves to climb over. Ngaire cursed me as she reckoned I must have arranged that we always got the window seats with Renee. This was not true of course. I don’t think any of us slept much but the meals were reasonable. We arrived on time and everything was well until Margaret declared her cigarettes as you have to do here. We then had to go to the customs counter where they wanted either $50 tax or for $4 would hold them until we left. We chose the later but needed to pay in SG$’s which we didn’t have yet and no ATM until we were through the door so it was a credit card transaction. Bloody smokers are a pain in the ass.
The taxi driver couldn’t find our hotel, The Park Regis, 23 Merchant Rd, and we went around the block three times. A great hotel Renee, in again a great location. Apart from Ngaire not getting window seats you are getting good points. We settled in ad headed of to find an ATM and something to eat. China town was just around the corner so that was where we headed, a bustling place for a Sunday night and found a nice place to eat and watch the world go past. It wasn’t long before we had polished off a couple of large jugs of Tiger beer and a nice meal. Noodles and Black peppered beef for me, Chicken & Potatoe Curry for Margaret, Doug a pork dish and Ngaire Chicken Satay.. I tried to get a haircut but after being told yes they decided they were closed come back tomorrow.
We went back to the hotel and had a swim before retiring to bed. We are starting to appreciate the hot weather.
