28 July - 1 August 2013
Day 1: Flying over
First things first, I had turkey on the way to Turkey. It felt like the right thing to do. Onto more serious matters like how much Turkish immigration hates Australians. I knew I need a visa but stuff isn't signposted very well in the airport so my first fail was making it half way through the massive passport control line only to realise that I needed to buy a visa before I entered the line so over to the visa counter I went.
Some countries, including New Zealand, don't need a visa to get in, others need to pay about 15 euro for 90 days and then there's Australia who needs to pay 45 euros (at least 3x any other country) for a visa. I thought everyone loved Australians until I went through this ordeal. I guess it's because so many Aussies come over for ANZAC pilgrimages that they want to make some money out of us. There's also the fact that we kind of killed an entire generation in the war.
Confusing metro/tram
The metro or tram or whatever it's called is the most confusing one I've been on so far. It does weird crap like
Feeling like a giant
I'm kind of tall and the Turkish kind of aren't. This became very apparent when I was standing in a tourism office asking for directions with my head tilted and cheek pressing against the ceiling.
Kebab time
I made it to the hostel eventually and chatted to a US couple who gave me some solid advice on where to go next; Cappadocia. I also chatted to a guy who worked for the hostel who offered to take me for a walk to a good kebab shop (while he was on the clock of course). The kebab didn't make my kebab hall of fame but it was certainly different with its paper thin wrap, super crunchy fries and pickles. Back in the dorm room I chatted with two Kiwis who were both keen to go exploring the next day; friends made!
Day 2: Galata Tower
After tackling the metro, failing a little bit and finally succeeding, we found ourselves at the highest point in central Istanbul; Galata Tower. We paid our 13 lira, jumped in the elevator with the crazy control panel and made our way to the top of the tower to squeeze around the 1.5 person wide path at the top. It was all worth it for the fantastic views of coloured roofs mixed with mosques and minarets covering the rolling hills.
Lunch
We made our way down to the riverside for a local specialty; fish sandwiches. Seafood isn't really my thing so I bought a kebab, that was totally different to the previous one, and a drinking yoghurt. The kebab was quite good, this one was in a bread roll, but I couldn't do the drinking yogurt because it was too bitter and just generally...um...too unusual for me.
Boat ride
The water in the Bosphorus (the river) looks so amazingly green and clean that you almost want to swim in it. I'm not sure why it doesn't look like the feral, brown excuses for waterways that I've seen elsewhere but I'm glad it doesn't. Anyway, boat cruises are a very popular touristy thing so we jumped on one and did a 2 hour cruise up and back, which was great because there was lots to see, a cool breeze and you could sit back and chat. A tip for the boat rides is to pay the captain the 10 lira when you get on rather than the 15 euro that hotels, tourist offices, etc. want to charge you.
Grand Bazaar
Back on dry land we went for a walk and wandered through lots of small bazaars until we finally found the Grand Bazaar. It was definitely huge but because it was a permanent building with shops I felt like it lost some of the chaos of a normal bazaar.
Blue Mosque
We found ourselves at the Blue Mosque at a time of prayer so infidel tourists weren't allowed in. The upside of this is that we could go see a free 50 minute information session about Ramadan, mosque architecture and Islam. I really enjoyed the info session and it helped a lot when we went through the mosque after because we knew more about what we were seeing. The mosque wasn't on the same scale as the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi but it was still quite impressive although not as blue as I expected. I was also wearing a singlet so I scored a covering cloth thingo, yay.
Dinner
We were persuaded into a restaurant by a champ of a guy who could fluently speak 5 European languages (plus Kurdish and Turkish) and accurately pick which one each tourist spoke just by looking at them. We ordered some hummus to share and I had a chicken hot pot thing that was served in a hot rock bowl and it was all fantastic. As seems to be the case in Turkey, you get free Turkish bread (possibly just called bread there :P) and a free tea with your food. It was so good to be back to good restaurant experiences after the crap that Athens had to offer. We finished the night with a beer on the roof of the hostel looking out over the city.
Day 3: Loner day
This was a no friends day so I took the chance to book some stuff, get a haircut and do some exploring. I know I normally buzz my own hair with the clippers but I smashed the plastic guide so unless I want a number zero, I can't really use them anymore. My travels took me up to Taksim square, the site of the recent protests, and there were certainly a lot of riot cops ready to go but unless the pigeons were going to riot, the cops wouldn't be doing much. One thing I noticed was that there are areas dedicated to different things so you'll walk through a street where every shop is a musical instrument shop, then another with all electrical gear and so on. It's quite strange.
Dinner
I went back to the same restaurant for dinner because there were other things that caught my eye on the menu. This time I ordered a chicken shish kebap and again, it was excellent. At this point I'd decided that the Turkish do good food.
Day 4: Gallipoli
I figured I couldn't go to Turkey and not see Gallipoli so I booked the day tour with the emphasis on day because it's a 5 hour drive each way with a 5 hour tour. The driver was a nutter, he was flying around the deserted early morning streets and driving on gutters, tram tracks and basically whatever he wanted. We stopped half way out for some breakfast where the choice was limited so I had a feta gozleme (thin pastry sandwiching some cheese), a cheese toast (a hotdog bun with cheese in it and squashed paper thin) and a tea. The drive out wasn't just on highways as we also spent a fair bit of time on super skinny back roads dodging cows and dogs and squeezing past oncoming traffic. There are also a lot of sunflowers in Turkey and it's strange driving past a field of them where they all face exactly the same direction (usually down).
When we arrived in Eceabat (the closest town to Gallipoli) our spritely tour guide, TJ, jumped on the bus and woke us all from our zombie like sleep. He gave us a bit of a talk, then we went for lunch at a local restaurant before getting back in the bus and heading off on the tour.
We went to Anzac cove, (Brighton) beach cemetery, lone pine (the Australian Memorial), ANZAC trenches where there was only a 7m gap between the Turkish trenches, Turkish 57th Regiment Memorial, the Nek and finally Chunuk Bair (the New Zealand Memorial). TJ gave us great talks at each spot and it was great to see these places that made history. It was a big day but definitely worth it.
We stopped at another road house on the way home for dinner but it wasn't particularly good. So I'll revise my previous statement and say that the food in Istanbul is good. I have a feeling that we were speeding the whole way home too because I saw a few 70 and 90 signs but we were going a bit quicker than that.
Day 5: Leaving
I felt confident enough to tackle the public transport system to get to the airport so I set off in the morning and caught a ferry over the Bosphorus. On the other side I eventually found my bus in a terminal of about 50 buses and started counting the stops; there were 64 stops on the route and I got off at the 63rd one *sigh*.
Thoughts about Istanbul
Turkish driving spirit
I've managed to reverse engineer the rules that all Turkish drivers must be taught.
Day 1: Flying over
First things first, I had turkey on the way to Turkey. It felt like the right thing to do. Onto more serious matters like how much Turkish immigration hates Australians. I knew I need a visa but stuff isn't signposted very well in the airport so my first fail was making it half way through the massive passport control line only to realise that I needed to buy a visa before I entered the line so over to the visa counter I went.
Some countries, including New Zealand, don't need a visa to get in, others need to pay about 15 euro for 90 days and then there's Australia who needs to pay 45 euros (at least 3x any other country) for a visa. I thought everyone loved Australians until I went through this ordeal. I guess it's because so many Aussies come over for ANZAC pilgrimages that they want to make some money out of us. There's also the fact that we kind of killed an entire generation in the war.
Confusing metro/tram
The metro or tram or whatever it's called is the most confusing one I've been on so far. It does weird crap like
- Opening doors on the non platform side so you jump onto the tracks
- Doesn't go to the end of a line, it just changes direction at a stop and goes back the other way
- Has all the trains on the same line so you're never sure if you're on the right one
Feeling like a giant
I'm kind of tall and the Turkish kind of aren't. This became very apparent when I was standing in a tourism office asking for directions with my head tilted and cheek pressing against the ceiling.
Kebab time
I made it to the hostel eventually and chatted to a US couple who gave me some solid advice on where to go next; Cappadocia. I also chatted to a guy who worked for the hostel who offered to take me for a walk to a good kebab shop (while he was on the clock of course). The kebab didn't make my kebab hall of fame but it was certainly different with its paper thin wrap, super crunchy fries and pickles. Back in the dorm room I chatted with two Kiwis who were both keen to go exploring the next day; friends made!
Day 2: Galata Tower
After tackling the metro, failing a little bit and finally succeeding, we found ourselves at the highest point in central Istanbul; Galata Tower. We paid our 13 lira, jumped in the elevator with the crazy control panel and made our way to the top of the tower to squeeze around the 1.5 person wide path at the top. It was all worth it for the fantastic views of coloured roofs mixed with mosques and minarets covering the rolling hills.
Lunch
We made our way down to the riverside for a local specialty; fish sandwiches. Seafood isn't really my thing so I bought a kebab, that was totally different to the previous one, and a drinking yoghurt. The kebab was quite good, this one was in a bread roll, but I couldn't do the drinking yogurt because it was too bitter and just generally...um...too unusual for me.
Boat ride
The water in the Bosphorus (the river) looks so amazingly green and clean that you almost want to swim in it. I'm not sure why it doesn't look like the feral, brown excuses for waterways that I've seen elsewhere but I'm glad it doesn't. Anyway, boat cruises are a very popular touristy thing so we jumped on one and did a 2 hour cruise up and back, which was great because there was lots to see, a cool breeze and you could sit back and chat. A tip for the boat rides is to pay the captain the 10 lira when you get on rather than the 15 euro that hotels, tourist offices, etc. want to charge you.
Grand Bazaar
Back on dry land we went for a walk and wandered through lots of small bazaars until we finally found the Grand Bazaar. It was definitely huge but because it was a permanent building with shops I felt like it lost some of the chaos of a normal bazaar.
Blue Mosque
We found ourselves at the Blue Mosque at a time of prayer so infidel tourists weren't allowed in. The upside of this is that we could go see a free 50 minute information session about Ramadan, mosque architecture and Islam. I really enjoyed the info session and it helped a lot when we went through the mosque after because we knew more about what we were seeing. The mosque wasn't on the same scale as the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi but it was still quite impressive although not as blue as I expected. I was also wearing a singlet so I scored a covering cloth thingo, yay.
Dinner
We were persuaded into a restaurant by a champ of a guy who could fluently speak 5 European languages (plus Kurdish and Turkish) and accurately pick which one each tourist spoke just by looking at them. We ordered some hummus to share and I had a chicken hot pot thing that was served in a hot rock bowl and it was all fantastic. As seems to be the case in Turkey, you get free Turkish bread (possibly just called bread there :P) and a free tea with your food. It was so good to be back to good restaurant experiences after the crap that Athens had to offer. We finished the night with a beer on the roof of the hostel looking out over the city.
Day 3: Loner day
This was a no friends day so I took the chance to book some stuff, get a haircut and do some exploring. I know I normally buzz my own hair with the clippers but I smashed the plastic guide so unless I want a number zero, I can't really use them anymore. My travels took me up to Taksim square, the site of the recent protests, and there were certainly a lot of riot cops ready to go but unless the pigeons were going to riot, the cops wouldn't be doing much. One thing I noticed was that there are areas dedicated to different things so you'll walk through a street where every shop is a musical instrument shop, then another with all electrical gear and so on. It's quite strange.
Dinner
I went back to the same restaurant for dinner because there were other things that caught my eye on the menu. This time I ordered a chicken shish kebap and again, it was excellent. At this point I'd decided that the Turkish do good food.
Day 4: Gallipoli
I figured I couldn't go to Turkey and not see Gallipoli so I booked the day tour with the emphasis on day because it's a 5 hour drive each way with a 5 hour tour. The driver was a nutter, he was flying around the deserted early morning streets and driving on gutters, tram tracks and basically whatever he wanted. We stopped half way out for some breakfast where the choice was limited so I had a feta gozleme (thin pastry sandwiching some cheese), a cheese toast (a hotdog bun with cheese in it and squashed paper thin) and a tea. The drive out wasn't just on highways as we also spent a fair bit of time on super skinny back roads dodging cows and dogs and squeezing past oncoming traffic. There are also a lot of sunflowers in Turkey and it's strange driving past a field of them where they all face exactly the same direction (usually down).
When we arrived in Eceabat (the closest town to Gallipoli) our spritely tour guide, TJ, jumped on the bus and woke us all from our zombie like sleep. He gave us a bit of a talk, then we went for lunch at a local restaurant before getting back in the bus and heading off on the tour.
We went to Anzac cove, (Brighton) beach cemetery, lone pine (the Australian Memorial), ANZAC trenches where there was only a 7m gap between the Turkish trenches, Turkish 57th Regiment Memorial, the Nek and finally Chunuk Bair (the New Zealand Memorial). TJ gave us great talks at each spot and it was great to see these places that made history. It was a big day but definitely worth it.
We stopped at another road house on the way home for dinner but it wasn't particularly good. So I'll revise my previous statement and say that the food in Istanbul is good. I have a feeling that we were speeding the whole way home too because I saw a few 70 and 90 signs but we were going a bit quicker than that.
Day 5: Leaving
I felt confident enough to tackle the public transport system to get to the airport so I set off in the morning and caught a ferry over the Bosphorus. On the other side I eventually found my bus in a terminal of about 50 buses and started counting the stops; there were 64 stops on the route and I got off at the 63rd one *sigh*.
Thoughts about Istanbul
- It wasn't that rare to hear cars driving past the hostel with really good sound systems
- I didn't see any locals wearing shorts or sunnies
- They're quite patriotic in that they fly a lot of flags (and so do Greeks now that I think about it)
- The bus had stops on the highway. People there are smart enough to not get stuck behind it though (take note Adelaide drivers)
- I noticed quite a few buses driving around with the doors open. I'm not sure if it's so people could jump on/off or for air flow
- Istanbul is huge (20 million people) and the suburbs go on forever. It's also quite developed with lots of new, high rise apartment buildings and the roads are quite good too
- I still had to show my passport for a domestic flight, arrrg!
- The Pegasus (airline) safety video is pretty funny because it's all done with kids
- Airport food prices suck. That's everywhere though, not just Turkey
- Turkey has a very young population, about 30, and I feel like we (ANZACs) must've created a generation without fathers
Turkish driving spirit
I've managed to reverse engineer the rules that all Turkish drivers must be taught.
- lane lines and speed limits are optional
- the right time to overtake is anytime
- the plastic, orange "no parking" sticks/poles are made to be parked on
- roadworthiness means does it drive?
- hazard lights give you a free pass to park anywhere (block roads) or do dumb shit
 |
| My Kiwi friends on Galata Tower |
 |
| Posing on Galata Tower with the Bosphorus in the background |
 |
| On the river cruise on the Bosphorus |
 |
| The Blue Mosque, Istanbul |
 |
| ANZAC Cove memorial |
 |
| Australian trench tunnel entrance |
 |
| New Zealand trenches at Chunuk Bair |
 |
| The view of Istanbul from the roof of my hostel |
 |
| Looking out over Istanbul from Galata Tower |
 |
| The Grand Bazaar |
 |
| Some bridge over the Bosphorus |
 |
| Humus and puffy Turkish bread, but the bread collapsed before we took the photo |
 |
| My chicken hot pot thing (it was amazing) |
 |
| ANZAC Cove memorial cemetery |
 |
| To scale recreation of just how close the fighting got; 7 metres. In Eceabat |
 |
| Istanbul at night |
No comments:
Post a Comment