As we drove into Turkey with a 5+ hour wait at the border – so the officials could figure out if we were a truck or a bus and then do the appropriate paper work. We ended up with some spare time to do our reading about Turkey and Istanbul. It has the most pedestrian accidents and deaths of any of the European countries. Now after walking here I can understand the statistics!!! There is no patience or slowing down for man, woman, or vehicle. But when we did a boat trip(cruise of the Bosphorus) we realized that meant the boats / ships as well. We were also told that Canadians had to pay 3 times what others did for an entry visa. I wonder how many Turkish people come to Canada.
Jim, our driver (from Cranbrook, England) tried to drive the truck as close as possible to our hostel ( called the Orient, where the owners ugly sister does belly-dancing on Thursday night in the roof top bar) as it ended up being quite late at night. Which meant he was driving through a rabbit warren of little roads where we got stuck between a truck and a bus going the opposite way, might have been us on a one way the wrong way. With lots of yelling, arms waiving, a ton of instructions from every bystander – one industrious vender seeing a good chance went up to Jim and offered him a hair cut after he got out of this mess ( and he did get his hair cut ). Only in Turkey!!!
Lots of markets everywhere in Istanbul but the largest is the Grand Bazaar – 4400 shops, 2195 workshops, 18 fountains, 12 warehouses, 12 mosques, 61 streets, 1 school and visited by 500,000 people everyday. There is also the spice market ( also called the Egyptian market) – which we just loved. Tried many of different kinds of Turkish Delight and loved them all. We didn’t realize how good these were till we tried some others from different cities. We also got to try or smell all the different spices cleverly arranged. What a delightful aroma!!! Also tried the Turkish pastries (totally different from Portugal) many made with honey, pistachios and lord knows what else. Had 6 of us, out for morning, going one of those and one of those and… then cut them up to try a piece of each with some Turkish coffee or apple tea (was pleasantly surprised with the apple tea – it tasted really good).
beautifully arranged spices
it's really Turkish Delight - their candy
Touts on the streets seem very friendly and fun.’ Excuse me, where are you from – let me help you spend your money!’ One pointed to Russell’s beard ‘maybe tomorrow’ as we walked past his barber shop! You need to have the right frame of mind when dealing with them and then you don’t get up-tight when they try to get you to buy the wares. The restauranters are more difficult to deal with and are far more pushy When in the market streets once you hit one store selling pots and pans you hit 20 or a whole street of just pots and pans or underwear (buyers mainly ladies in their black burkas buying the daintiest of unmentionables in all colours except black). One street had touts selling only cell phones – 20 -30people in a row with each holding 8 -10 cell phones (if you lost one lately it might be for sale here!!) Of course Viagra and cialis is for sale on most street corners as well.
couldn't see a place to try them on - only males seem to sell them!!
While in Istanbul we toured the Palace – the Harem and Treasury sections. They had an 86 carat diamond on display – the story was it was found in a garbage dump and sold to a jeweler for 3 silver spoons and then made into a ring called the Spoonmakers Diamond. The Basiica Cistern – nicknamed the sunken palace is a slightly spooky underground cistern – there are 18 of them in varying sizes under Istanbul to store water for the city. The water comes from the mountains up to 75 km away via aquaducts. This one can hold 80,000 m3 of water or a fleet of 16 warships. You will have seen it on the latest James Bond movie with him racing a speed boat through it. ( talk about special effect photography)
/basilica cistern
night life in lights
Of course we visited a few mosques, seeing how we are in the land of 0430 Call to Prayers. We found the smaller ones the best. We also walked over the bridge to the eastern part of the city and found it very western in comparison and mainly the younger crowd – where old town was tourists and older groupings. It happened to be a Friday and the place was hopping with music in the streets and even the street car had an extra car of musicians. Well Done!!!
Roads are very good – lots of 4 lane highways, and many tunnels through the mountains. We drove up to Goreme to see all the cave dwellings – carved out of the rock formations. We found it very cold here, even had frost on our tent in the morning. Later realized we were at 4900 feet in elevation. After a 0430 call we were up hot air ballooning up to 1800 meters above ground level in the air. There were over 70 balloons up in the sky – the sight was unbelievable. We were silently floating over all the cave dwellings in the different rock formations with little farmyards hidden in the box canyons. The pilot was pretty good, in floating up the dry canyons only a few meters above ground level, even chased foxes out of the canyon with the balloon.
Ballooning in Goreme
Our last stop in Turkey was at the Sumela monastery .We loved the steep walk up and the views of all the waterfalls on the way down. Actually it was just great to be doing walk abouts after sitting in the truck the last two days. I can appreciate the work in building the original monastery but not really my thing.
Truck stuff – each cook group is now buying the food stuffs for the meals and running into little problems or rather that you just have to be very adaptable to changing the meal plan as to what is available. We have tried buying butter instead we have bought cream cheese or the last try lard!!
On a menu: sigara boregi – cigarette flaky pastry. Was not sure what that could be and sorry we didn’t brave it.
Found out on our Mother’s Day that different countries celebrate it in different months!! England, Scotland it’s in March but New Zealand and Australia are in May but Father’s Day is September for NZ and Aussie where it’s the same as us in England and Scotland
Turkey, I always thought was hot, dry, flatish what we have found is cold (still early spring here – trees just starting to bloom) wet, very green and very mountainous. They have a number of ski hills. Now I realize it is the part that we are travelling through but the mountains still have snow on them!! Not much different from home. I believe down south is more what I thought Turkey was.
We are also in the country of squat toilets now and you should here the females complaining about having trouble getting positioned right. They are still using tp instead of the water dipper. From our experience in the far east, the newbees always had wet pants from their efforts at this process.
woke up our last morning in Turkey to the tinkling sound of sheep and goats being moved to pasture up the road past our tents. It sounded so musical it was neat.
Next country is Georgia and hopefully a much quicker border crossing and a little warmer weather. Cheerio till then.
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