Tuesday September 30th - Istanbul, Turkey. By Jim
Its our last day in Istanbul, and we are waiting for our overnight bus to collect us from the hostel at 8:00pm to take us South to our next stop, Selçuk in Southern Turkey, near Izmir and the ancient Roman site of Ephessus
Istanbul has been great. We've really enjoyed wandering around and taking in the main sites - The Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia Museum, the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, Galata Tower even though the weather has been pretty poor, and we have got more use out of jumpers and waterproofs that quite frankly we were hoping to over the course of the year. We've wandered along the banks of the Bosphorous, and taken the public ferry across it. And its been Ramadan too, so have enjoyed seeing how the locals behave during festival. The food is great - kebab, mezze, kebab in the old town, and a little trip to Wagamamas in the New town for a taste of home. Turkish pizzas (called pidas) are good too.
We also made it up to the Cagaloglu Hammams for a communal bathe and massage. Luce & I had to go off to separate men's and women's baths to change before going for a scrub. They're all marble and visually dauntingly impressive. After a coeple of rinses, it was time to move onto the central marble slab for a massage. My chap had possibly the firmest palms imaginable, but was a great masseur, and left me feeling thoroughly relaxed. Then it was through to the steam room for a chill out for 10 mins, and then back to scrubbing with a dish to rinse off using water from the marble sinks around the walls. Truly a memorable, and chilled out experience. I'm pretty sure that there was some Hollywood actor in the baths at the same time as me. While waiting for Luce to dry her hair, a chap with more than a passing resemblance to Steven Seagal, but a but younger was there. He had all the airs of a self-important LA actor, with a couple of chaps running around after him, being paid to be his friend etc, but cant quite place who it might be! Hey ho.
We've been here longer than initially planned as we've been trying to get our visa for Syria. We went up to the Syrian consulate on Friday morning to discover that we needed a letter of recommendation from the British embassy to go with our application. So off we went to Little Britain. After a thorough security briefing (although the metal detector was broken) we were ushered past perfectly manicured lawns into the visa office, where we had to hand over £60 for a letter which ran along the lines of: We jolly good chaps at the British Embassy send out heartfelt respect to you jolly good chaps at the Syrian Embassy. These two good eggs Jim & Lucy are definitely British, and we think you should let them into your country so they can have a jolly good time. What ho. It took them about 45 mins to type our names into this letter, by which time the 1100am deadline to hand in our passport at the Syrian embassy had passed. Never mind, we will stay on an extra couple of days in Istanbul, and then we can come back early on Monday morning. After all the Bayram holiday doesnt start until Tuesday, so we will be fine. On Monday morning, up we traipsed once again to one of the finer areas of Istanbul. The Syrian Embassy's neighbours include Gucci, Prada and, TopShop. However, our dear chums decided to start their week long holiday a day early, and we had to admit defeat, and cross Syria off our itinerary, and book flights to Amman in Jordan, passing Syria completely by. We dont want to hang around for another week, so have decided that Syria just wasnt meant to be this time...
Istanbul isnt the cheapest city in the world, and shelling out £60 for a pointless letter, and having to book additional flights means that the budget has taken a bit of a knock, but we've got firm plans to make some money back over the next ten days or so where the South of Turkey promises more, for less...
No comments:
Post a Comment