So, after that crazy night we woke up at 7am on Saturday 23rd April. J & I both felt pretty horrible, although Janet managed to make up some funny little songs while packing - with a bogan accent rhyming 'today' with 'me' and other things like that. I'm glad I wrote that down to remember actually... We had breakfast about 8am - just felt like basic stuff: cornflakes, plain bread, and stupidly a boiled egg and a piece of cheese.
We left about 8:45am (with me managing to throw up on the bus, over all my stuff but thankfully not on anyone else) for Pergamon, another ancient city which we had to take a cable car up to. It went really high, a bit scary but really amazing views. We saw more cats up the top. We had fantastic views the whole time we were up there, walking around through ruins, discovering a gorgeous lake from high above it. Also another huuuuge theatre. We took the cable car back down after a couple of hours.
We stopped at a restaurant/service station area for lunch, where I got a cheese and tomato pide for 10TL. I regretted that, though, when others got a yummy-looking buffet of rice and vegie sauces for 15TL which ended up being 12TL because a lot of the food was apparently gone by the time we arrived. Obviously I wasn't feeling so sick by this time (although nothing keeps me from yummy food)!
Our next stop was the ex-Greek island of Cunda (Choonda) just as I was falling asleep on the bus. I'm thinking we either must have gotten on a ferry or gone across a bridge. Probably the bridge. It was absolutely gorgeous. There were little market stalls (the ring and bracelet I got both broke that day, but fixable, but the vendor wouldn't give me a discount on another broken ring), restaurants along the water, and a few boats - SO. PRETTY! I have a couple of photos from this place that are possibly the best of the whole trip.
We arrived at our hotel about 7pm (I can't remember where - the itinerary says Bergama but that doesn't really ring a bell), with 5 people in each room this time so I was with Janet, Caitlin, Rose and Kate. I washed my clothes that I'd thrown up on (lovely, huh?)and tried to make them dry by hanging them outside. This was the coldest place we'd been though so not much luck there. We half-packed our day packs for the next day - night at Galipoli - and enjoyed the fact that there were hammocks outside and we were right on the beach again.
We went down to the fancy-schmancy dining room where individual bowls of beans and salad were already on the tables. Then we got our soup (with Janet making animal noises and gestures to ask if it was vegetarian - even though the Turkish word for vegetarian is very similar and we didn't get why he didn't understand!) and vego meal of rice and chips and tomato/cucumber. The desserts sat in front of us for the whole meal - sweet balls of deliciousness which made me so full!
We went back to our rooms, finished packing, walked to the beach to have a look with Caitlin. Had a horrible shower with no light in the bathroom, the showerhead wouldn't stay up so had to hold it the whole time and NO hot water. Slept don't know what time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next 2 days are kinda mixed together because I didn't get much sleep. On Sunday 24th April we got up at 7am after a freeeeezing night when no-one slept very well. For breakfast I had 2 pieces of toast (on an ingenious toaster which you put the bread onto a rotating grate and the bread falls through at the end), honey, feta, more cheese, Nesquik (!), olives.
We left at 8.15am, stopping at Troy for a bit, where we saw 4000 year old ruins, a fake Trojan horse which we took photos in the windows of, etc.
Then we drove on and stopped at a shopping centre/supermarket to get food for lunch and dinner that night, breakfast the next morning and possibly lunch the next day. We were to be at Galipoli for the ANZAC dawn service that night. So I bought really healthy stuff like a loaf of bread, Nutella to share, biscuits with Smartie-type things, Snickers & Twix (it was Easter after all although there were no eggs anywhere!), pretzels, corn cakes, pesto to share, bananas and apples. For lunch I bought a huge (didn't realise it would be that big) baked potato with cheese, corn, olives and carrot which was absolutely delish.
We drove about 15 minutes, then onto a ferry for another 15 mins then a bit longer to Galipoli on the other side. Once we arrived we were in a big bus queue so we had to wait a while. We eventually got out, got our bus number tags and walked along the unmade road to a grassy area near the entrance. It was something like 2pm but we weren't going to be let in till 6pm - but you needed to get there early to be near the front of the line to claim a big enough spot for 300 Topdeck travellers. We sat on the grass for a while, it was really sunny so stripped down to t-shirts and cranked out the sunscreen. The portaloos around the place were horrible; I managed to grab a bunch of toilet seat covers thinking they were paper hand towels and then had nowhere to put them, whoops.
We started lining up at the entrance gate eventually, only to be totally squished, have to squish even more for trucks to come through the crowd, and eventually be told NO-ONE THROUGH TILL 6PM so we sat back down only after being promised chocolate cake by one of the workers. I lost my thumb ring at some stage, I think when I was heading to the toilet and took off my rings before I went. Devo :( I also lost my Murano pendant and a Turkish bracelet the first night out in Kusadasi, not doing well.
We 'lined up' again about 5:15pm and the gates were opened a bit before 6, so slowly though, about 8 people let through at a time for security checks. We picked up arm bands and info packs then rushed to find the hopefully awesome spot that other Topdeck-ers had claimed. We weren't right at the front where apparently we normally would be but they'd laid out a big tarp so we quickly jumped on a bit of that.
We sat, ate, walked around, gradually building up our layers again as the sun went down. Everyone got into their sleeping bags and I was freezing and upset since I didn't have one (couldn't fit it in my backpack). Caitlin had brought some 'space blankets' though so we shared those although they ripped and didn't do much for the temperature.
I think music and things started about 8pm, possibly some before that. Some woman with a great voice kept returning with the Aus/NZ orchestras every now and then. Documentaries on the big screens started something like 9:30pm. Everyone started going to sleep, hoping to be semi-awake for when the dawn service came around. I got about an hour's sleep then woke up freezing and decided that trying anymore was just not worth it.
I went with a couple of women next to me to see a Today Show reporter (Sarah Harris I have discovered) interviewing a few people. Pretty sure I was in the background of a lot of the filming but had no time to let anyone in Aus know to turn on the TV. It was really hard to get back to my sleeping spot without stepping on lots of sleeping people, but I was warmer from standing anyway. I found Rose awake and we just walked back and forth along the road for a couple of hours just trying to stay warm. A young Turkish worker even asked for a photo with Rose, just a little bit funny. While we were still up and walking, a random film came on the screen which looked like a really bad movie trailer but we couldn't work it out.
Eventually everyone was told to wake up and we saw the speeches from the Prime Ministers. Then we saw picture and heard descriptions of ANZACs who had died, the youngest being 15 years 10 months plus mainly 18-23 year olds which was very sad. I didn't really cry though which I was very surprised about, considering my tired state. Following were speeches, odes, the Aus, NZ and Turkish national anthems, 2 minutes silence and The Last Post.
The sun had really started coming up at this point and it was now definitely into Monday 25th April, ANZAC day. It was still really cold, most people packed up and got ready to head up the road for the memorial services. As you can imagine, the line for the toilets was ridiculous but moved quite quickly, thank God. We started walking towards Lone Pine, where the Australian service would be held, and saw a few pretty beachside cemeteries on the way, with flowers around and between all the graves. Caitlin found her ancestor's grave in the first one. Continuing walking, now uphill, we all ended up with really burnt faces. We got to the Shell Beach cemetery - something about a famous cricket game there? - and eventually got to Lone Pine. It was a bit of a tiring walk, but that definitely added to the feeling of empathy towards the soldiers who had walked the same route 96 years before us. We found a spot on the grass in front of the stands and the orchestra was already playing, although we were a bit early. The ceremony started at 10:05am; I lay down with my knees still up but ashamedly I kept falling asleep - and waking up to every applause. We heard the same kind of things as at the Dawn Service - the anthem, silence, Last Post plus a couple of emotional poems.
We started towards Chunuk Blair (the site of the NZ service) where the buses would collect us from. It was a long steep walk, with a couple more cemeteries along the way; this time Rose found her ancestor's grave. We got stopped for a few minutes at the Turkish memorial site then headed onwards and upwards. I power walked the last 10 minutes or so and was hot and sweaty by the time we reached our destination. The grandstand for the service was crowded so we found someone with a big Topdeck flag and sat outside on the grass. We finished most of our food as it was lunchtime by now. Try Nutella and banana in a roll, so yum. Definitely ate too much Nutella overall though.
Our whole group eventually came together and we waited for bus 384 to be called out. Tolga said we'd be third but we weren't... as we drove away, though, we could see hundreds of buses still lined up on the other side of the hill so we did pretty well.
On the bus we had a competition - we paid 1TL to guess what time we'd arrive and the closest person would win all the money. It was 2:08pm and I had absolutely no idea, I ended up being about an hour and half off. We stopped a couple of times for the toilet - I can proudly say I squatted a total of twice the whole trip. I fell asleep a couple of times; Old School and Eurotrip were put on but I didn't see much of either.
We arrived back in Istanbul at 7:34pm and Felicity/Flick (christened Flaps at the start of the tour) won the munnay. Everyone grabbed bags, went inside the hotel (same one as start of tour), got room keys and headed up. There was no real group goodbye which was a bit sad. We had showers then went downstairs to say bye to some people heading out for final drinks - I think we were just tooo tired. We got free baklava from the hotel which was nice. We got to sleep about 11:15pm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So that was basically the end of the tour. But Caitlin, Janet and I were staying a few extra days in Istanbul. On Tuesday 26th April we got up at 8:45am, got dressed and went down to breaky. Not that many people from our group were down there so not many goodbyes :( Delicious breaky but ate too much as usual - chocolate chip bread, olives, cheeses, more bread, yoghurt and fruit syrup, different corn flake-type cereal. We went out and sat in the lobby with Kasia for a bit, hoping to see some more of the group to say goodbye to, but hardly saw any.
We went up to our room, packed our stuff then headed to Georgie, Aisling & Kate's room which G, A and Rose managed to book for that night as well, lucky ducks.
J, C & I walked to our hostel, a good 40 minutes or so (near the restaurants we'd gone the first couple of nights) which was hard with a heavy backpack. The receptionists pretended they didn't speak English at first, thought it was pretty funny. They were actually really nice though, let us leave our bags, gave us maps and things.
We walked back to the hotel to meet the others and then we all went to the Grand Bazaar again. We went via some Turkish baths but they wouldn't do facials without the whole service. I bought some cushion covers for home, bracelets for friends and we all randomly got given free African scarves at a shop where Aisling and Georgie bought awesome hippy pants. We wandered through the bazaar, bought a few things (jewels mostly), got outside and ate at the same place we had the week before. As Kate said, it was like a circle, that we started and ended doing the same thing but we saw a whole lot of Turkey in between. Kind of weird to think about actually, it was crazy that we'd been gone that long!
Kate left to relax, catch a taxi and then fly back to London town and we went back in the bazaar. We said goodbye to G, A & R, they went back to the hotel and we went to check in at our hostel. We had an 8 bed dorm, I lay on the bottom bunk for a while before the others told me I was on the top, whoopsy. We relaxed for a couple of hours, using the wifi, etc., then went to meet any others from the tour who were still in Istanbul in the same area as those restaurants. We sat in the 2nd storey of a shisha bar on cushions which was a nice atmosphere. Some people bought drinks then most of us headed out for dinner not too far away. We got free apple tea and puffy Turkish bread and I had a veg pizza. The view from the top of the restaurant was of the mosques lit up against the sky, again just like Disneyland. I got charged less for my pizza than thought so that was a nice end to the meal.
We went back to the bar, some people had left but we filled out 2 circles of cushions. A couple of fish bowls were drunk (that sounds really weird - we all drunk a couple of 'fish bowls'). A lot of the cocktails were brought out with sparklers which was cool.
We eventually headed across the road to where we'd had drinks on our second night in Istanbul but it was midnight - and therefore closing! Some more of our tour was there so we said goodbye and to others who were now next door to the bar.
We found that our hostel was literally a 1 minute walk away - it took us 15 on the way there because we thought we had to go all the way around the mosque, no thanks to the guys working at our hostel! Still, I found the fact pretty funny. We all had showers then got to bed about 1:30am.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I pressed snooze a few times on my alarm on Wednesday 27th April, got up at 9:20am, dressed, headed upstairs to the 'rooftop terrace' for breakfast. Had yummy brown bread with 2 cheeses and tomato, egg, dried apricots, chocolate cake (what's with having dessert for breakfast in Turkey?), muesli with yoghurt and delish fruity syrup stuff. We checked out the view outside - over the sea and the mosques but with lots of ugly being-renovated or needing-renovation buildings in between plus lots of cats as usual.
We went back down to our room for a relax (still recovering from no sleep at Galipoli) and journal sesh. The workers started making beds so I followed Janet and Caitlin back upstairs to the terrace, and used the wifi and computers up there. The workers were cooking something for lunch and it smelt reeally good. After eating too much of Caitlin's leftover chocolate muesli we went out for lunch near the Grand Bazaar, past lots of tempting baklava places. Caitlin got really salty pasta for 4TL and Janet and I got a plate of 3 things - mine were rice, beans, and cabbage dolma - for 5TL. Yum but smallish.
We walked through the bazaar to find a bracelet place from the first day we were there, then decided we were too tired to think of anything particularly to do so we headed back to the hostel, stopping for baklava and Turkish delight on the way. Amazing stuff. I was still full from muesli/lunch so didn't eat it for a bit but when I did...!
We went back up to the terrace, sat inside and wrote postcards, looked through photos, used the internet.
We went out for dinner about 7:30pm at a restaurant nearby. There was one cheapish cute-looking place with a plastic-covered bit - it was raining so would have been perfect - but it was full so we found a nice restaurant. All the waiters we passed were really nice when we said we needed cheaper places, suggesting others. We got yummy bread and oil with cheese, then I got a tomato soup with mozzarella and C & J got veg noodles.
We went back to the hostel, still laughing about how close we were to all the restaurants/bars. Had showers then hit the sack at 10pm (although I wasted precious sleeping time wifi-ing so it was more like 11pm).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning, Thursday 28th April, we got up about 9am and got breakfast a bit before half past. I had cheeses/tomato on bread, olives, sundried tomatoes and a delicious orange. We walked along the tram tracks (the only directions I remembered) to the Spice Bazaar, where we'd briefly gone on one of the first days after the cruise.
We went past lots of cheap funky little jewellery shops where we went a little crazy. We found the Bazaar, and had LOTS of Turkish Delight samples while Janet worked out which ones to get for her house mistresses (C & I had bought scarves for ours a couple of days before). The place she ended up choosing actually let us try whole pieces until the guy was ready to serve us, which was a long time - this place was popular. I obviously took advantage of this but definitely ate toooo much.
After that we walked through a tunnel which goes under the road where there were more shops and we all bought 5TL watches just for the sake of it. We followed the tunnel through to the other side which was on the waterfront, and fish and bread were all you could smell. We sat in one of the little places connected to boats where fish was being grilled and C & J got fresh fish rolls which were apparently very good.
We walked back underneath the road, bought some more rings then headed back along the tram line. We stopped so I could get a plate of rice with chickpeas which was tasty but weirdly greasy. These stupid Turkish guys who were definitely younger than us were harassing us as we walked so we stopped in a ceramics shop to get away from them.
We found a park and sat down for a bit, still struggling with what to actually do with our time. There were tulips everywhere plus bridges and fountains so we spent some time taking photos.
We continued on back the way we'd come, stopping at a guy on the footpath selling 1TL bracelets and all bought one. We got back to the hostel at 3:30pm - such bad tourists - and napped and used the wifi.
We went to dinner at 7:30pm, this time to the covered-in place we'd seen the night before - kind of felt like we were intruding on a possible date before another table vacated. I got potato borek which actually looked like 2 really long spring rolls but was still nice.
We were thinking of walking to the water/actually doing something but Caitlin was getting sick and we didn't think it was a good idea just 2 of us walking around Istanbul in the dark. Instead we went back to the hostel, packed our stuff, found out about the bus to the airport the next day, had showers and got to bed at 11pm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday 29th April - got up about the same time as yesterday, breakfast about 9:30pm: we sat outside that morning and I had muesli, yoghurt, jam, dried apricots and an orange. Wasn't too cold so therefore quite pleasant. We finished packing totally, paid for the shuttle to the airport. We were told that we could just chill upstairs all day if we wanted, even though we'd checked out which was nice. It was Royal Wedding day and we were a bit annoyed we were missing it, while the others back at High Wycombe were heading into Hyde Park.
We headed out, with not really any plans again, looked at some shops in a little mall-type place nearby. Walked to the Spice Bazaar again. We went to find an ATM and found a whole strip of stores on the outside of the Bazaar full of cheeses and things - the one sample of Turkish mozerella made our day. Then we went inside to the same stall as the day before and I bought a bag of Turkish Delight for myself (which I still haven't opened almost 2 months later, how good am I?).
We went through the tunnel again, and the others got the same lunch as yesterday but from a different place. I bought spinach borek which didn't have enough filling :(
We headed back, buying a couple more bracelets and a ring, and a little bowl which I'd wnated the whole trip. Back at the hostel we went upstairs and watched the balcony part of the wedding on TV.
We caught our bus to the airport with a few other people from different hostels and I was really glad I sat backwards and could not see the scary driving, because I could definitely feel it!
We got to the airport at 4:50pm; our plane wasn't till 8:30pm so we waited, checked in our luggage, waited some more, headed to our gate which was changed 3 times. We were meant to start boarding at 7:30pm but didn't actually until 8:15pm and didn't leave till 9:20pm, since we were "15th in line for take-off".
The veg meal was okay - eggplant and a tiny piece of tomato with rice, salad, fruit salad, and for some reason didn't get the tomato olive dip that Caitlin got in her non-veg meal. I slept a bit. At the start the lights in the plane were off so you could see outside.
We arrived 10:50pm London time (12:30am), which was actually only 20 minutes late in the end. We went through passport control (the line for 'other nationalities' was actually shorter than the EU line this time), collected our bags and headed out to the taxis. We were told it would cost £85 and it ended up taking less than half an hour so that was ridiculous and kind of a crappy end to the holiday.
We checked out our new bathroom, which couldn't be used till Monday, grrr. Got to bed about 1:30am (3:30am for what we'd been going with).
No comments:
Post a Comment