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Published: April 7th 2010
Bospherous to the Black Sea
Day one our hosts took us on a boat ride up the Bospherous to the entrance of the Black Sea to a lovely little village where we had lunch and visited a castle ruin.Wednesday 7 April
Since the last blog on Easter Day we have had a final day of sight seeing in Istanbul ending up being taken by our excellent host, Umit (our Turkish naval captain), to a true Turkish experience - a night in the harem! No, the reality was a dinner and show seeing the true belly dancers of this nation at work. Brilliant to watch the intricacies of body, hands and arms telling a story through dance. During the day John and I enjoyed visiting the exotic Grand Bazaar as well as the famous Blue Mosque while enjoying a break at the roof top cafe on top of the Seven Hills Hotel - so named because Istanbul is reputed to have been built on the seven hills in this geographic area. The city is significantly bigger now of course, with a population around 15/16million people. I suppose the highlight during the afternoon was our visit to a famous Turkish Hamami (Turkish Baths). Quite an experience. Lying on the slap of marble wondering what next surrounded by similarly attired men soon became a reality as an ‘attendant’ took us through the massage process. Thought my chest was going to cave in
Ships Bow
The largest gold leafed ship's bow sprit taken from an old Turkish sailding vessel. It now resides in the Naval museum, Istanbul. at one point! And as John said afterwards, the figures that slid down the arms and legs massaging the muscles left one wondering if those muscles were ever going to work again such was the intensity of the experience! But hey, we had to do it. It’s part of the whole experience that this trip will bring us at this stage of life. Yesterday morning after saying goodbye to our lovely hosts who left for work by 7.30am, John and I finished packing the car and drove out of the city towards Ankara and the true Asian East. I felt that one big city was enough in Turkey and that we should be trying for some of the interesting places along our route towards Iran and so after a long and interesting journey we arrived last night at a place called Amasya which has put us truly half way across Turkey and ahead of our published schedule. The Lonely Planet came up with the goods as we have found a wonderful place called the Ilk Pansiyon, a restored mansion that has all the trappings of Eastern Turkish culture. Its set close to the river in the centre of the town
Mosque and bridge
From our restaurant we could see one of Istanbul's famous mosques with the bridge to the Asia from Europe in the background. We crossed this bridge on Tuesday morning on leaving Istanbul. which is surrounded by high cliffs within which are set remarkable remains of castles from a bygone era. We are staying here two nights as we are ahead of schedule and catching up on domestics, managing photos, writing the blog and getting it all uploaded through web links that are foreign to me so it all takes time. We also want to enjoy and experience what Amasya has to offer. Our room you will see from the photos is magnificent, and the proprietor lit the boiler you see in the pictures using a bucket of fine wood chips that caught fire instantly and warmed the room so quickly that we were both astounded at how quickly it did so. We have now covered approximately 2,500 miles since leaving home and the car is still going strong despite the road conditions during the last few hundred miles to Amasya being less than smooth, due to a major dual carriageway being built across Turkey along the route we have decided to take, which is a more direct route than the one in the original route plan. (I will update the route plan and resend with new dates and times.)
Tomorrow, Thursday, we
Mirror image
Spot us and our hosts in the mirror above the waiter's head! will head for Erzurum, the largest city on the Anatolian high plateau, some 925 kilometres from Ankara. Our journey to Erzurum is close to 700 kilometres so we may find ourselves camping somewhere between Erzincan and Erzurum depending on the road conditions. So far we have evaded any mishaps on the roads although we have seen some incredible manoeuvres by drivers on the roads. We had our first experience of being stopped by the poliza yesterday too. We are finding that the signage on the roads is quite confusing, and speed limits contradictory it seems in places. But a phone call by the polizi who stopped us to his mate with the radar enabled us to continue with no penalties! Phew, the first of many I am sure. Bye for now.
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Adam Ososki
non-member comment
Great work!! Keep it up
I'm so jealous - it brings back lots of memories of my 17,000 round europe trip in a 5.5 ton bus 8 yrs ago, I'm so sorry I couldn't get the time off work to be at The Ace Cafe for your departure, and more sorry I couldn't be your official trip photographer and follow you across country on a motorbike snapping your travels!! All the best Adam (John's Step-son)