Blogs from Middle East - page 11

So, welcome to my first blog entry! I've been away for three days now, and already feeling a healthy kind of exhausted. Late Monday night/early Tuesday morning my very good friend Jenny dropped me at Melbourne airport, loaded like a packhorse with 12.5kg backpack, daypack and shoulderbag. I flew with Emirates for the first time, via Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. I've never been to Dubai before, so thought it would be a great opportunity to get a taste of the city before heading to Jordan. So far, it's been fabulous! I arrived at my accommodation, a villa run by my lovely AirBnB host Clare, after taking a pink 'ladies' taxi from the airport. I had never heard of these until Clare mentioned about them, and they are mostly Barbie pink taxis driven by women, for women. ... read more

My second day in Istanbul. I was staying on the Asian side, so I had to take a minibus to Usküdar, then take the ferry to go across the Bosphorus until Eminönöu (European side). The ferry takes around 15 minutes, enough to take a deep breath, watch the landscape and believe it! You are in the city that belongs to 2 continents. It is better to take a ferry than going in car trough the Bosphorus bridge, it could take until 2 hours because of traffic. I loved Eminönü, from the ferry you can see the New Mosque and lost of people around (population in Istanbul is around 13 million people). I was satrving so I bought a piece of bread sold in small cars (only 1 TL) and then took my way to Galata Bridge ... read more

Taking the D400 in an easterly direction we opened the car windows and sped towards Perge. Passing hundreds of road side sellers with succulent strawberries and huge bags of oranges there was plenty to see. From the hotel complexes to the small one room dwellings and the lone cows on any piece of grass. The traffic lights fascinated Woolly. Woolly says – They count down!!!! When red they count down to when they turn to green and vice versa, will have to recommend them to Mr Cameron, it would save a lot of road rage!!!! Taking the turning to Perge we rounded a bend to the most splendid sight of an amphitheatre, pulling into the car park we could see remains in all directions. Paying our 15TL each (approximately £6.20 GBP), expensive for Turkey, we entered ... read more

Heading eastwards along the D400 we decided to spend the day looking at Aspendos and Side, two of biggest tourist attractions in the Antalya region. Woolly says – A chance to take to the stage??? Turning right off the main road, we followed the sign posts to Aspendos, pulling into the car park. Woolly didn’t look all together impressed. Woolly says – It appeared to be a large wall with nothing else of course I was disappointed, not a stage in sight. Paying 10TL each (approximately £4.10 GBP) we went through a dark covered archway and there in front of us……. Woolly says – a HUGE stage area, I got very excited and started to warm up my vocal chords. To the rear of the stage the walls rose behind with alcoves where sculptures would have ... read more

I made another trip "home" to my apartment in Dubai. It feels good to get out of Doha sometimes and this time, my fellow geologist accompanied me. But what a hassle of a weekend it was! I could only get a super late flight and then we wound up in holding pattern for almost an hour while landing Dubai, where our gianormous plane was offloaded via bus (UGH!). I had to wait for my coworker to go through customs, but used my time by getting some Duty Free wine. Then we had to wait in a line for a taxi. Seriously? Why so many people at 3:30 in the morning? We were able to get a ladies taxi to take us home and I swear the woman's eyes kept closing - I started to watch her ... read more

With some clouds in the sky and a light drizzle of rain we continued on our route back to Alanya. Having looked at the map we spotted the location of Syedra. Woolly says – this looked like a really good idea, WRONG, turning off the main road we headed towards a mountain in the distance. With the road becoming a dirt track, narrower and narrower with a huge drop down the mountainside Ian tried to keep going, it proved impossible and with Jo clinging to her seat and me clinging to Jo we managed to turn round and descend back to normality and less terrifying driving conditions. It’s a shame we couldn’t make it to the Syedra ruins as it’s believed to date back to the 7th century but even an intrepid Mammoth has his breaking ... read more