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Published: October 6th 2008
So after such a long silence, I guess some of you are wondering where I’ve been these past months. Well, where haven’t I been is more the question! Let’s begin from the start, shall I?
It all started 4 months ago, in a small city called Brno, far, far away in the Czech Republic. There I boarded a bus which was to take me to Budapest, via Bratislava. In Budapest I waited at the deserted bus station for 2 hours in the middle of the night to catch my next bus to Romania, which would turn out to be a bit of a nerve-wracking bus trip, for several reasons! This was my first big trip by myself so I was quite nervous about a lot of things and sitting in a minibus with just the driver and one other lady, both who didn’t really speak English, on our way to a country completely foreign to me, didn’t help with my anxiousness! We reached the Hungarian-Romanian border at around 2am and were stopped first by Romanian police and then again by passport control at the actual border. Both lots of people who inspected my passport looked like they didn’t know what
to do with it and at the border they took a really long time returning with it so I was really worried about what was going on and whether they were going to let me into the country or not! But of course, they let me in and I was in Romania - my first solo backpacking trip had begun!
We arrived in Cluj-Napoca at around 6am and after crashing at my hostel for a few hours, I set out to explore the place. For some reason I had the idea that Romania would be really ‘backward’ compared to most other European countries, so I was quite surprised to see that Cluj was just like any other European, well Eastern European country. It was a very pretty student town so it was a nice introduction to Romania. The next day I ventured further north to a city called Baia Mare and that certainly was an adventure! I’m certain I was the only tourist in the whole city. So there were no maps, no tourist information, no signs, nothing. At first I was quite annoyed that I wasted a whole day going to a city that was all ugly concrete
buildings and nothing interested to see but then I managed to stumble across the old part of the city, where it was like a proper rural Romanian town. That was a great experience, but I actually think the best part was the bus ride there and back. Some of the sights along the way were old men and ladies (as in 60+) working on their farms with only sickles, hoes and spades to help, no machinery at all; huge herds of cattle all over the road and, most interesting of all, seeing people driving horse & cart down the road, only to be followed by people driving BMWs and Mercedes! I came to learn pretty quickly that Romania is a country of contrasts, you’re either rich or poor and things are either new or old, clean or dirty, fast or slow - there doesn’t seem to be anything in between.
After Cluj and Baia Mare, it was time to head to the heart of Transylvania, the so-called Dracula country. My first stop was in Sibiu, a small and very pretty city with some very cool attic windows! While I was there I headed out to the Museum of Traditional
Folk Civilisation, a huge open air museum showing rural Romanian life. I wasn’t actually staying in Sibiu, so I took a train to Brasov, where I would be basing myself for a few days. That train trip was the absolute pinnacle of my authentic Romanian experience! It took almost 4 hours to travel 150km!! The train stopped anywhere and everywhere, including in the middle of fields surrounded by no signs of civilisation, to let people on or off. It was rusty to the point where I was surprised that it actually stayed together, had outside doors that would just fly open while we were travelling and we would therefore basically be travelling without any walls in part of the train and was full of local Romanian men who were acting like it was their lounge room, shouting to each other, drinking, eating and staring at me the whole time. I can’t imagine they get many foreigners travelling on those trains!
I was lucky enough to be in Brasov one night when Romania played against Italy in the European football (soccer) championships. The main pedestrian street was full of chairs and tables set up by all the restaurants and pubs
and most of them had huge tvs for everyone to watch the match. The Romanian fans are crazy but that created an awesome atmosphere and it was just as much fun watching them as it was watching the match! It ended up being a draw but you would’ve thought Romania had won from the way everyone was acting afterwards. There were big trucks full of riot police everywhere but everyone was just having fun so luckily the police weren’t needed.
I went to Sighisoara for a day from Brasov and I would have to say that it was my favourite place in Romania. It was a really small city built on hills around a river, so it was very pretty, especially the medieval part of the city, high up on a hill. I loved just wandering down all the small streets in the medieval part, it felt like I could have been in another time. However, Sighisoara has started to become a victim of Dracula-oriented tourism… Vlad Tepes, or ‘Dracula’ was born and lived the first 5 years of his life in a house in the medieval part of Sighisoara. This house is now surrounded by stalls selling everything a
tourist could possibly ever want, including fake Dracula teeth, Scream masks and fluoro stretchy balls. Of course, I couldn’t resist from buying all three…
The next day I was back on the Dracula trail and headed off to ‘Dracula’s Castle’, a.k.a. Bran Castle, with 2 guys staying at my hostel, one from USA and one from Ireland. Bran Castle was very nice from the outside but the inside wasn’t really anything special and it’s actually just an incorrectly marketed tourist attraction because ‘Dracula’ only ever went there once in his whole life. After that we headed to another castle just down the road, Rasnov Castle. Despite the fact that it was a huge hike round and round in circles to get up to the top of the hill it was on, I was much more impressed with this castle. It was huge and in a pretty bad state - some parts of it looked like it was being used as a rubbish dump! However, it was a real, authentic castle, with some really interesting things to see and an awesome view over the surrounding countryside.
The first of my ‘disaster days’, where nothing seemed to go right, occurred
the next day. I wanted to go to Bucharest but every single hostel in the city was full that night. So, I decided to stay in Sinaia, a town on the way to Brasov. However, I not only had problems getting there but problems finding somewhere to sleep there as well because it didn’t have any hostels or budget accommodation. I did manage to find a cheap hotel, thank God, but I discovered that staying in a hotel when travelling by yourself isn’t much fun, even if I did have a tv. Anyway, in Sinaia I did manage to find some time to do a bit of sightseeing and headed off to have a look at Peles Castle and Pelisor Palace. Peles Castle is apparently the most beautiful in Romania and although it’s not actually a castle, I can see why it’s called that. It was an incredible palace and set in the most beautiful mountains, with a stream nearby.
The following day it was off to Bucharest, capital of Romania and a Communist’s dream. I’d heard stories from so many people that Bucharest was boring and ugly and not worth going to even for a day but all
of this sounded a little unfair to Bucharest to me and I was looking forward to investigating and making my own decisions about the city. One thing I can definitely agree with everyone on is that Bucharest is an ugly city. That’s the thing that stands out most about Bucharest - it’s filled with grey concrete Communist buildings, huge streets and very little colour. Half the time I was there I felt like I was in an abandoned construction site! One of the metro stations had scaffolding everywhere, concrete blocks all over the floor, huge holes in the roof and bunches of wires hanging out of the roof everywhere. Australian safety inspectors would have had a heart attack if they’d seen it! Bucharest was completely different to the rest of the country - everything happened much faster, it looked totally different and the people there seemed to be different as well. I’m really glad I went there and I found it a fascinating place but I think my 2 days there were enough!
After my experience in the ugliest place I’d been to in Romania it was off the most beautiful place I would go to in Bulgaria. I
took a train from Bucharest to Veliko Tarnovo, in northern Bulgaria, where I stayed for a few nights. It was definitely my favourite place in Bulgaria, the city was in a gorge with a river running through the middle, and was incredibly beautiful and had a really relaxed feel. For centuries it was the capital of Bulgaria and there are still the ruins of the huge fortress area high on one of the hills there. The ruins were incredible, there were ruins of over 400 buildings and 18 churches, as well as towers, the fortified wall and an execution rock, where prisoners used to be pushed to their death in the valley below. At night there was a beautiful light show held at the fortress, which tourists have to pay for if they want to see it, but once they do, everyone else is able to watch it for free from a square in the city!
I reluctantly left Veliko Tarnovo to head to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Sofia reminded me of Melbourne in a lot of ways, so it’s no surprise that I liked it. It wasn’t the most beautiful city but it had a lot of
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look into their eyes...character and there always seemed to be something happening. I stayed there for 3 nights and for 2 of those nights I managed to stumble across free outdoor concerts held in city parks! One of the funniest things about Sofia was their pedestrian crossing lights. The green man did a little Michael Jackson moonwalk! It was so awesome!
As a day trip from Sofia I went to the Rila Monastery, which is apparently the most popular tourist destination in the country. It is in a mountain range, beside a big stream, and was very beautiful. The 2 hours I spent there were definitely worth the 7 hour return trip in a crowded minibus travelling 50km an hour! Despite the hordes of tourists and people catering to the tourists, it was a really relaxing place in a beautiful location - there was even snow on the tops of the mountains.
My next and last stop in Bulgaria was the ancient city of Plovdiv. It was a rather incredible city, jam packed full of ancient monuments in surprising places. On top of one of the 7 hills of Plovdiv was a 7000 year old ruin of a Thracian settlement. There
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how cool is this car?! was a great view of the city from there but there wasn’t actually much left to see of the settlement, which isn’t surprising considering how little regard the people of Plovdiv seem to have for the incredible ancient monuments in their city - I even saw one lady going to the toilet there!
While I was there I climbed up the Hill of the Liberators, which has a huge statue of a Russian soldier up the top. It was probably a pretty stupid thing to do actually cos it was at least 30/35 degrees that day and I climbed up this massive hill in the middle of the day, so I wasn’t feeling too great by the time I got up there. However, the view from the top was wonderful and I got to see the former 7th hill of Plovdiv from above. During the communist era, the hill was completely demolished to be used as steps in the city. And ever since then it’s been a massive hole in the ground…
About 2000 years ago, Plovdiv was a Roman city called Philippopolis and there are still some very evident and incredible reminders of their existence in the city.
There is a Roman amphitheatre in the city, which is in remarkably good condition and still used for theatre performances. The most surprising Roman remnant was something I just stumbled across and didn’t realise what it was at first. Right in the middle of the main pedestrian street in Plovdiv are the ruins of a Roman stadium! Pretty amazing. The internet café I used to use was almost inside the stadium, so it was really cool to be sitting there using the computer and look out the window to see a 2000 year old stadium around me!
From Plovdiv I headed south towards the most exciting part of my journey: Turkey! It was the country I’d been looking forward to most and it certainly didn’t disappoint. But to get there I had to endure an epic 9 hour bus trip, which included being stopped at the Turkish border for 2 hours at about 1am, where we had to get ourselves and all of our luggage out of the bus to be inspected, and I had to go buy my Turkish visa. After this exhausting bus trip, where I hardly got any sleep, I wasn’t in any mood for
the situation that greeted me when I arrived at the Istanbul bus station. I knew that Turkey was a Muslim, male-dominated country so I’d been expecting it to be different and to get a lot of attention, but nowhere near as much as it was! The Istanbul bus station is an incredibly overwhelming place - it’s the biggest bus station I’ve ever been to; it was 3 stories high with about 40 platforms on each level. So, I had no idea where to go, I had no Turkish money, I was surrounded by Turkish guys who were all staring at me and I couldn’t find an ATM. Nice start…
After I’d recovered from my lack of sleep and the shock of my arrival in Istanbul, I went to have a bit of a look around the city. I was staying right in the city centre so the first place I arrived was the Aya Sofia, the most famous mosque in Istanbul. It is thousands of years old and used to be a Christian temple, before being converted into a mosque. The inside of the building was absolutely stunning! Just across the road from the Aya Sofia was the Blue
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i wouldn't be surprised if there was a bmw parked behind them Mosque, which is still being used as a mosque. I went inside on my last day in Istanbul and it was also very beautiful. I really like going into mosques, they’re always so nice inside, really calm and you have to take your shoes off and walk barefoot on the carpet, which I really like. Everyone has to be really covered up entering mosques, especially women, so I always had a scarf with me, but for anyone who didn’t have anything to cover themselves with, they were always provided with some sort of super trendy blanket or sheet to cover themselves with.
I had a bit of culture shock for my first couple of days in Turkey. It was so completely different to any country I’d ever been to before and there were so many new things to get used to - it was all a bit overwhelming! Especially in Istanbul, where everything is so much more exaggerated than in the rest of the country. Everything is louder, brighter, faster, busier… The thing that was hardest for me to get used to in Turkey was how male-dominated their society is. I found it quite frustrating that there is such
inequality between men and women there, in almost every area. The whole 10 days I spent in Turkey, I think I only spoke to one or two Turkish women, while I would’ve spoken to at least 50 Turkish men. I don’t know where the Turkish women were, maybe they were all hiding at home, but they certainly weren’t working in the shops or walking around the cities! I never really got used to all the attention I got from Turkish guys either. There were a lot of things about me that meant I was never going to escape their attention, the main one being that I’m female, then that I’m not Turkish, I have blonde hair and blue eyes, I was a tourist and I was travelling by myself. All of those things meant a lot of unwanted attention! For a while it made me really uncomfortable, then it made me self-conscious, then I just ignored it but then I got to the stage where it was making me really mad because I was thinking why do men think they have the right to so blatantly stare at women, call out to them and treat them like they’re things instead
of people. Finally I decided it wasn’t worth getting angry about cos there was nothing I could do to change it so then I decided that I’d just ignore it all. Istanbul was the worst place for attracting attention. It was a major mission just trying to walk down the street - within 200 metres I would’ve had “excuse me miss, excuse me”, “hello, do you want to have a look in my shop? hello”, “where are you from?” (I’m sure this is the first English phrase every Turkish person learns), “do you want to come and have some tea?”, “lady, lady, where are you going?”, “water, water, you want some cold water?”, “I just want to ask you one question, just one question”. This last one was the most dangerous because they never wanted to just ask one question - it was just a way of getting you to stop and then they’d launch into a million questions. You can imagine how I was feeling after walking down the street in Istanbul! It was exhausting trying to avoid eye contact, look into shops without giving away that you were looking and making up excuses to get away from people.
I got really, really good at making up excuses to get away from people (men) while I was in Turkey! You could call it lying, but it didn’t hurt anyone and it certainly made my life a lot easier. The most common one was my invented Australian boyfriend, who came in very handy! I had to talk about him quite a few times and discuss how long I’d been with him for, what his name was, what he did, why he wasn’t in Turkey with me, etc, etc. This new Australian boyfriend of mine certainly saved me, otherwise I could’ve had a new Turkish boyfriend almost every day!
I managed to do well with free entertainment in Istanbul as well while I was there. The day after I arrived there was a finals match in the European football championship between Germany and Turkey. It was being shown on a huge screen inside the ancient hippodrome so I went down to watch it, along with hundreds of other Turkish people. It was incredible to see the range of people there, everyone from young children to old grandmas were there watching the match! There was a great atmosphere because the Turks
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'Dracula's birthplace are incredibly passionate about their football so they would get really worked up every time the ball went near the goal. In the end they lost, but even then there was no trouble, they just all got up and went home. On my last night in Istanbul there was a free concert on in the same hippodrome, of traditional Turkish music. It was really good and an awesome way to spend my last night in Turkey.
After a couple of days in Istanbul I was ready to move somewhere a little calmer, so I headed to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Every time I told someone I was going to Ankara I would always get the same reaction - “why?!” It seems that even though Ankara’s the capital, it certainly isn’t a tourist destination. This was made pretty clear to me when I tried to find somewhere to sleep for the night. There are no hostels in Ankara and the cheapest single room I could find anywhere was $50, which was almost my budget for a whole day! Luckily I have a friend who lives in Ankara, Havva, who I met in Prague and was basically the reason I
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a long way from home... was going to Ankara anyway. Her and her friend Murat were awesome and they organised for us all to sleep at a friend of a friend’s flat that night. While Ankara might not be a ‘typical Turkish’ city or have many things to see, I really liked it because I got to hang out with Turkish people and see where they go and what they do at night. Funnily enough, it’s basically the same as what people my age do in any country.
The next day Murat took me to Ataturk’s mausoleum, otherwise I would’ve got lost going there - Ankara’s not the easiest city to get around. Before I went to Turkey I don’t think I’d ever heard of Ataturk but I sure learnt quickly! The Turks absolutely love the guy; they worship him like a God and have pictures of him all over their houses and workplaces. Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, Ataturk was the man who created modern Turkey. He united the different regions of Turkey into one country, under one flag, despite the many differences between these regions and created the secular state, where religion had no influence over politics. I couldn’t
quite understand why he was so highly regarded by the Turkish people but it was explained to me that he is the one thing that unites the Turkish people. There are so many different groups of people and minorities living in Turkey that he is often the only thing that everyone has in common and can relate to. His mausoleum certainly reflects the status he holds in Turkish society! It is a massive complex, complete with forests, lakes, towers, museums and of course, the mausoleum. It’s like a shrine to Ataturk and his whole life is documented in great detail in the museums. It was definitely very interesting and eye-opening, but wow, what a cult figure!
My journey then continued further inland, to the heart of Turkey and what is possibly the most incredible part of the country - Cappadocia. I was staying in Goreme, the most touristy of all the towns in the area and as the bus I took to get there got in late at night, I was sleeping as we started to enter the town. When I opened my eyes I was absolutely blown away, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! No words can
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the weather during my 10 minute walk to the train station do this area justice, you’ll all just have to look at the pictures and try and imagine being there. However, even though the pictures may look incredible, they still don’t really portray what it was like to be there. It was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been! All of the rock formations are such incredible shapes and they’re absolutely everywhere. Part of Star Wars was filmed in this area and I can understand why, because it did feel like you were on another planet at times. I decided that I wanted to be able to go out and explore more of the area by myself, so one of the days I was there I hired a scooter. It was the first time I’d ever ridden a scooter so it was a bit of an experience but I managed fine and had no crashes or injuries. It was a bit nerve-wracking riding along the winding, narrow roads when I had a bus or a truck behind me though! It was also the first time I’d ever driven on the right hand side of the road, so I wasn’t sure how I would go but it wasn’t a problem
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can you feel their pain? at all. The only problem I had was when I accidentally entered a city, which was full of traffic, and I couldn’t work out how to get out of the city again! I drove down the main street about 5 times before I worked out which way to go - everyone probably thought I was doing mainies! On my travels that day I visited some awesome places. I stopped at an area where there used to be a whole city of people living inside the rocks, in buildings that they’d cut out of the rock. It was mind-boggling, to see just how well they’d carved houses, churches, steps and hallways out of the rock. Some of the houses were 3 or 4 stories high! People were living in these houses until only decades ago, when they were evicted because the rocks had become unstable and there was the risk that some of the houses would start to fall apart. I also visited the valley of the fairy chimneys, which was full of some very interestingly-shaped rocks. And busloads of tourists…
I headed off to the nearby town of Uchisar the next day, to see the so-called rock castle. I’m
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"Dracula's castle" not quite sure if I would call it a castle myself, but it was an impressively huge rock, full of rooms and with a wonderful view from the top. From there I headed down into Pigeon Valley, which connects Uchisar to Goreme. Goreme is surrounded by beautiful valleys and apparently you can’t leave without having walked through at least one of them, so I chose Pigeon Valley and set off. High up in the cliffs along the valley are thousands of little pigeon boxes, I guess you could call them, that had been cut into the rock by locals, who wanted to collect the pigeon droppings and sell them for fertiliser. Luckily for me, the pigeons don’t live there anymore - I’m not a huge fan of pigeons. The valley had a lot of small plots belonging to people from Uchisar or Goreme, where they grew fruits or vegetables. Despite this, I didn’t see anyone while I was walking through the valley, which sort of unnerved me a little bit. Then after I’d been walking through the valley for an hour or two, a man suddenly appeared behind me. This freaked me out a lot because I was in a
deserted valley, I had no idea where I was and this man was a lot bigger and older than me. I tried to pretend he wasn’t there and kept walking but then he called out to me and told me that the way I was going was really dangerous and that he’d show me another safer way. I didn’t know whether to trust him or not because I thought if anything happened, there was no one around to help and I didn’t know whether he had good intentions or not. In the end I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and went with him for the rest of the way through the valley. I’m really glad that I did because without him I would’ve become incredibly lost and could’ve been wandering through the valley for who knows how many hours, trying to find my way out. I would never have found the way he took me - over and under and through pitch black tunnels and down streams… He was wonderful and kept stopping to show me things along the way and point out things in the valley and explain what they were. It turned out that
he was a tour guide and took people through the valleys on tours - and I got it all for free! That was the sort of behaviour that was typical of a lot of Turkish guys out of Istanbul. They were normally really helpful and friendly and expected nothing except some friendly conversation in return. I was always a bit sceptical of their intentions at first but they all turned out to be really nice and it was a great way to get a bit of an insight into the Turkish people and the areas they lived in.
From the deserts of Cappadocia, I headed off to the complete opposite landscape of Olympos, a village on the Mediterranean coast. It was a massive backpacker destination and without backpackers there would be no one living there, so I was a bit apprehensive about it, but it was wonderful. It was great in that there was so much to do and nothing to do all at the same time, so you could be active or do nothing all day. I did a bit of both and really enjoyed being at the beach and being able to swim and just lie around
all day. I also explored the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Olympos that are scattered all through the bush next to the beach. It was amazing to be just walking through the trees and suddenly stumble upon a 2000 year old theatre! The second day I was in Olympos I decided to treat myself and went on a boat trip all day with a group of other people. The whole day basically consisted of lying on the boat while we were going somewhere and then jumping in the water for a bit of a swim when we stopped in a cove. It was the least I’d done all holidays and it was really nice!
At night I went with an Australian girl I’d met at the place I was staying to see the eternal flames of Chimaera. It was a huge trek up to the top of a hill to get to the flames but luckily they were worth it. The locals use it as a social hangout, just sitting up there talking and drinking and even cooking their food on the flames! Pity we didn’t have any marshmallows… Legend is that there’s a dragon that lives
under the hill and it’s his (or her) flames that are coming out of the hill. Science says that there’s no dragon living in the hill but they’re not actually sure why there are flames coming out of the hill. So, for pure explanation of this mystery, I think legend wins. Actually, it’s thought that there’s methane gas that comes from deep in the Earth and comes up through the hill, to exit into the air through gaps in the rocks at the top. But that doesn’t explain why the methane ignites and there are flames just coming out of the ground all over the top of the hill. There were a lot of them, ranging from around 10cm high to maybe 70cm high. Pretty amazing…
From amazing sight to amazing sight, the next stop on my Turkish journey was Selcuk, further north along the coast. Here I visited the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. It was completely mind-blowing that I was standing at the site of an ancient wonder of the world. For me they were always something that I’d heard about but never really seemed real, as if they existed
in some ancient mythical place or story. But now I’ve actually seen one with my own eyes, so I know that it exists! There’s not much of the temple left, only one full column, part of another column and signs of where the rest of the temple was. When it was still standing it must have been incredible because the floor of the temple was huge and the remaining column was very, very high.
From there I rode (on a pushbike this time) out to Ephesus, the ruins of an ancient Roman city. This place was at least 2000 years old, probably even more and a huge amount of it is still standing and in unbelievably good condition! It was very hard to believe that the buildings were 2000 years old and still standing. Ephesus had been a wealthy city - the main street was paved in marble and lined with marble columns and many of the main buildings were constructed completely from marble. A lot of them were intricately carved, with sculptures and engravings all through them. I spent hours there, just marvelling at it all. I spent a lot more time marvelling at Ephesus than I’d expected
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Hollywood here they come! though because I had to keep stopping to recover from the heat! It was around 40 degrees that day and although it was really close to the sea, I might as well have been in the middle of a desert, the way it felt out there that day. The afternoon basically turned into a mission to dart from patch of shade to patch of shade! That was the one day in Turkey that I had my legs showing - I’d rolled up my pants to cool myself down a bit. For the rest of the time I was in Turkey, I wore pants, no matter how hot it was, and believe me, it was very hot in Turkey! Being a Muslim country, Turkish women generally don’t wear anything that ends near or above their knees. So in my effort to fit in as much as possible with the cultural norm and to attract less attention, I wore pants. The lengths I go to to be culturally sensitive! Although I couldn’t believe the number of female tourists who went around wearing short shorts, short skirts or skimpy dresses. Didn’t they notice that there was no one else dressed like that? Or
maybe they liked all the attention they would have got from everyone, both good and bad.
Finally, I returned to Istanbul on a night bus from Selcuk. I was excited to be back in Istanbul, where there was so much more that I wanted to see and discover before I had to leave. It is definitely one of the most incredible cities I’ve ever been in, it’s like a living, breathing museum of so many different cultures and religions. There was a museum complex that I went to where most of the things there were at least 2000 years old, if not 10 000 years old. At first I just couldn’t comprehend that I was looking at objects that were 10 000 years old - these were everyday objects that looked just like the things we would use now! But after I while, when I’d acclimatised myself, I started to get a bit blasé about it all and would see something and think ‘oh yeah, that’s just another 10 000 year old bowl’. They were extending the metro system when I was there and every time they would dig deeper into the ground they would find remnants and artefacts
from settlements thousands of years old. At that stage they’d found evidence of at least 4 settlements on top of each other.
One of the coolest things about Istanbul is that it’s right next to the sea, which makes it even more beautiful. There are a huge amount of ferries that cross over the straights in all different directions and they were only the price of a normal public transport ticket so I took a couple of these on my last day there. It was great being able to see Istanbul from the sea and it made a nice change to be there, where it was relatively peaceful, as compared to on land, where everything was crazy.
I decided to be the typical tourist and brave the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and go shopping for cool Turkish things. That place was so big that it was like a whole town of its own! There were hundreds and hundreds of stalls selling everything you could possibly imagine and although there were maps of the area, I still managed to get myself lost and ended up wandering around and around in circles. Even one of the guys working there noticed
Romania - Bucharest
one of the few beautiful buildings in Bucharest - notice the pianist out the front that I’d walked past him at least 3 times in an hour! In the end I finally managed to orient myself and escape from its maze-like passageways without spending too much money.
So, after spending my last few days trying to see and experience as much of Istanbul as possible, and doing a pretty good job, while being incredibly impressed and spending lots of money along the way, it was time for me to leave Turkey. My flight from Istanbul left at 3am, which meant that once again, I got absolutely no sleep that night. After 1 & ½ weeks of taking night buses everywhere, I was feeling very sleep-deprived and could easily have slept for a week. But who wants to sleep when you’ve got a whole country to explore?!
To be continued…
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Josie Mann
non-member comment
Middle East, Turkey
Hi Kimberley, I think you are very brave undertaking a trip like this by yourself however having read your blog you make it sound quite easy and certainly achievable for anyone contemplating visiting these countries. I have really enjoyed your write up and photos, it just makes me want to pack up and go. Keep enjoying! Love Josie