JenGog

In 2020 Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the conversion of the city’s historic Hagia Sophia back into a mosque after a court annulled a 1934 presidential decree that made it a museum. Shortly after Turkey’s top administrative court released its long-anticipated decision Erdogan issued a presidential decree transferring the management of the site from the Ministry of Culture to the Presidency of Religious Affairs which paved the way for its conversion. Erdogan has been a major proponent of the move. I am not sure that the population were entirely happy as this was at odds with the idea of allying Turkey to the West and the EU . I wish we had visited before he had changed its status as viewing was going to be less of an experience than it could have been. There ... read more

Day 2 Monday morning early . Breakfast was served at 7.30. Breads, yoghurts, cheeses of every description, selections of cereals, jams and other nice things . Salad which seemed out of place . Fresh lemonade a feature of every restaurant . The bed had proved fine for me but rather hard for Glenn who prefers softer beds . Room service changed the towels . I would probably in the interests of recycling and reusing been happy to keep the old ones for another day . Room service came in three times during the day . Replacing towels on the first visit , replenishing coffee the second time round and a final third visit called room control . Never did find out what that was . I was accosted at breakfast by a guy who spoke to ... read more

A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving . A quote from some while ago from Lao Tzu put away for a day it could be used . Today seemed that day . Day 1 or just the day before travel . We are counting down . The boarding opens in 1 hour 42 mins . We are pacing about as you cannot get further away from motorhoming than this holiday . For the first time I had to find something other than Europe to put in the continent . Turkey did not come up in Europe nor Asia but was lurking in Middle East . We printed off our boarding cards, put them safely away and made all our last minute plans for the trip. Day 2 - the day ... read more

How many thousands of turkish lira do you need for a holiday ? We had little idea as most of our holidays had been in Europe and we had with the exception of Croatia and Denmark used the euro. A trip to pick some up gave us a good idea . It seemed we did not need that many . The Turkish Lira was so devalued the locals preferred to be paid in American dollars, English pounds or euros . We had a stack load of euros left over from France last year . So we changed a few pounds £85 to lira just to tide us over and worked out meals could be paid for in Istanbul in euros and it would be easy to change euros to liras if we needed them in the ... read more

Chat Ham /Chath Am - we pondered on the pronounciation of the town on the Medway. Of course it is Chat Ham we said . But being Welsh the th could be pronounced slightly differently . Did a Man of Kent say it one way and a Kentish man the other ? That was the chat over a large meal in the restaurant attached to the Premier Inn. A meal of fish and chips and a steak and ale pie for me. Sadly no brocolli and I was looking forward to that . A pudding rounded it off . A large glass , scoop of ice cream , Cadburys buttons , lots of cream and a dousing of chocolate sauce . We slept well . For a Premier Inn it was quiet , the bed hard ... read more