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Published: April 13th 2012
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There were some rather colorful signs on the metro Heading to the airport in Budapest was my second time riding the blue metro line from end to end, which takes about thirty minutes. In the airport, most announcements were only in Hungarian, which made it rather surprising that on the flight (Turkish Airlines) Turkish and English were used. The other surprising aspect of the flight was that, despite being in the air only two hours, I was served a lunch, which turned out to be fairly representative of Turkish cuisine. I learned that the two people sitting next to me were part of a group of special needs students and their teachers on a trip to Istanbul. This, of course, meant the kid's conversational skills were about on par with my Hungarian knowledge, so we had some rather satisfying (if simplistic) dialogue.
My arrival in Istanbul (I'll leave off the dot over the first letter - Turkish has two letters resembling i, one without a dot: the dotted letter is an "ee" sound, the undotted one something between "ih" and a schwa) wasn't particularly eventful. The US is one of a long list of countries the citizens of which just purchase a visa sticker before going through passport control.
A shot looking across the Bosphorus Strait, which I came to after a long walk along the Golden Horn. It was very easy to take public transportation to the area my hostel was in. The last bit of the journey was extremely crowded, however, since as it turned out most other hotels were in the same place. I also accidentally went a couple of stops too far, and so ended up taking a rather extended walk along the "Golden Horn" of Istanbul, looking for an entrance passed the walls of Topkapi Palace.
The high density of hotels corresponds to a cluster of Istanbul's main tourist destinations, around the area called Sultanahmet (or Sultan Ahmet, somewhat variably), which is the same Sultan the "blue mosque" is officially named for. Indeed, our hostel was only a couple minute's walk from either the Hagia Sofia/Ayasofya or Blue Mosque/Sultanahmet Camii. After walking around the area for a bit, we started checked the ferry schedules only to discover that the lone morning ferry to Bursa left earlier than the hostel management would arrive. We needed to talk to them to make some different arrangments, so we decided to instead stay in Istanbul for the day and take a ferry to Bandirma, a much less notable location (from the travel guide: "an undistinguished 20th-century
Istanbul, though we hadn't begun classifying cities yet, was certainly a cat city. concrete city"), and continue from there to Canakkale as planned. I was planning on returning to Istanbul for the end of my trip, anyway, but this afforded us a chance to see a bit more, at a somewhat relaxed pace.
Breakfast at the hostel was, it turned out, in good agreement with the breakfasts we got across Turkey. The main components were bread, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, jam, and a feta-like cheese which was simply called "white cheese." After that we headed to the underground Basilica Cistern, which, as seems to be common for cisterns, was used as a garbage dump long after it was needed to store water, and had since been cleaned and restored at least once. Hundreds of columns were spread out over the vast open space of the cistern, though the wooden walkway was just along the direct path to the main attraction, two columns with depictions of Medusa on their bases. Walking around the dark, cavernous room was a bit incongruous with the rest of our experiences in Istanbul, but a wonderful way to get a feel for the city's long history.
Next we headed to the Dolmabahçe Palace (where that ç is a
Some fish inside the Basilica Cistern at Sultanahmet. "ch") across the Galata Bridge. We got some simit along the way, ring-shaped breads with sesame seeds (which I had enjoyed in Sibiu, Romania by the name Covrigi, apparently coming from the Turkish for "crisp") after passing by many street vendors selling them. The palace is notable for being entirely unlike everything else in Istanbul, and was constructed much more recently than many of the well known sites. I'm told the correct term for the design and architectural style may be neo-classical or neo-baroque. The rooms were (though in general lacking any Ottoman-style features) extremely elaborate, with massive chandeliers and a huge staircase with crystal balusters. We ended up spending a lot more time than was probably necessary to get a sense for the place because we received an amazing student discount, paying only 5 lira instead of 40. This unfortunately made us a bit hopeful for such discounts later on, though few were forthcoming. At a cafe on the palace grounds I first encountered ayran, a yogurt-based drink which according to my travelling companion is also popular in India with the same name. After taking a tour of the harem area, too, we took a metro uphill to Taksim
One of two Medusa-head pillars, neither of which had her right side up. square and walked along the lively and crowded Istiklal Caddesi/Street. We ate on the roof of a kebap restaurant on the street, listening to street musicians and looking down at the Galata tower.
Having made reasonably good use of our somewhat unexpected day, we headed back to the ferry dock and set off on hour two hour journey to Bandirma. The views were initially interesting, with both sides of the Bosphorous in view, but once we were further out into the Sea of Marmara there wasn't much to look at. The highlight of the ride may have been spotting a Greek newspaper, which was quite amusing to attempt to decipher. While getting off of the ferry in Bandirma, we got into a conversation with a man who apparently lived in Bandirma, but we didn't quite have the heart to tell him we were just passing through on to more interesting places. He was also a bit of an except as far as speaking English, which became apparent in the next twenty minutes or so when we attempted to secure transportation to Canakkale. Everyone we asked was helpful, however, and our experience with the bus company (KamilKoç) encouraged us to
I don't think any pictures really provide a sense of the scale of the place, but this perhaps comes close. The picture also showcases my camera's struggles with dimmer lighting. continue making use of them. The employees were quite helpful and at both ends made sure to point us to the right "servis" shuttles to and from the bus stations. We arrived in Canakkale quite late, but were pleased to find that our just under 50 lira got us a private room and comfortable beds despite the impression I had got when making the reservation.
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