From Modern Pretentious Shizzle to Ancient Cave Dwellings

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If ever we are lost, I always know to go uphill, because no matter where you are, the most difficult and steep route is the right one. If it has numerous steps disappearing into the infinity point, worn slippy with age and no shade, that is the direction that Glyn and I are headed. And I'm always suspicious of any route that starts going downhill as this is surely a sign that we are lost. This has certainly been the mantra of the day and I will pay for it in the morning.

I woke in the night to the sound of the fan switching on after 4 hours of powercut which I'm told is very unusual for the city centre. The helpful lady who lives at the bottom of the stairs told us that it had been romantic.

If she was still alive, Agatha Christie would think I'm stalking her, it seems that most foreign places I have visited claim to have a hotel that she once stayed at and Istanbul is one of them. The Pera Palas Hotel is not far from our hotel and worth stopping to look at as it once was the height of opulence, having been built to receive travellers from the Orient Express.

We started off by visiting the Galata Tower and paid more than it was worth to go up it. Why are towers so expensive to go up no matter where in the world you are? As expected we could see across Istanbul in all directions, it is massive with a population of around 15 million - I didn't count them, I read it somewhere. Glyn pointed out a cat from up on high to keep me happy.

We'd spotted the Egyptian Bazaar from the tower so thought we should go there, even though we hate shopping and didn't have a good time in the Bazaar area yesterday - you have to wonder what motivates us really. The Egyptian Bazaar was like the Grand one, only a lot smaller and less people asking if you're German whilst trying to sell you socks - I was wearing sandals you see.

Next we went in for some tram action and found our way from Eminonu to Tophane, this was intentional as we wanted to go to the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, not just for the wonderful aircon, but also to make a change from historical shizzle that we'd overdosed on. Just like all modern art exhibitions worldwide, it was full of pretentious tosh that no one can understand without reading the signage - scratch that, even after reading the signs, I often was left confused. Some of it looked nice though :-) There was a set of four films about four women who wore wigs for various reasons; one because she had cancer, one I've forgotten, one who had her head shaved by the police because she was a transgender prostitute and the last so that she could wear a head scarf under the wig at university. Apparently head scarves are banned at the Uni she attended, I'm curious where this University is and why the ban.

Time was getting on and we'd thought we'd risk a taxi back to our hostel to collect our luggage, but the taxi we hailed didn't like the cut of our gibs (he told us to get a taxi from the other side of the road and then drove off, performing a u-turn to the other side of the road) and we decided to walk. It was uphill, or upsteps, multi-coloured steps so that that made it OK - it reminded me of our long upstep climbs in San Francisco a few years ago.

After a bit of downhill and getting lost, we found another taxi firm who also did not want our custom, telling us that our destination was just 200m up on the left. Note the 'up'. A whole lot of up. And it was much further than 200 metres. Of course.

After collecting our luggage, we thought of getting a tram to Taksim (where the buses leave for the airport), but there was no tram, at least not going our way. So we dragged/carried our luggage over cobbles and through the crowds to Taksim. If anyone tells you that buses go from Taksim, this is a blatant fib! This is why we got lost on our first day as we thought we were at Taksim. Taksim is one of the biggest squares I have ever seen with absolutely no signage to anything, let alone buses, so we made educated guesses based on memories of our arrival. We carried on meandering through cobbled streets, asking for directions twice before coming upon the buses. After an hour or so we arrived at Sabiha Gokcen Airport and took a plane to Kayseri. Note, if ever you use Pegasus Airlines, be sure to get earplugs for the safety film. It is done by 'cute' kids with annoyingly squeaky voices that I couldn't ignore no matter how much I tried.

Landing in Kayseri, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of high rise flats, it looked like a really condensed population of what I found out later is 1 million.

It's a boring story that I won't bother telling, but we messed up on the itinerary and instead of staying at Goreme, where we wanted to be, we are now in Nevsehir. Goreme is amazing with cave hotels, and dwellings carved out of conical volcanic rocks. Nevsehir is bland, but at least uncrowded. .

We ended up having a minbus from Kayseri to Nevsehir as public transport proved too difficult at the late time we arrived. I got to sit at the front, peering through the very cracked windscreen. I tried to engage in conversation with the driver but he gave up talking to me after I failed to pronounce Pamukkale properly. We arrived late in Nevsehir and they was nothing there that made us want to wander about, not like Goreme which we'd just been driven through and saw all the other travellers all dropped off at cool looking cave hotels!

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Photos

The entrance to Fratelli Hostel when the Pizzaria is shut.
Helpful woman often lurked at the bottom of the stairs here.