Big, dirty, loud, packed = Istanbul = Interesting

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So leaving Finland was easy, but i had a day to kill in Heathrow waiting for my evening flight to Istanbul, just like in The Terminal, but probably a lot more boring. I spent the day eating, listening to music, watching Seinfeld and trying to chat up the information girls.

When it finally got close to flight time i thought i'd do the smart thing and get in through customs early, but the rumors are true. i took a video walking from the customs entrance, out into the next building, and then out into the car parking building corridor, where sure enough there was actually more queue. It took me just over 7mins brisk walking to get to the end of it, and about 1.5 hours to get back to the start of it, this wasnt the worst part.

Once i made it through into the checking area it was shoes and belts off, no liquids, no food, no nothing. I thought i would be hilarious to take a photo of this little 2yr old kid getting frisked through, and it was, until the security man asked to me to walk this way please. Oops. At least the snipers didnt shoot me, and yes there are snipers. So that little escapade cost me another 30mins and they confiscated my vitamins (oh the humanity!) By the time i finally got to my gate i was basically right on time, so it worked out swell.

Flight was uneventful and as i waited in the slowest passport processing queue i could find i met a british chap who happened to have a kiwi girlfriend with him and was going to the same area as me, a convienient taxi split later i was at Tower Galata in Istanbul. They were both high flying financial panthers and had just moved to Istanbul permanently for a while with frequent trips back to the UK, so it was more a 100% / 0% taxi split, thanks guys :D Imogen was also kind enough to give me a quick run down of the place (since i'm always too lazy to read my lonely planet) and some things to do in the next few days... and dont eat the street mussels!

Its amazing sometimes when you are travelling how much your 'travellers mojo' comes into play and things just work out. Its 1am in Istanbul, i'm tired, vague directions to the hostel from some tram tracks, i know the area i'm in is correct but no idea which street, so i wander about 20m up the road dreading a long night ahead looking for tram tracks, then low and behold I'm sure thats the name of my hostel on that sign. I check and it is. Sweet, sorted. Met the local hostel crew, Coskun and Emirate and the regulars. Bed.

Orientation

First day in istanbul I meet an American guy in my room who also just arrived, all i want to do is wander around that day and so does he, perfect. We head down stairs for the first of many Turkish breakfasts at the hostel, tomatoe, cucumber, boiled egg, cheese, bread, jam and tea. Its not my ideal way to start the day, but not bad and improved by the fact i could get an orange juice squeezed for me every morning across the road for 1 lira.

We cruise up the main road and the first thing that strikes me is that 90%!o(MISSING)f the stores on this road are selling music instruments and equipment, i'm talking like 20 stores next to each other on one road all selling the same stuff, this was my first indication of what business a population base of over 20 million can support in a single city.

We wandered around aimlessly but actually covered a lot of the main touristy areas, first i'll try give you a brief idea of the layout as i saw it.

There is the European and Asian sides of the city which you have to take a ferry between. The European side is divided in two, the Tower Galata/Taksim square side, and the Mosque/Palace/markets side. Most of the accomodation and tourists are on the Mosque/Palace side of the european half as its closest to the main attractions, on the Tower side near where i was is Taksim square, the main road that leads there and the surrounding backstreets has over 2000 restaurants/bars, yes 2000+.

We wandered up to Taksim square, then back down to the port through the 'industrial' shops area, (i learned the layout of the streets by what the streets specialised in selling!) over the bridge over the filthy Bosphorus river, where you can get yourself a fish sandwich type dealy from any one of maybe 30 vendors for 2-3 lira, the fish isnt as good as back home 😊 and i'm *pretty* sure they are not the same small fish the 50 fisherman on the bridge were catching. Up through the Grand bazaar, filled with plenty of cheap junk and jewellery, and the spice markets where you could stock up on a lifetime supply of anything, towards the Blue Mosque and Ayasofia, which i went back to later (no shorts allowed!)

There are people trying to sell you stuff literally everywhere, on the streets, in the underpasses which are like mini-markets, how some of these people make enough money to survive i'll never know but they obviously do, you can bargain with them too and usually get those margins right down.

That evening we had the first of many meat filled meals, and it struck me that since the lira was close to one to one with the New Zealand dollar that things might not be as cheap as i had expected. In fact I struggled the most here with the values of things because i kept comparing them to home and kept expecting things to be cheaper! Later we went for a drink where we ran into a few of the boys from Jenson Buttons Honda F1 pit crew team! Turns out they are not so much lean mean specialist tyre changing machines so much as your average funboys who work in different roles in the team and do the pit work on race day, needless to say some of my F1 preconceptions were smashed.

Football

Next morning met a few more of the hostelites at breakfast and found out a big football match was happening that evening from a Ukrainian Keiv supporter. A few other people were keen and i asked about tickets, it was sold out, but the Ukrainian (with the funny laugh) said he might be able to get a few tickets in that supporters area, the turkish hostel guys warned me it might not be such a good idea but i wasnt too worried about it. I left Emir my crazy tall dog norwegian buddy to hunt for any other tickets and went with Conner and a local dutch/turkish girl to explore the asian side. The asian side is not what i expected at all, it has wider roads, is newer and cleaner, but otherwise the same, markets, kebab places, cafes. When i got back Emir had pulled a rabbit out of a hat and scored some tickets for me, him and his older, even taller brother! The turks told us to get some sort of Fenerbahçe colours, for "protection" so we did and headed to the game.

Now that was an experience, 52000 fanatical turkish football supporters, now i knew why supporting Keiv might not be such a good idea, they were about 100 in number, and protected in their own little caged area. Football is serious here.
It was made apparent to me during the opening ceremony with the singing and chanting of every member of a 52000 strong crowd. The noise is unbelievable, especially when everyone whistles and boos non stop when the opposition gets the ball. Incredibly strong police presence as expected and I thought it was a pretty good game in the end, heaps of pressure from Fenerbahçe as they needed to win, but controlled all the way by Keiv ending in a 2-2 draw. It was definitely an event to remember and highly recommended.

"Beach"

Every day in Istanbul was stinking hot, so on Thursday i was convinced by Nina (swiss girl) to head to the beach, we had a beautiful ferry cruise up the river and got to the "beach", it was tiny, filthy and cost 6 lira, but it was water, and it was cool. So relaxing in fact we missed the last ferry back and had to wait for a bus, convieniently this meant we had dinner a little out of the restaurant that was cheap and run by a nice family, that Mum knows how to make Dolma! That evening we had a few sneaky drinks on the roof (awesome view!) and went out with another french girl just-take-one-more-beer-Emelyne, for a drink at on of the many bars where our over friendly turkish barman did laps looking after the ladies.

F1 Time out and partying

The next three days were Formula One so see my seperate entry for that. On the Saturday night however I managed to semi organise a bit of a bar crawl with most of the people staying in the hostel. Out on the town one thing i notice is its about a 5:1 guy to girl ratio, this explains why the turkish guys have to take hitting on girls to a whole new level, any time, any where. I met five really nice turkish guys throughout my time there, but only when i was with a girl, and the conversation would usually follow a pattern;
Brief general token chit chat with me
Brief general chit chat with girl
Is this your boyfriend?
Can i have your phone number/email (regardless of answer to previous question)
I dont think being a girl in Istanbul would be much fun and i heard some bad stories.

Other than that going out was cool because there are so many options and places to go, i dont know how you ever pick a favourite without wondering if that next bar or restaurant just down the road might be a little better 😊 But in the end its drinks, music, dancing, not dissimilar to anywhere else in the world.

Sultans Palace and Tea

On the monday after the F1 me and Tom and Pedro, a couple of Jenson Button F1 groupies staying at my hostel, headed to see Topkapi, the Sultans Palace. Its quite touristic as expected but quite stunning in its size, location and what would have been its former glory, those Sultans knew how to live. I was most impressed with the silverware and jewellery that they had recieved as gifts or otherwise acquired. We just dont see things with that sort of workmanship and attention to details very much any more. Unfortunately you cant take photos :/ they also had the worlds biggest diamond which was originally found in a rubbish dump and traded for three spoons!

We stopped for tea on the way back and on this side (touristy area) the shop owners had their A game with them, normally when walking around the shop owners will come out and invite you in or try show you the menu or tell you how good their food is. This can actually get quite tiring after a while and you do just end up ignoring them or waving them away, even though i dont think its very polite you could spend half your day nicely talking your way out of things. But on the tourist side they'd actually try to engage you in conversation with perfect english first, "Hi, how are you, where are you from" etc, or try and guess and say Kiora or Gidday, quite annoying in the end.

That night i started the long and arduous task of writing the updates for my blog and not much else.

Mosques and Hamam

Tuesday me and Nina headed back to see the famous Mosques, the Ayasofia is ~1500 years old and all made of marble, its is just a tourist spot now so feels quite dead. The main space is huge and the central dome is being restored (there are NO famous tourist spots in all of Europe that arent being permanently restored) so the scafolding in the picture might help to give you a sense of scale. The Blue Mosque i thought was much more beautiful and lively as it was still in use, however I'd like to have a word with whoever thought it would be a good idea to hang the lights just above head height from hundreds of wires attached to the roof.

That afternoon we went to Hamam, the turkish baths. Now this was an experience I'd recommend, if i lived in Istanbul I'd go every week i swear. Starts with a sauna then a big hairy turkish man scrubs you down, puts you on a giant marble hotplate, massages/bends you and cracks places you've never been cracked, before you rinse and sit back with a cool drink. Incredibly cleansing and refreshing.

That night a few roof drinks before hunkering down and spending all night finishing off blog updates and photos, I sure hope someone is reading this.

Princess Islands

I was due for another beach day so me and Nina decided to check out the Princess Islands, of which there are four and they are supposed to have nice beaches. It was quite a long ferry ride but quite pleasent, the islands have no cars, everything is horse and cart which is interesting, we found a quiet (filthy) beach to have lunch and a swim with the rubbish and i noticed something i hadn't heard for a long time - silence, or at least very quiet. After so much city living i had forgotten what it was like! We wandered around the island and found the nice beaches they were talking about, the same as the others but private and they cost you 6+ lira...

That night i really needed to decide where i was going to next so sat down with my map over dinner, I spoke to Meisha an aussie guy who recommended i check out a quiet greek island called Samothraki which was a short over night train to Alexandroupoli and a ferry ride from there. He said that was where most of the local greeks went camping to chill out and not very touristy at all but still quite beautiful. I'm an easy sell.

Last day

On my last day in Istanbul i sorted my train ticket for that night and was due for haircut, for 12 lira i got that and a cut throat shave, this was an experience i recommend too, its almost a ritual, the attention to detail is great, anyway i was happy and looking a new man, if i lived there i'd go get this done every week after my Hamam!

That afternoon i went with Jillian a german girl learning Turkish, living and working at the hostel, for a wander to another few of the sights, nothing too stressful. We met another "friendly" Turkish policeman too, it doesnt stop!
We got a little side tracked and i ended up *just* making it back in time to pack up my stuff, spend my last lira on a donner and jump on the train to eat it as we left!

I made friends on the night train with Racheal, an American girl working as an english teacher in Istanbul doing her tri-monthly border run to extend her visa, we talked away the night train ride (and turkish and greek customs stops) and it turns out we are the only ones being dumped out at Alexandropoulis in Greece at 4am, without anywhere to stay.

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Photos

My monkey
They wanted US$2000 though

The Bosphorus river
As seen from the Palace