Istanbul May 05

well its about time I used the blogs for talking about traveling so here goes.......

Istanbul- May 2005

We were supposed to originally fly to Istanbul on Friday 13th May via Rome, unfortunately it was an unlucky day for us. There was a strike in Italy so the flight was put back a day (insert much wailing and sad music here !). We finally arrived at Dublin airport ready to fly out to find out that there was a two hours delay, no problem we thought we would have to waste 6 hours originally in Rome airport anyway, we can handle this. Finally we get to Istanbul at 1am to find out that the hotel airport pickup hasn't arrived, luckily my phone had one bar left on its battery to ring the hotel. After ten minutes we managed to get through while trying not to panic or fall asleep (we'd been travelling since 8.30am after all). We finally get through to reception who insist the driver will be there in 20 minutes at the information desk. Great ! time to look for the information desk but Arjan is getting annoyed and needs a smoke to calm down first so while standing outside with all our baggage we notice the desk. But with our luck we see we can't get back in without a valid ticket for that day (they had high security that day, you could only get in if there was at least one passenger between you). Damn, ringing the hotel again trying to explain what happened should have been easy but the battery went dead. Luckily the sweetest man in the world used his phone, rang the hotel to sort everything out and even convinced them to give us a discount for our first night because of all the hassle. ahhhhh the world is great again...

Woke up the next morning to blue skies, wow haven't seen these in a while, first stop is looking for breakfast since we slept past the hotel one but wait whats this, a balcony attached to our room , great for relaxing in the shade, watching the children play and just chilling with some raki or beer.

First stop is the Blue Mosque which was beautiful,

of course i'd lost my scarf the night before so had to haggle to buy a new one, i'm getting better at it, the woman wanted 20tlr for it but settled for 7tlr in the end, i've probably still been overcharged but i had fun haggling and whats a few quid for a good laugh and talk.... on leaving the blue mosque i can hear car racing ... wait a second this can't be right, feeling all religious and now brmmmmmm brmmmmmm , yes it is its a formula one car roadshow....... now this cool, saw some vintage cars racing through cobbled streets with old men cheering and clapping wildly, should have taken photos but was too mezmerised by the mix in cultures by walking two steps........ so after a nice breakfast in a cafe in front of the Aya Sofia its time to explore it,

all i can say is wowwwww, its beautiful, the amount of work, pain and hours that must have gone into is something to be thankful for and reveered...... coming out of this in a daze we could hear heavy dance music as a local radio station was braodcasting across the road from a mobile unit...... this is really a strange place but i like it, its just so diverse.

after this we walked around the streets just trying to get our bearings and just generally enjoying the feeling and the warm banter of shop keepers trying to sell their wares....

more to come.............