Tue, 22 Apr 2003

author Liz	location Commons Wood Caravan Park, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England
posted 08:30 BST 05/05/2003	section Europe2002/Asia/Turkey ( all photos )

Catching up ( 57 photos )
Well, although it is now the 5th May, I am about to go all the way back to Tuesday the 22nd of April, which is the day our Turkey tour officially started. Even so, the only thing that was happening all day was a 'meet and greet' party at 8pm that night. Which meant that Tim and I had another day to ourselves to explore Istanbul.

We started off with breakfast in our hotel, which consisted of hard boiled eggs, bread, olives, cheese, tomatoes and cucumber. This is a fairly typical Turkish breakfast. While we were eating we met a couple of other Aussie's who later turned out to be on our bus. One of them even knows where Connells Point is (his Grandma lives there), and they both live about 10 minutes walk from where we are in London! Small world.
After breakfast, Tim and I headed up the road, past the Grand Bazaar, and then made a stop at the internet cafe' we had visited previously. We then went to a nearby outdoor tea and coffee house in Sultanahmet Square where we sat in the sunshine enjoying Turkish tea and coffee.
Feeling nice and refreshed we walked across the road and found the Basilica Cistern or Sunken Cistern. This is a huge underground water storage place, where the towns water supply used to be kept. The roof is held up by 336 columns, some of which have been stained a beautiful green colour by the water.
We walked all around a platform, watching fish swim in the water, and listening to dripping water and classical music. At the furthest corner, two of the columns are supported by giant stone heads, one of which stands on its side, and the other upside down. These are Medusa heads, and are evidence of plundering by the Byzantines from earlier monuments.
The whole place is beautiful and very relaxing to wander around, although some of the darker sections are a little spooky :)
Next, we continued wandering along the tram tracks through the city until we were back at the edge of the Golden horn where the fish sellers and ferries are. We crossed the Golden Horn via one of the bridges which was full of men dangling huge fishing rods over the side of the bridge in the hope of a catch, and then we were in the area known as Beyoglu.

We spent quite a while walking around backstreets here - it is quite a big residential area, and is obviously not kept as nice as the more touristy areas. There were bare-foot children playing soccer in the street and scrawny-looking stray cats wandering everywhere.
We headed to the Galata Tower, built in 1348, a tall conical building at the top of a very steep hill (we were puffing when we got to the base of the tower!). This was first used as an observation tower to see which boats were coming up the Golden Horn or the Bosphorous, and when we got to the top of the tower, we could see fabulous 360 degree views of Istanbul. On one side we could see the Golden Horn and the bridge we had crossed earlier, and on the other side was the shiny blue Bosphorous with its two giant suspension bridges that cross it. We could also see a huge number of Mosques poking up between all the other buildings, and the sun made our view even better.
We were very high up, and at the top of the tower, there is only a very narrow platform to walk around. I was feeling dizzy every time I looked down, and clutching the hand rail as hard as I could :)
Once we got our feet back on the ground, we did some more walking around a part of the city that is frequented more by locals than tourists. There were lots of shops selling food, drink, household supplies and even Turkish musical instruments.
We decided to head back to our hotel, which involved a long walk in the warm sunshine, firstly heading back down to the Golden Horn and crossing a different bridge (also filled with fishermen), and then following one of the main roads through Istanbul until we made it back to the Laleli district where our hotel was.
On the way, we had a great view of, and eventually walked under, a huge series of viaducts, which we later found out were what was used to bring water into Istanbul for storage facilities like the Sunken Cistern we had visited earlier.
We also saw just how crazy Turkish drivers can be. As we walked along what could be termed as a freeway, we noticed a car that seemed to have taken the wrong exit, so the driver decided he would reverse back onto the main road, even though there were vast numbers of oncoming cars, buses and trucks swerving all around him! Apparently road rules in Turkey are just there as a suggestion. One way signs are ignored, as are no entry signs, pedestrian crossing, red lights, other vehicles on the road, and generally anything that gets in their way. If they have bothered to stop for a red light, the absolute instant it turns green, the driver behind the first car will toot his horn. Sometimes they even give a toot before the light changes, just incase the guy infront has forgotten he is sitting at the lights. It is also worrying how many dents there are in all the yellow taxi's driving around, and as we learnt on our very last night in Istanbul, it is not suprising that they have so many dents! More about that story later...
Back at out hotel, we spent an hour or two resting our tired feet, before we met up with the people we had met at breakfast and walked about 20 minutes up the road to the venue of the 'meet and greet' party. The night was spent enjoying some Efes (Turkish beer), finger foods, a belly dancer whose main priority was to wobble her boobs infront of any single men until they stuffed cash down her top (Tim firmly stood me infront of him to protect him!), chatting to people and dancing away to the music.

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