So where did I leave you? After our sightseeing Wednesday morning but before our shopping afternoon? I suppose I could check and find out. Or just risk repeating myself. I choose the latter because today I am feeling lazy (which we all know is so uncommon for me).
So that afternoon we hit the grand bazaar. I don't think there are words to describe the experience but if there were they would have to be written in capitals and without spaces in between. Catie and I spent a while meandering looking but ignoring all of the shouts and attempts to sell us things. But we did eventually brave the insistent sales people to buy some scarves. We had been forewarned that they try to seriously rip people off and that it can be tricky if you don't know what things are worth but we got it down to a quarter of their original price and considerably less than we could get anything similar in nz so I'm calling it a win.
Then we headed to the spice market for a quick walk through, the dried avocado seemed particularly odd to us, before heading back to the hostel. We cooked ourselves some dinner and then didn't really do much of anything. We were still a bit jet lagged and after our long day we didn't feel up to much.
Yesterday we headed across to the Asian part of the city but only walked along the waterfront before getting the ferry back because we didn't feel like doing huge amounts of walking. So we spontaneously decided to jump on a boat doing a 2 hour cruise down the Bosphorus. It was a great way to see more of the city and we got to just sit back and relax.
After the cruise we decided to head back to the hostel for a spot of lunch and a chance for me to sort out some real world stuff (funny how it doesn't just disappear even though I ran away). But before we did we decided that we would for the rest of our lives regret it if we didn't go back to the spice market and try some of that dried avocado. It's avocado, which on principle is quite liquid for a solid, but it's been dried. How could we pass that up? Well if you find yourself in a similar situation I can tell you that it is an experience worth having, but not so much a good one. The first taste is fine but the after taste is horrible and doesn't go away. Some free samples of turkish delight helped briefly but it just came back.
I feel like this post is becoming fairly epic but I haven't even gotten to the part in the title yet. I guess I'll just plow ahead and assume no one will be paying attention when I stop making sense.
So in the afternoon we headed over to topkapi palace because we'd been told it was worth doing. It is pretty amazing. It just kept going. You could spend hours there. We saw people who looked like they had come for the day with picnic supplies. We also paid to see the harem which is very beautiful but the beauty of the place can't make you forget the people who lived there and how many of them were prisoners. Not just the concubines and wives but also the eunuchs and the sultans relatives. There was a whole area for the brothers and other close male relatives of the sultan so that they wouldn't have any contact with the outside world and wouldn't be a threat. It was meant to be an improvement on the time when they just killed them all.
I could go on about topkapi for ages but I won't. We spent hours there and still didn't see it all.
That evening we ordered in some traditional food and ate up on the roof. Then we went for tea at a little place up on at terrace with a view over the bosphorus. It was a lovely place that even gave me a shawl to wear because the wind is slightly cooler that high up. Still pretty warm though.
This morning we had a grand plan to leave Istanbul and head to Canakkale. We had looked things up the day before and knew that it was a 6 hour bus ride but that you could take a ferry to Bandirma and then a bus to Canakkale which would only take about 3 1/2 hours. So we checked what times the ferry left and decided the 11.00 one would get us here with lots of time to see Troy this afternoon. But (as has been hinted at) things did not go according to plan because apparently in Turkey you can't trust even the official websites. There was no 11.00 ferry. Only a 2 pm one. And we didn't want to wait 3 hours. So we had a bit of an adventure making our way to the bus station (it involved a few encounters with the language barrier and two men wanting to make money off of our confusion). But we got there before noon and found out the next train to Eceabat was at 12.30. So we spent all day on a bus and didn't get here in time to do Troy today. But the buses here are really good. They give you food and drinks and have little screens for you to watch movies that have been dubbed in turkish. And we will have time to do both Troy and Gallipoli tomorrow so it all works out fine. Plus, we found haribo. And haribo macht kinder froh und erwachsene ebenso.
So that afternoon we hit the grand bazaar. I don't think there are words to describe the experience but if there were they would have to be written in capitals and without spaces in between. Catie and I spent a while meandering looking but ignoring all of the shouts and attempts to sell us things. But we did eventually brave the insistent sales people to buy some scarves. We had been forewarned that they try to seriously rip people off and that it can be tricky if you don't know what things are worth but we got it down to a quarter of their original price and considerably less than we could get anything similar in nz so I'm calling it a win.
Then we headed to the spice market for a quick walk through, the dried avocado seemed particularly odd to us, before heading back to the hostel. We cooked ourselves some dinner and then didn't really do much of anything. We were still a bit jet lagged and after our long day we didn't feel up to much.
Yesterday we headed across to the Asian part of the city but only walked along the waterfront before getting the ferry back because we didn't feel like doing huge amounts of walking. So we spontaneously decided to jump on a boat doing a 2 hour cruise down the Bosphorus. It was a great way to see more of the city and we got to just sit back and relax.
After the cruise we decided to head back to the hostel for a spot of lunch and a chance for me to sort out some real world stuff (funny how it doesn't just disappear even though I ran away). But before we did we decided that we would for the rest of our lives regret it if we didn't go back to the spice market and try some of that dried avocado. It's avocado, which on principle is quite liquid for a solid, but it's been dried. How could we pass that up? Well if you find yourself in a similar situation I can tell you that it is an experience worth having, but not so much a good one. The first taste is fine but the after taste is horrible and doesn't go away. Some free samples of turkish delight helped briefly but it just came back.
I feel like this post is becoming fairly epic but I haven't even gotten to the part in the title yet. I guess I'll just plow ahead and assume no one will be paying attention when I stop making sense.
So in the afternoon we headed over to topkapi palace because we'd been told it was worth doing. It is pretty amazing. It just kept going. You could spend hours there. We saw people who looked like they had come for the day with picnic supplies. We also paid to see the harem which is very beautiful but the beauty of the place can't make you forget the people who lived there and how many of them were prisoners. Not just the concubines and wives but also the eunuchs and the sultans relatives. There was a whole area for the brothers and other close male relatives of the sultan so that they wouldn't have any contact with the outside world and wouldn't be a threat. It was meant to be an improvement on the time when they just killed them all.
I could go on about topkapi for ages but I won't. We spent hours there and still didn't see it all.
That evening we ordered in some traditional food and ate up on the roof. Then we went for tea at a little place up on at terrace with a view over the bosphorus. It was a lovely place that even gave me a shawl to wear because the wind is slightly cooler that high up. Still pretty warm though.
This morning we had a grand plan to leave Istanbul and head to Canakkale. We had looked things up the day before and knew that it was a 6 hour bus ride but that you could take a ferry to Bandirma and then a bus to Canakkale which would only take about 3 1/2 hours. So we checked what times the ferry left and decided the 11.00 one would get us here with lots of time to see Troy this afternoon. But (as has been hinted at) things did not go according to plan because apparently in Turkey you can't trust even the official websites. There was no 11.00 ferry. Only a 2 pm one. And we didn't want to wait 3 hours. So we had a bit of an adventure making our way to the bus station (it involved a few encounters with the language barrier and two men wanting to make money off of our confusion). But we got there before noon and found out the next train to Eceabat was at 12.30. So we spent all day on a bus and didn't get here in time to do Troy today. But the buses here are really good. They give you food and drinks and have little screens for you to watch movies that have been dubbed in turkish. And we will have time to do both Troy and Gallipoli tomorrow so it all works out fine. Plus, we found haribo. And haribo macht kinder froh und erwachsene ebenso.
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