Day 4 - Travelling to Cannakale

6am and I am wide awake. So I start the day early and get showered and packed before everyone else is up. Today Leah and I will catch a bus to Cannakale but first we must take a train, and then a subway to the Otogar (bus terminal). Thankfully the signage is good and we make it there without troubles.

Somehow the bus takes 6 hours to get there, and we arrive at Cannakale in the rain. There really isn't much in town itself, so we eat, wander around and finally sleep.

Day 3 - Istanbul

We headed out with the intention of seeing the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofya, and to buy a SIM card for the cell phone so we can cheaply and easily call ahead to arrange for accomodation. We join the shuffling throng of tourists to enter the Blue Mosque, an active Muslim place of worship. Tourists don shoulder-wraps and sarongs to cover bare-shoulders and legs, and everyone removes their shoes. Inside the vaulted domes are staggeringly huge inverted bowls, streaked with wires suspending rails of dim lighting. The carpet is plush beneath our feet, and we can see (but not enter) the area of prayer.


The Aya Sofya was once a Christian church, converted to a mosque and is now a museum. Its huge walls hide two levels inside, with ceilings that seemed to be 30 meters above us; despite all the tourists it is impossible to feel cramped here. The walls are decorated with intricate Christian mosaics. In some places faint Christian themes are overwritten with Muslim art, but for the most part remain unchanged. The dome reaches so high it is impossible to describe, a height is just a number but to see it from within is just breathtaking.

We make another attempt at the grand bazaar, now armed with Turkish Liras but we cannot find the shops we had noted the night before. We walk for hours up and down the myriad covered and uncovered streets and alleyways, and finally (after lunch there) we find a kiosk that will sell us a Turkcell SIM card. The seller offers an 'openbox' deal that does not require activation, and doesn't require us to register our passport number. I go for this and it works!

We crash early that evening, exhausted and still not over our jetlag.

Day 2 - Istanbul

The next morning we set out to explore without a plan of what we were going to see. We were staying in Sultanahmet, and it seems this is where all the sights are. Before we knew it we walked past the Aya Sofya and into Topkapi Palace.

There are some fascinating finds within the Topkapi Palace; lovely views, great big trees in the central courtyard and many golden, ruby and diamond encrusted treasures. Interestingly they have Moses' staff, John the Baptist's mummified arm and skull, and pieces of Mohammed's beard. These items have survived for several thousand years (Moses' staff dates from 3500 B.C.), and given the careful attention to preservation we saw these things may last for another thousand or so years!

We made an exploratory dip into the Grand Bazaar to change some USD into TRY (New Turkish Lira); this is a confusing maze of shops. We made note of several shops that we planned to return to but never found them again.

Day 1 - Istanbul

We arrived at 1am and easily bought our entry visa - $60 USD each. We breezed through customs and collected our bags! No problems and we didn't even have to recheck our bags when we stopped over in Amsterdam.

Even though we knew we would need a taxi at this early hour, as seasoned travellers we were sure to ask at the info desk - this way we knew the approximate price of a taxi so we wouldn't get fleeced. It sure felt like it anyway, at 45 Liras.

We were greeted by an animated but tired looking hostel attendant. We had some laughs deciding what day it was, and before settling in for the night I had a delicious Efes beer.

I'm going to try to post an entry for each day, but it is going to be about a week later than it really has happened. Such is life. :) You can check our pictures as we've had time to upload them here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/thewozza