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Day 1: Istanbul: Sunlife Hotel, Hippodrome, Sarnic Restaurant Sunlife Hotel The bus drove us through Istanbul to our hotel. Not the one on our itinerary, but a nice one anyway. We drove by the Bosphorus, underneath the Topkapi Palace, past the fish market and the Grand Covered Bazaar, and on to The Sunlife Hotel. The bus trip was our first glimpse of Turkey. Lots of military with machine guns. Lots of broken down, ancient walls. Very narrow streets. It was early Sunday morning, so the traffic was pretty quiet, and there weren't many people out and about. The bus had a bit of a struggle getting around the corner to the Sunlife Hotel. This corner was really bad and provided us with a huge amount of entertainment over the next few days. Those of us who had rooms near the front of the building would watch the traffic. A sure sign that something interesting was happening would be a sudden rise in car horns. Car horns are sounded all the time in Turkey. You can't drive without one hand on the horn. But when the volume of horns swelled, we knew something good was on and we would rush for the windows. We had a tramway going past the hotel, with lanes on either side of the tramway. If cars wanted to turn into the street beside our hotel, there was no problem. But large vehicles would turn into the street, and there usually wasn't room for them to turn. They would stop, and back up a bit, then try again. In the meantime, traffic was blocked, the trams were blocked, and the car horn chorus would swell. Any bus or truck that turned down the street had to stop and back and turn, often several times. Late at night, the really fun incidents happened. Impatient cars would swing out and drive down the other lanes, going the wrong way until they could get back into the right lane. One memorable occasion saw a petrol tanker get stuck and the tanker part balanced on the guardrails. It was raining too, so everytime he tried to back up, the tanker would slide further down the guardrails. When we came to book in to the hotel, the receptionist wanted us to surrender our passports. After a great deal of confusion, it turned out that he wanted a lot of forms filled in for each of us, and he was trying to do us a favour by taking our passports and filling in the info himself. However, it made most of us very uneasy. We had always been warned Don't let your passport out of your sight. Eventually, after much toing and froing, we got our passports back. After that struggle, we headed for our rooms for a well-needed wash. But first, the lifts. I very much liked the numbering system: C indexing, zero indexing. Ground floor was floor zero. Sunsequent floors were 1, 2, 3, etc. Below ground floor, were floors -1, -2, -3, etc. This is a very sensible arrangement and one that I can easily grasp. I also liked the name of the makers of the lift: Dikmen. The logo or symbol of Dikmen, started with a lower case d, then the i, then a lower case k, and then the men. But the ascenders of the d and the k curved over the i and met. So Dikmen had a logo that started with what looked like a short stubby dick. Most amusing. The lift didn't have the safety features that I was used to. You pulled the door open, stepped in and pulled the door shut. When the lift moved, you could touch the walls you were moving past. The room that Anne and I had was pretty small. We rushed for the shower. Plenty of hot water and plenty of soap, but the shower arrangement was not efficient at keeping water in the shower recess. The plughole didn't let water out at the same speed it came in. The shower curtain stopped water spraying the walls, but helped it spread along the floor. Water went everywhere, inches deep, and headed for the carpet in the bedroom. We used most of our towels trying to contain the water. After two days of this, I learnt how to control the flood. I would stand in the shower recess, let a burst of water wet me, then turn it off and soap myself up. Then another short burst of water to rinse myself. This prevented the deluge, but it wasn't a very satisfying shower. Walkabout We were tired, but we weren't to sleep. It was the start of the day and Jenny wanted us to go walking and see some of the sights. So we headed down to the Hippodrome. Along the way we passed a few money changers, and so we started to convert to Turkish lira. Did we get confused! At that stage there were 120,000 Turkish lira to one Australian dollar. The huge numbers meant that conversion was mentally difficult. After a little while, in order to make sense of it, we assumed 100,000 Turkish lira to the dollar, and just stripped off 5 zeros. We were carrying one and five and ten million lira notes. Millionaires we were. Turkey has very high inflation. We started at 120,000 TL to the dollar, a few days later it was 125,000, and by the end of the third week, it was about 130,000. Every time we withdrew money from our bank accounts, it cost us less. While we were changing money, some of us were milling around outside the change booth. Some of the women were approached by Turkish men. When asked about husbands, Barbara grabbed my arm and declared me to be her husband. A few seconds later, Anne came back and was similarly propositioned. She saw that Barbara was on my arm, so she grabbed Richard and declared him to be her husband. I am sure the Turks knew that this was make-believe, for there was much laughing and jesting. Most of them had a fair grasp of English. Our first purchase after the money changing, was water. Tourists can be detected by the water bottles that thery carried. We were no exception. First thing we did each day was ensure that our water supply was okay. Big bottles, little bottles, warm, cold, we always carried water. The prices varied throughout Turkey. Anything from 50c to $3 for a small bottle of water. I think it depended mostly on what they thought they could get out of you. Once equipped with water, we were ready for Turkey. We walked down to the Hippodrome and meandered. We would be coming here again the next day, so this wasn't a full on history stop, but a casual Sunday stroll. We thought it was pretty crowded with the pedlars, who considerably annoyed us, but it was as nothing compared to the next day. Still, the pedlars were irritating. You couldn't step anywhere without picture books of Turkey being shoved in your face, or scarves, or small carpets, or demands for a shoeshine. Pedlars Anne ran foul of a shoeshine man. Free clean he claimed. By the time I got over to her, she had said Okay and he was down there slapping polish on the shoes and shining them up. When he was done, he demanded money. "But you said it was free" said Anne, seeming to have fun by teasing him. "The shine was free, the polish costs money" was the reply. Anne said she didn't ask for the polish and that was his bad luck, and he got irritable. It was pretty stupid to tease them. I told her to give him some money and get out of there, because by then there were about six shoeshine men milling around us. So Anne pulls out her purse and holds it up in front of her face and starts to dither while trying to work out the notes. She's waving her purse, stuffed full of Turkish and American notes, right in the face of the shoeshine man. Of course he was going to help her, so he reaches in and grabs a note and says that 500,000 Turkish lira should do the trick and he puts it in his pocket. But it wasn't a 500,000 lira note, it was a 5,000,000 note. I should point out that the numbers on the notes don't contain commas, so it's a little hard to see whether there are five or six zeros at a quick glance. It takes a few days to learn the different colours of the notes. We both saw what the note was. Anne was quick. She leaned over, and shoved her hand in his pocket and grabbed her note back while spilling all the rest of his notes on the ground. He wasted a bit of time picking up all his money before his mates could grab some, but we still didn't quite get away. There was an ugly sound in the crowd of growing shoeshine men. They still wanted money. While Anne was arguing with them, I got sidetracked. I noticed some activity at my feet, and when I looked down, I found that my shoes were being polished, and now money was demanded of me. All I wanted to do was get us both out of there without any more trouble, so we hurled two 500,000 notes at them and we headed off. That shut them up a bit, and they dispersed, grumbling. So we ended up paying about $4 each for a crappy shoeshine that was good for about half an hour. But that was better than Anne losing the 5 million lira note. That was about $40. I gave Anne a lecture and I got stuck into her because I was scared. She learnt one lesson in that she never accepted anything free again. Freebies always contained a non-free portion and that always meant money. It also didn't take long to stop her waving her purse in front of Turks. It was just too much temptation for them. Not to steal, but to help her with the notes. I really think that most of them were being helpful and just wanted to get the deal consummated. But it is disconcerting to have someone else fumble in your purse for money. We both learnt a lot that first day. It took us about a week before we became immune to the blandishments of the pedlars. The easiest way was to completely ignore them, ignore eye contact, murmuring No, no while passing them. If you made eye contact, or stopped, you were lost. They would pounce and talk and offer you things and make it very difficult to get away. Completely ignoring them was safest. We rushed away from our shoeshine, and found the others a little further on. I took my backback off to get something out and noticed that it had been opened during the melee. Nothing was gone, but I was pretty uneasy. After that, I tried never to let anyone close to me, and I stopped using the backpack. Anne started using it and I kept a close eye on her at all times. The Camel Offer We continued our walk around the Hippodrome and I got bailed up by a guy selling scarves. He asked about my wife and I pointed Anne out, and he got this reverential look on his face when he saw her. He offered me ten camels for her. Now I have to say that I think he was joking, standard joke with green tourist, but he did have this look in his eye. I said no, and he asked me how much I paid for her. I had a quick think and worked out $35,000 dollars and tried to mentally convert this to Turkish lira. I got one zero wrong and told him 3,500,000,000 lira instead of 350,000,000 lira. His eyes went really wide and he asked me if I paid cash, and I said yes, and his eyes got even wider and he muttered something and rushed away. All these zeros got confusing. It even affected the way we tipped. We became reluctant to tip more than 50,000 lira. Even though this was less than 50 cents, all those zeros scared us off. By the end of the third week, I was starting to become comfortable with tips of 200,000 or 250,000 lira, although this was still only a couple of dollars. If we had been there much longer, we would have become adjusted to the currency and everything would have fallen into perspective. Jenny led us out of the Hippodrome in search of lunch. We came past the Vitamin Restaurant, and it looked pretty inviting so we all traipsed in. Downstairs, you pointed at the various bits of food and then you went upstairs and sat down. A few minutes later, a plate arrived with your choice on it. We tucked into our first Turkish meal. Pretty good. Not cheap, but pretty good. Anne had told me that Turkey was going to be very cheap for food, but eight years ago that might have been true. After eight years of 100% inflation, meals cost the same as in Australia. But we were hungry, and the food was good, and the beer was good. Paying the bill was an experience. The head waiter came around and remembered what each of us had. He then quoted a price. We were still fresh to the game, so he had to explain to almost every one of us how he had calculated the bill. We were getting frustrated; he was getting frustrated; but at the end, everyone was satisfied. Except for the few who thought that the meal was $3 per plate, not $3 per item put on the plate. Some us had a large lunch, with a corresponding large bill, which we hadn't quite expected. Still, it was a learning experience. And the beer was very good. The head waiter was quite pleased at the end. He was wreathed in smiles, and said goodbye to each of us. After lunch, most of the group went back to the hotel and had a nap. Carolyn bravely went off and had a Turkish bath, soaking up the Turkish experience right from the first day. Anne and Richard and I walked around a bit. Anne wanted to visit the Youth Hostel where she stayed last time, so she led us there. Anne said it hadn't changed much since last time, nd she led us out the back to the courtyard. At the entrance to it, a very helpful Turk supplied us with our drinks, and then waved us on into the courtyard. We sat out in the sunshine and took our ease. It was a lovely little courtyard that caught the sun. It had a nice view, and it was quiet and green and very peaceful. We didn't have to share the courtyard with many people. There was only one young couple there, dressed as backpackers, writing letters and postcards. We settled back and rested and drank. I had beer as is my usual wont. Big bottles. Several. After the several beers at lunchtime. The beer refreshed me, and woke me up and made me feel a lot better and less tired. And then it made me very lazy. And then a bit dozy. Anne had tea. Apple tea. Elma cayi. This proved to be a very popular drink in our group. It's refreshing, and is a great pick-me-up. Very tasty. There were many brands of apple tea for sale along the streets. The one that caught my eye was Lezzo brand apple tea. I bought several packets of this to take home, just because of the name. Jenny said that it had the same connotations in Turkey as it did in Australia. So Anne had apple tea, and I had beer. Richard wanted Diet Coke, but they didn't have any, so Anne talked him into trying apple tea, and he loved it. So we sat in the sun and lazed for a few hours. What a great afternoon. We wandered on and came down a little street where Anne found a clothing shop and I found a music shop. Anne didn't buy anything, but I was entranced by the music that was playing and I bought the cassette on the spot. It turned out to be Sufi music, and I bought some more of that later on CD. Gulhane Park We wandered down a little bit further, and came to the entrance of Gulhane Park. This was popular on a Sunday afternoon, full of strolling Turks, so we walked through the park ourselves. Walked to the end, which turned out to be below the Topkapi Palace, and then walked back. We watched the walking families, saw a couple of singers performing with lots of amplification and reverb to hide their voices, saw a few unhappy animals in the tiny zoo, watched a few musicians playing and selling cassettes of themselves, and passed a lot of food stalls. Freshly cooked nuts were very popular, and some enterprising vendors were attempting to sell fresh popcorn. Popcorn wasn't as popular as the more traditional fare. Nuts were very popular, as was Turkish icecream. They had small tubs in front of them that they stirred with long poles. Every now and again they would pull the pole out, covered with the icecream, and they would spin it and twist and stretch it and then stick it back in the tub again, all the while bellowing the benefits of it. I bought a packet of large nuts that looked like witchetty grubs but tasted like potato. Bland with weird overtones. Strange. We were a bit pooped by then, so we walked just a little bit more and we were back at the Sunlife Hotel. Had a brief nap, and another wash, and then the group was off to the Sarnic Restaurant for dinner. It was back near the music shop, so we just walked up there. All this walking was just to break us in for the real walking once we left Istanbul. Sarnic Restaurant The Sarnic Restaurant used to be an old Roman cistern. It is a huge underground building, lots of echo, dim lighting, and absolutely loads of character. This building was maybe two thousand years old, and had held the water supply for Istanbul. Now it was a restaurant for tourists. So much character, and the food didn't match it. The antipasto was great, the pastry was okay, but the main meal was awful. The fruit was wonderful. That's one thing we noticed about Turkey. The fruit and vegetables tasted marvelous. They were fresh and ripe and just bursting with flavour. Fruit and veges back home have had all the flavour bred out of them, and they are rarely ripe when we get them. In Turkey, they were picked and on the table within hours. We walked back to the hotel, ready for a good nights sleep. I didn't get one. My mistake was to put the airconditioning on. Anne's sister, Bronwyn, and her friend Ene arrived at midnight. They were coming on tour with us for just a few days, then continuing to a yachting holiday in southern Turkey, and tripping off to Egypt. Anne slipped out to see them, while I slumbered on. I woke at 5:00am, probably still vaguely attuned to Australian time, with a dry raspy throat. This was the start of my cold. I don't think the airconditioning started the cold, as Barbara came down with one too and she said she got it on the plane. But it certainly let it get worse.