Turkey – Feb 2008

Isobars in Istanbul

The Capital of Turkey is.......

“So why Istanbul?” I hear you ask.  Yes, I concede it’s not the capital of Turkey but it is in Europe whereas Ankara, the actual Turkish capital, is geographically in Asia.  The choice I therefore faced when devising the original list of capitals some years back was whether to include Turkey at all, as all as only 3% of it sits in Europe.  Given the appeal of Istanbul, the history, the culture, the weather, it just had to go into the hat.  The weather....OK, maybe I was wrong on that one.

The Guinness

We had a prearranged plan, the only one of the holiday, to go to the James Joyce Bar and possibly meet the Guinness representative for Istanbul.  I had been in touch with him when I had read that there is no foreign brewed draught beers allowed to be sold in Turkey.  He confirmed my findings but said that there was canned Guinness in the James Joyce Bar.  A bit of map reading and there we were in the James Joyce Bar and yes, they did sell cans of Guinness.  We sat on stools at the bar but I almost fell off mine when I enquired about the price £6 a can!  My round I guess!  It was onto the Efes larger after that!  Bar owner Gulsum, who had lived in Ireland at one stage, kindly drew out Tbilisi, Georgia as my next destination.

Dave and Phil enjoy the Guinness

We all tried to go on the free Internet but it proved very tricky as the keys on the keyboard were slightly different, the letter ‘i’ in particular being in another place.  We gave up and instead watch a traditional Irish band that started up and dance a jig or two.  Dave spotted the breathalyser machine on the way out.  The barman showed him how to use it and it confirmed, in Turkish, that he was not allowed to drive home.  Luckily we didn’t have a car with us.

Gulsum picking out Tibilisi, Georgia as my next destination

Getting There and around

We flew from London Luton to Istanbul with EasyJet. We then took an internal flight to Izmir to visit Ephesus before getting a train to Denizli to visit  Pamukkale.  After that we used night express to return to Istanbul

The Istanbul skyline

Team Makeup

Dave, who’d been to the Faroe Islands with me, and first-timer Phil.

Accommodation

In Istanbul we stayed at the Terrace Guesthouse in the Sultanahmet area of the city with a very friendly owner, extremely steep stairs and lots of carpets.

View from the dining room in the Terrace Guesthouse

Food

On our first night in town we deliberately avoided the posh touristy looking restaurants and instead headed into a smaller one, full of Turkish people.  We ordered everything on the menu, literally, which was not difficult as they only had six things: kebab, salad, yogurt, rice, soup and pickled chilli.  Only five turned up – we never did see the chillies.  It was very good; the rice had a real nice flavour as did the salad, all swilled down by a coke.  Sweet was equally straightforward as only one of the two things on the menu was available, something that looked and indeed tasted a bit like the polyurethane foam you get inside a settee.   Now that’s how to run a restaurant – a simple short menu.  Gordon Ramsey would be pleased.

Freshly squeezed juice - delicious

Sightseeing highlights

The Archaeology Museum was pretty good, stuffed full of Roman statues, sarcophagi and mummies. There was a special exhibition of beads which made you wonder how people drilled holes through beads before electric drills.  

The Basilica Cistern is the underground water storage system built by the Romans.  You would never have thought it was there walking around on the street above, but below ground a vast open space full of pillars and walkways and a couple of feet of water.  A couple of the columns at the far corner have upside down faces of Greek Gods carved into stone.  It was a fascinating gem of a place and lay undiscovered for hundreds of years after the Romans left the city.  Did the city’s residents never for a moment wonder where their water was coming from?

Basilica Cistern

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, or Blue Mosque as it is commonly known, won the vote given it was next door.  This unusually has six minarets surrounding it.  The designer got heavily criticised for building a six-minaret Mosque, mimicking Mecca, but resisted the pressure to take one down and instead paid for a seventh to be built at Mecca. 

Yes, it was raining and it could have done with being a bit warmer.  It even snowed on our last day and our flight was the last one out for a few days.

The covered Grand Bazaar was a great experience.  Thousands of stalls in covered streets.  We did get hassled in some parts of it to buy things but it was bearable and certainly not too crowded.  A Saturday in the summer things would be very different.  One thing that surprised me however was that although it was very colourful it was not full of the aromatic smells I was expecting.  Again in summer things may be different.  After walking around for quite a time we sat at one of the intersections and had a thick Turkish coffee.

Grand Bazaar

Quirky moments

The man holding up my name on a board as we stepped into the arrivals area at Istanbul’s new Sabiha Gökçen airport had a slightly odd appearance.  Odd from the point of view that he seemed only to have one eye.  Never mind we thought, as long as he doesn’t wink too much we should be OK.  To begin with he appeared to drive at a snail’s pace. Then after five minutes, when he seemed to slouch over on the seat, we really got worried.  It turned out he was just reaching into the glove compartment to give us all a carton of juice and a cake each – I’ve never had that in a taxi before.  From then on his driving got faster and....faster and....faster.

Out of the City

Dave and I would then flew off to Izmir to visit Ephesus. We stayed in Selçuk, a modern town just a mile from Ephesus. The place was certainly in ruins.  You are gradually struck by the size of the place, covering a massive area and could begin to picture yourself inside this ancient city that once housed tens of thousands of people. The spectacular facade of the Celeus ancient library is one of the best preserved sections and looked wonderful in the spring sunshine. 

The Celeus in Ephesus

The next day we got the train to the industrial and textile city of Denizli and then onto hot springs of Pamukkale and the neighbouring ruins of Hierapolis.  After taking your shoes and socks off you are allowed to go paddling in the warm water on the terraces of Pamukkale.  Quite and experience – especially having the hillside to ourselves.  In Hierapolis I took the option of going for a swim whist Dave went to the museum.  It was one of the more expensive options of the holiday, £7, but a highlight for me, paddling in amongst fallen stone columns and then swimming in the deeper sulphurous water.  The boards around the side gave a full chemical analysis and advertised its healing properties.

Dave enjoying the waters of Pamukkale

These theatres must have been quite a sight when full.