Day 62 - Istanbul ; Thoughts

Sunday 19 September 2004, 21:00 Turkey time

I'm still recovering, but I am now very sure I'll be fine.

The tour started today - I have now met my tour guide, Ayhan (I-haan), and several of the other people travelling with us - including Trent from Melbourne, my roommate, and his friends Brent and Attila the Hungarian. It looks like it's going to be an excellent time. In my travels around Victoria and Tasmania, I got used to tour groups where I had nothing in common with anyone else, so this is a big improvement :)

Today we did the Istanbul city tour, and I got some good photographs. All the downsides happened in the first hour, and the rest was great and more than made up for it. I hope I never have to wrestle another "businessman" such as that one outside the Blue Mosque trying to sell me a picture book of Istanbul for A$27 and pulling my money out of my hands and hanging around me like a fly for over 10 minutes, and I hope I never urgently require a WC right when we are passing by a carpet shop.

The list of destinations was:
- The old Hippodrome, most of which was not visible
- The Blue Mosque
- The Agia Sophia
- The Basilica Cistern
- Topkapi Palace

Rather than trying to review them, I'll just say they were all amazing places, and that you can read about them on any tourist website of Istanbul. The tour guide was excellent and provided us with an insight into the very mixed history of Istanbul, with Roman, Greek Orthodox and Ottoman Muslim traditions, while being very careful to paint the Turkish Ottomans in a (generally) good light. He also covered the basics of Greek Orthodox and Turkish (Sunni) Muslim tradition very well, although I was already familiar with it. We also learned something that never occurred to me before - the "harem" where the concubines lived is the same root word as "haram", the Arabic word for ritually unclean which is the opposite to "halal" (and I'm sure everyone knows that one!)

One tip for any travellers coming through - There is an excellent Hostelling International here located at the Cordial House located just off Piyerloti Caddesi (Look on hihostels.com for more info). A single room costs just A$34 and dorm bed about $15. Even if you're not staying there, it is the safest and cheapest place to buy a map and four postcards (A$3.80). This should be remembered when being harangued by numerous shady individuals trying to sell you postcards - I've learned to treat them like the homeless of Canada and purposefully ignore them without even looking at them. It's a sad way to have to do things, and I often wonder if my travelling has made me a better or worse person, but it's reality and I'm not in Australia, I'm in Turkey and have to deal with the reality here. Most people I've talked to emphasise that these problems are primarily problems within Istanbul and will cease to bedevil me out in the countryside where we go tomorrow.

I mention the HI primarily because my room at the Grand Yavuz for $57 a night is just a tad dodgy. The remote on the TV doesn't work without fiddling the batteries, and the volume and program buttons are missing. The bath has no plugs, and the bathroom door doesn't lock. There's not even a hook to hang up a jacket. The one good thing I can rave about is the breakfast - it's a small buffet, and isn't bad. (I've been spoiled by both relatives and the Hotel Imperial in Ostrava, so my standards are probably too high)

Anyway, I'm off now. See you all later - it may be a bit later, depending on what standard of Internet access exists in rural Turkey. Wish me luck!