077 Turkey; The tour that nearly did not happen Part 2

Turkey; The tour that nearly did not happen Part 2
Panakkale
this was magic

The water that flows over the rocks leaves a calcium deposit. At first we see these dried pools, which were fantastic but then we see......

the 'waterfalls'

and the 'ice fields'.
you can almost imagine skiers here

at the very top is a magnificent thermal pool. There are tiny bubbles rising to the surface that stick to the bathers body and make them float. I've never seen anything like this. I didn't bring my bathers as our guide had said "look you can swim there if you want but it is pretty pricey". It really is a unique opportunity but we have to let it pass. The tour has been one disappointment after another.

There are three brides here. This one was by far the prettiest.

another of those photos that Frank takes and that I find out about when I'm looking thru the photos for ones for the blog!!

so you can actually walk down the hillside in the pools (more than 30 of them). Have you ever seen anything like this?

the other side of the 'waterfalls'

poser!

Our tour group. 3 'oldies' couples and four young girls (early 20s). Frank and Erkon (our guide) in the front. The final day made the tour. There were some highlights but far more disappointments. The people on the tour made the tour. Everyone was a great time keeper, no one was a shopper, no one was opinionated. It was far more bearable as we were all in the same boat. 

Next stop America

076 Turkey; The tour that nearly did not happen Part 1

Turkey; The tour that nearly did not happen
Gallipoli, Troy, Ayvalic, Selcuk, Ephesus, Sirince, Panakkale, Denizil (airport)

So just three days before we are due to fly to Turkey we get an email from Scoopon to tell us our tour has changed. (It is too long a story to explain why we purchased a holiday via Scoopon) The company that let us all down was called Aisa but Scoopon never told us their name so we hadn't looked them up on trip advisor)
When we look at the itinerary we are gobsmacked. No trip to Capadoccia (which was a must see for me as I'd booked an optional hot air balloon trip) but replaced by Gallipoli. OK, disappointing but I could live with it. Then we read on... 4* accommodation replaced by 2*, 3* and 0* and at the 0* there would be no private bathroom and we might have to share. (photo of the final room below). Pickup from the airport still to be included but the return trip to the airport was now at our cost. Dinners were also no longer included. Frank, quite reasonably, sent an email to complain. They told us we could have our money back! OMG this is just now 2 days before we are to fly. Scoopon tell us Aisa pulled out 10 days ago and they had been moving heaven and earth to get us a replacement trip. What a shame they didn't tell us 10 days before; we would have asked for our money back as what was on offer was not palatable. We survived, the group of people we were with were all in the same boat and they were lovely. The tour was a big disappointment.

Gallipoli is very moving.  Frank put his sun glasses on after this photo to hide the tears.

Anzac cove. Such a small place. How could so many men have been in such a confined space?

If you can enlarge this and read the words you will get a small insight into how great Atatürk was.

Lone pine.
This is the grandchild of the original, which was destroyed. An Australian soldier sent a seed home to his mum and she grew it in their back yard. News of it reached the right people and a seed from that tree was used to grow this one.

This reduced me to tears. Someone has placed a photo of A.G. Manning by his name; suddenly a name on a wall is transformed into a person.

We visit Troy, where our guide dismisses the story. He says Troy fell due to an earthquake.

This is another feature he points to as to why a horse could not have been taken into the city - it would have had to come thru this narrow windy pathway.
In the end though we started to take some of the things he told us with a grain of salt. If you believed everything he told you Turkey would have invented everything known to man!!!

This is our room in the 0* accommodation. What really got me was the way it was written up in the itinerary. "A beautifully restored Ottoman mansion that some of our guests say was the highlight of their tour".
We were lucky - we got a room to ourselves. Others had to share. There was no hot water. There was one "bathroom" (stretch of imagination to call it that) to three rooms.

We had a lovely couple of hours on a boat. This is the  ladies of the tour. The itinerary said we could swim but it really wasn't warm enough and our guide really didn't want us to. His language began to fascinate me. Couple of samples: "I'll let you have some free time now" (means there isn't enough to do to fill in the allotted time); "I can't imaging anyone wants to go swimming, so we'll just drive around".

 

Our itinerary said we would go to a factory to see Turkish carpets being made.  We went to a shop. Our guide was very well connected. He told us which shops we should go to and told us terrible things about the other shops. He invited us to join him for dinner each evening. He never paid for his meal and made sure we all left a tip. The number of 'back handers' he got was very noticeable - very much in the open, nothing sly.

 

Ephesus. Incredibly extensive Roman ruins. Not in the best of shape. Our guide made several reference to countries that had 'stolen' Turkish ruins but my thoughts are that is they'd been left where they were we wouldn't have them today.

The library

The communal toilets.

Frank actually stood on this stage and sang Advance Australia Fair.
and somebody, somewhere, clapped :)
The he did the Aussie, Aussie, Aussie chant.
Our tour exited the amphitheatre and pretended not to be with us! (Frank's edit: someone had to test the acoustics !)

Sirince.  We order Turkish pizza. The lady in the far corner is working furiously making the dough. She could turn these out in seconds. Then someone added the filling and then they were cooked on the open fire. Yummy.

So while our guide never found us someone making carpets, we found this lady sitting in a shop window.

Fortunately the best part of the tour was saved until last and it was so unique that I'll dedicate a full blog to it. 

 

075 Turkey: Istanbul

Turkey: Istanbul
We have arrived a day before the tour is supposed to start as there wasn't much time on the tour for exploring the city and it has a lot to offer.

The transport for the local police was varied but this alternative Segway and smart cars took our attention. As you can see he is very focused on policing the area.

The Blue Mosque. A dominant feature of the landscape and quite a magnificent looking building.

So we are strolling down some random street and the Richmond cap (spot the rest) catches our attention. WT...

Loved this Basilica Cistern.
The James Bond movie, From Russia with Love, has some scenes shot here. It really was different and amazing to find how far we walked under the city.

Turkish Delight like we've never seen. An amazing selection of flavours all beautifully presented and yummy. Certainly was 'delightful' :)

No trip to Istanbul would be complete without a visit to the Grand Bazar (although we at first went to the Old Bazar and discovered our mistake). We'd heard some pretty awful stories about this place but while obviously for the tourist (Turkish as well as other nations) we really enjoyed it, felt safe and loved the diversity. We were disappointed not to be offered coffee when we bargained though :)

 

There were some amazing fashions in the stores. Jumpers and boots/shoes that I'd never seen the like of. However never saw any being worn on the street, where the dress was very conservative.

We found the train station where on June 2nd, each year, for 2 days the Orient Express 'docks'. Lots of movie star pictures in the restaurant.

This was possibly our most entertaining dinner. A stew type meal is cooked in a clay pot which is sealed by bread dough. Once cooked they heat the clay over open flame and crack it open along a pre-marked line. I thought that perhaps the clay from the pot could be reconstituted but it is simply thrown away. As he cracked the pot we clapped and he was thrilled. Another 5 people ordered the same meal after us!

Inside the Blue Mosque. A very beautiful expansive building. As it is a 'working' mosque there are lots of restrictions on when you can go in but we managed to get in just a few minutes before midday prayer (our third attempt at getting in).

wonderful atmosphere inside but it did smell of sweaty feet!

Topkapi Palace.
Had some amazing mosaics. This is a fire place. Unfortunately none of the rooms had furniture in so you didn't really get a feel for the place. Perhaps if we hadn't just seen remarkable palaces in Europe we would have been better impressed. The 86 carat massive diamond was OK though !

The combination of patterns is quite something. It shouldn't work but it does.

Hagia Sophia Museum.
Ataturk was an outstanding man. This building was a church then a mosque etc. So of course the religions were fighting over it. He said it was too important a building, architecturally, to belong to any one religion, so he had it made into a museum. :)
Here the Islam symbols and the Christian symbols are side by side.

There are three extraordinary Christian mosaics dating back as far as the 7th century. Mind blowing. Who do we know that is making something now that will be available for others to still see in over 2000 years time?

and this is just to give you an insight into the number of minarets around the city.

074 And that was Europe

And that was Europe
we've just passed the 6 months mark
we got into a great routine and could pack and be on our way in under 1 hour
we've worked out how to go off the beaten track and more importantly how to then get back on it
we've had endless challenges from our GPS including tyring to send us down a railway track, a spelling mistake in a street name that just happened to be the street where we were staying, endless roundabouts were she (Claudette) got the number of the exit wrong and some absolutely stupid 'short cuts' she sent us down.

we've learned so much more about ourselves and have been amazed at how empowering being anonymous is; you can be more daring when there are no consequences and little responsibility.

I reckon we've slept in over 66 beds.

At the end of the trip I'll do a blog with the final statistics but here is the evidence of the kilometres we did in Europe (excluding Ireland)

So in this car we did 16,669km

Happy Frank handing over a very clean car and learning that he would not be charged the E80 cleaning fee :)







And that was Europe - what an adventure; travelling is not a holiday

073 Portugal; Lisbon part 2

Portugal; Lisbon part 2
It has been fascinating to learn about the connections between Brazil and Portugal.

In Portugal they liked the Rio Christ the Redeemer statue so much they built their own
The 'parent' copying the child.

Just to give you a bit of idea of the scale.

At the top of the hill in the old town is a great castle. Really well restored. It is our last day in Europe and it is a wonderful sunny day. Plus I've got clean clothes on so I'm very happy :)
Frank got very chatty with the taxi driver over soccer (Franks edit - he was a Belenenses supporter and couldn't get over David Villa was in Australia), the guy ended up giving us a great history lesson and lots of directions for things to do and see.

what a view

Rapunzel - let down your hair!

Look at the size of the bridge in the background.

Famous 28 tram that we never managed
to get on due to the crowds.

So we have to walk
The hill is very steep and it is a bit of a labyrinth
but the taxi drivers instructions to
always head downhill get us back into town.