Goodbye Turkey, We’ll miss you!

We spent our last and final two days in Turkey taking in more of what Istanbul had to offer.  My favourite part has to be the Bazaars! We spent a few hours (over a few visits) inside the Grand Bazaar, where I found myself a few silver treasures! Poor Chris followed me around from stall to stall, looking at basically the same things, until I found exactly what I wanted. Chris then haggled for it, and then we walked away leaving it behind, only to return later and buy it for their “best price”!

I LOVED them all, but the lanterns were my favorite stands!

We also spent some time at the Spice Bazaar. Sadly we couldn’t buy much. If we were heading home I would have purchased loose teas, a few spices, and a few kilos of Turkish delight. I guess these purchases will have to wait for our next trip. I did however buy some candied ginger! Unfortunately we went to the spice bazaar in the afternoon, post our 2 hour Bosporus Cruise. The candied ginger would have been helpful during the boat trip as the Bosporus is a bit or a rocky ride! It was great to get to see Istanbul from the water. What a massive city. It really is much more modern that I had envisioned it to be.

Yum Yum!

On the boat

Our final night we decided to splurge a bit on dinner and went to a restaurant with an amazing view. It was incredible and really a must do for anyone visiting Istanbul. The Restaurant is called Seven Hills and was situated right in-between Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque. We had desert on the roof top patio surrounded by thousands of years of history all lit up. We both agreed that we have seen many amazing things so far on our trip, but this was the best place to enjoy a meal together.

Amazing view at dinner!

Today we start the next leg of our trip and we are currently en-route to Cairo where we will be meeting up with our first tour. We have now been traveling for 40 days. That’s 120 meals eaten together! We have had the best time traveling as a pair but we’re looking forward to meeting some new people. I know traveling with Chris has been even better than I imagined. I thought it was going to be tough being with the same person 24 hours a day, but knew there was no one else in the world I would rather do this with. It turns out, it hasn’t been tough at all. Sure we’ve shared a few moments of silent frustration, but we’ve had way more times of laughter and created so many incredible memories to last a lifetime.

Looking forward to see what adventures Egypt has in store!

I  have been posting more of our pictures to my facebook, so if you care to see more of what we have been up to, you can check them out there.

Love Ashlyn and Chris.

Istanbul

We arrived in Istanbul after a 13.5 hour bus ride from Pamukkale.  (The guy said it was a 10 hour bus trip.  I guess they don’t count any of the stops.)  We arrived late and pretty much just crashed when we arrived.

Yesterday morning we decided to take a walking tour of the city.  We’re staying in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul, which is the old city so we thought we’d be able to find the meeting point for the tour pretty easily.  Nope.  This city is a complete maze.  And it seems that Turkey has outlawed street signs across the land, which is especially helpful.  Lots of directions that you get from people sound like this:  Walk 400 meters and turn down *insert street here*.  If you’re coming to Turkey, be prepared for every single person to provide directions that includes the measurement of 400 meters.  They love 400 meters.  If it’s 50 feet, it’s 400 meters.  If it’s 3 kilometers, it’s 400 meters.  400 meters is actually not helpful at all.  So anyway, we got a bit turned around in the maze and ended up taking a taxi to our location to start the tour.

Once on the tour we had a great day checking out the city of Istanbul.  The layout of the city is great for tourists.  Most of the big attrractions are located in one area and you’re able to easily walk around and see a bunch of them in a day.  Yesterday the tour took us to; the Blue Mosque, Ayasophia, Grand Bazar (which was closed yesterday), Tombs of the Sultans and a few other sights.  Our guide was a little bit special.  Super nice lady, but seemed to lack any ability to organize the group, so it was basically like herding cats for 10 hours.  She also seemed to specialize in walking past interesting and important sights and not explain what they were unless somebody asked, which is a strange specialization for a tour guide.  At the end of the day, we saw some really great sights and good a good portion of the history, so we’re pretty happy with that!!

Overall Istanbul is a great city, and you can really sense that it’s the meeting place a ton of different cultures.  It has a very European feel in the area that we are staying.  Lots of great restaurants that have long patios spilling out on to the sidewalk.  Fashion seems pretty big here, with lots of different styles all over the place.  The prices are definitely more in line with Paris and London than with the rest of Turkey.  We’re looking forward to getting out and exploring the city more and seeing what the Grand Bazar has to offer.

Here are a few pictures from our first day in Istanbul:

Inside the Blue Mosque

The Ayasophia.  Was a church, then a mosque, now a museum.

Inside Ayasophia

If you can keep your tumb inside this pillar inside Ayasophia and turn it around a full 360 degrees, your wish will be granted.  Ashlyn did it!

Pamukkale, Turkey

One of the good things, and possibly the only good thing about taking the 10 hour bus from Pamukkale to Istanbul is that we have plenty of time to update this thing!

We spent 2 days in Pamukkale and are excited to be moving on to Istanbul.  Pamukkale was a great sight, but definitely a place that you can drive into and out of on the same day if anyone else is planning a Turkey trip.  The big attraction in the town is a mountain that has a natural spring and has deposited a ton of minerals, leaving a pure white mountainside and a bunch of collecting pools.  There are also a number of ruins further up the mountain, which are also good to see.

Back in the day the pools would have been huge, taking up the whole mountainside, but after a number of hotels and other attempted attractions divereted water for their own needs, there is barely a trickle coming down the hillside.  We’re glad we got a chance to see it.  It didn’t look like anyone was stopping the development because there were still a number of other pools being built at the base of the mountain.

Here are some pictures from our stop:

Just starting the trek up the mountian.  You have to do it barefoot and walk through the pools and running water.  It was pretty cool.

Ashlyn making her way across one of the pools.

A view of the collecting pools and pollution in the distance.

Us at the Theatre in the ruins.

Ashlyn swimming in the ‘Ancient Pools’ at the top of the mountain.  I’m pretty sure this pool is one of the main reasons that the water isn’t flowing too good these days.

Kas, Turkey

After a few great days in Kas, we’re hitting the road again this morning on our way to Pamukkale.  Turkey is somewhere that we’re definitely going to be returning to.  Each place we’ve been in so far we’ve ended up staying longer than we had originally planned, so we’ve had to cut places from the original itinerary.

Kas has been pretty relaxing.  Both days we took boat cruises, one toured a sunken city, the other stayed inside the sheltered bay where Kas is.  For 50 Lira you spend the entire day on the water, and they severe you a homecooked meal on the boat as well.  Highly recommended for anyone making their way to Turkey!  Here are some pictures of our time in Kas:

Breakfast at the hotel.  The island in the distance is a greek island with a little town.

The colour of the water in the marina.  We’ve never seen a marina this clean!

Swimming before lunch.

One of the best meals we’ve had in Turkey!

Sunset from our balcony.

Well that was ridiculous…

Ok, where were we…

Groeme…

After the Balloon ride in Goreme, our Pension Manager offered to drive us to our next destination!! The bus ride to Antalya (on the coast) is about 8 hours, but he was going to a city just 40 kms before the town, and said driving a car there take only 5 hours! We could get a ride from him for free, arrive 3 hours sooner, and just take a short bus ride into the city. Sounds like a plan! He was planning on leaving at 10:00am just 30 minutes after the bus left. Great. We would be in Antalya by 4:00 at the latest, time to enjoy the sunset by the sea, have a great dinner, and enjoy the old city!

Well as it turns out, as nice as Bakir was, he’s not exactly prompt. We didn’t get on the road until about 12:00… The roads in Turkey are…interesting. Actually the roads are fine, it’s the drivers that are a bit nuts. The signs, speed limits, and lines on the roads are mearly a suggestion, but each driver decided how fast they will go, where in the lanes (or out) they will drive, and just when they want to pass. No passing lanes necessairy.

By 4:00 we all were getting hungry and we clearly weren’t close to our destination, so we stopped for lunch. It was actually an amazing lunch grilled lamb, fresh tomato and cucumber salad, homemade yogurt and grilled bread. Delish! AND…Bakir insisted on paying, Sweet, Thanks Bakir! We hit the road again and  by 5:30 (1 1/2 hours after we thought we would be checking into our hotel) we arrived at the bus station in a city 79 kms from Antalya. The bus for Antalya left in 5 minutes which was GREAT! Bakir brought us in, set us up with the bus, and wouldn’t accept any money for gas or lunch.  What an amazing guy! So the ride wasn’t perfect, but we were almost there…. Not so fast. Turns out this bus to Antalya was the milk run!!!  On a positive note we really got to see how Turkish people live and shop and eat in 2 different cities, but it really wasn’t what we were looking for.  At 8:00 (that’s 2.5 hours and 79kms for those that are keeping track) we arrived at the bus station in Antalya. At this point we aren’t exactly sure why we didn’t take a cab to the hotel, but we got on the city bus.  Did we mention that we don’t speak Turkish?   By 8:30 we had arrived at the old town; A maze of tiny streets within the old Roman walls. It was so amazing, but we were tired and really just wanted to find our hotel. Like a needle in a haystack, I tell ya! There are no street signs and 100’s of Pensions, restaurants and shops! 30 minutes later, 5-6 different directions given, we found our hotel. 9:00 PM. Awesome! Sadly we didn’t feel like exploring too much at that point.

This morning we woke up excited to take on the day. The Pension we stayed at was absolutly gorgeous. It had an amazing garden/courtyard right in the middle of it and we were served a fantastic breakfast in the middle of the courtyard.  We fell in love immediately, and wished we were staying longer, but our time in Turkey is short so had to keep moving. We walked around the pretty town, got lost a few times and decided on renting a car to drive down the coast  Here is a picture taken a couple blocks from our hotel:

They don’t seem to have any large rental companies here… seems that everywhere you rent a car, you pay to have some guy from the original location to take the bus to where you want to leave the car, meet him at the bus station and hand back over the car. Strange but true. So we found the least sketchy place (still super sketchy), and the guy who spoke the most english, and rented the car. He was really helpful and drove with us out of the walled town and then told us how to get out of the REALLY BUSY, CRAZY city (with no street signs. Well we missed our first turn off and decided to stop there, get gas, and more info…

As soon as the car was filled (it was full service) all these gas station attendants start yelling in turkish and pointing under the car. We had sprung a gas leak. Great! Did we mention we don’t speak Turkish?

Gas was pouring out from under the car onto the ground. All of a sudden our rental car was surrounded by Turkish people.  Some Employees.  Some citizens.  An owner.  Everyone.  The one man that spoke a few words of english asked for our papers (rental agreement) and immediately called the rental office. They all pushed the car off to the side and moments later had brought out 2 chairs into the sunshine for Chris and I to sit at and wait for the guy from the car rental place to come meet us. How hospitable. Moments later we were given 2 cups of tea and a table! People really are very nice here. The rental guy eventually showed up, with a new car, and was very apologetic! So, with a new car, we hit the road.  Here are some pictures of the Great Turkish Gas Adventure:

At the gas station after the excitement.  These are the chairs they brought us.  The guy on the right is the owner of the station.  He brought us Turkish Tea and a table right after this picture was taken.  He was Awesome!!

The greatest Gas Station in the history of Gas Stations.

Leaving the City

We have to say, although we’ve had a few rough days, we LOVE this place. People couldn’t be nicer (EASILY the nicest people we have ever met), the scenery is to die for and so is the food.

Along our drive today we stopped at Olympos and visited some roman ruins as we walked to the beach. Not too shabby!

We are now in the town of Kas (Kash). We arrived right after sunset so are very interested to see what it looks like in the day! By night it’s amazing and we have a hotel room that looks right over the mediterranean, at a fraction of the cost of other hotels along the way. Loving life right now.

Oh also, and most importantly, we didn’t have to wear our jackets and scarfs today. We wore sandals!

Love you all!

Ashlyn and Chris

Groeme Part 3

Hanging out in a cave gets boring, you’re probably not shocked by that.  So, we decided to get a tour of the valleys surrounding Groeme…on ATVs.  It was an awesome tour that got us back into a lot of areas we wouldn’t otherwise get to see.  If anyone is making their way out to Groeme you can skip the Open Air Museum and just go on an ATV tour and you’ll see all the same stuff, most of if better than the museum.  Here are a couple of pictures:

Than yesterday we finally got to get up in the balloon.  We were a bit concerned that it wasn’t going to happen again after we heard that the time was changing.  Time changes in Canada are pretty simple.  Everyone changes their clocks before they go to bed, and the next day life moves on.  Turkey uses a slightly different strategy.  They function on two times for a little while (at least in Goreme).  People either use ‘old time’ or ‘new time’.  But, just to make things even more helpful, you’re never sure which businesses or people run on which times.  Nice.

So Ashlyn went over to the balloon company we were using and asked them about the time change, and they had absolutely no idea that the time was even changing.  After trying to help them realize the time was changing, she came come and we just hoped that someone would actually pick us up the following moring at 5:00AM for our balloon trip.  They did.  It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience…and man, those pilots are good!  they drop you down into the valleys and lift you back out inches away from the cliffs.  It was pretty cool until the guy decided to land.  He picked a nice little quick flat piece of land tucked between powerlines and a cliff.  It was a bit strange and everyone on the balloon kept asking about the powerlines, but the guy didn’t seem concerned.  Somehow he was able to turn the balloon on a dime and get us to a safe spot and we finished the ride with a champange and a certificate that we had taken the flight.  Why anyone would require a certificate is beyond me, but now we have them.  Here are a few pics:

Goreme Part 2: Nature versus Chris and Ashlyn

Good morning from Goreme!  Still living in a cave, and still wearing coats.  We woke-up nice and early today (5:30 AM) to take our balloon ride through Cappadocia, but after waiting for a couple of hours for the weather conditions to change, the flight was called off for the day.  We’re going to try to go again first thing tomorrow morning, but need to catch our bus to the next town at 9:30AM, so hopefully all goes well!  They pumped us full of coffee before sending us home, so I figured I may as well update the blog.

Yesterday we went to the Open Air Museum in town where they have a little ancient city that was carved out of the rocks.  It was pretty cool.  Here are a couple of pictures:

A pottery tree right outside the museum.

Us sitting at the table carved out of the cave.  The scene behind us was ‘the last supper’.

The landscape

Yesterday afternoon was pretty nasty weather.  It started to rain quite hard while we were sitting in our little cave.  It was hard enough for the power to go out in all of Goreme, and caves are pretty dark when the lights are off, so we sat around with our headlamps on.  Here is how cool we look with our headlamps on in a cave.  Hot stuff if you ask me.

Last night we went to “Turkish Night” which is a dinner and show all about Turkish Culture.  It was a pretty fun show to go and see.  Their basic strategy is as follows: Collect money from hundreds of tourists.  Drive them to a resturant outside of town.  Lead them down a long tunnel underground to a… wait for it…carved out cave!  Start brining out as much booze as possible and get everyone completely hammered.  Begin show.  That was the basic idea…and we loved it!!  Bad night to forget our camera.  It started with the whirling dervish dancers (not the real ones, but we got the idea), Turkish wedding ceremony (complete with a donkey that was somehow brought down this long tunnel), Turkish dancers, belly dancers, and knife throwing.  I think some of the artistic direction was inspired by the evening entertainment shows that they have at Mexican all inclusive resorts because it did involved a lot of black lights, which was a nice touch.  The other nice thing that they have adopted from the resorts is taking your picture and selling it to you.  Except here there is a special twist, they put your picture on a decorative plate and sell it to you.  Sweet!  So did we spend 10 Turkish Lira on a plate?  You bet we did.

This is the one we bought.  Ashlyn grabbed the wine jug to hold up in the picture (the wine came in huge jugs instead of wimpy bottles) and the Turkish guy was not at all impressed that we wanted to ruin the picture like that so made us retake two pictures his way (they looked like passport photos).  You guys know how much we like to ruin photos, so we thought this one was perfect!

Goreme, Turkey

We’re writing this from inside a cave in Turkey.  Yup, caves have the internet.

After a couple of bumpy flights from London to Istanbul and then to Nevsehir, we arrived at the tiny airport in Nevsehir.  They get one flight a day, and ours was it.  When you land on the runway, they just turn the plane around on the runway and taxi back down the same runway to get to the shed that they call the terminal.  It was definitey a bit different than where our journey started today at London Heathrow.

We’re staying in the town of Goreme which is about 60 kms from the airport where we landed.  Thankfully they have a couple of different options to get to the town that we’re staying in…a free shuttle, or the taxi for 50 Lira (about $35 CAD).  Obviously we would take the free shuttle after collecting our bags.  After watching every single passenger on our plane collect their bags and make their way to the shuttle, we heard the guy yell out ‘No more bags!’.  What?!?  No more bags???

After a moment of panic we ran outside of the shed…err…terminal and saw that our bags were on a tractor being driven somewhere else.  More panic, and then we were told that we need to clear customs because Nevsehir was our first point of entry in Turkey.  Fine.  So we walked into the other room in the shed (which was dark and full of turkish customs agents) and we found our bags and had to open them up in front of agent.  No problem, he went throught he bags and cleared us to go.  So we turned around and made our way out of the shed just in time to watch our free shuttle drive away.  Sweet.  So now we are two white people with Canadian flags on our backpacks at the airport where one flight a day comes in and 3 cabbies are just waiting to take our money.  Okay, 50 Lira isn’t so bad for the drive into town.  Sure, that would be fine if the price for the cab was still 50 Lira.  Remember economics classes?  We were now in great demand (the next bus was tomorrow), limited supply (now 2 cabs), and zero competition for the cabbies.  So our cabs were now 110 Lira.  Eek.  To put it in perspective, our room is about 40 a night.  So after some intense negotiation and a lot of hand signals, we settled on 60 Lira for the ride into town.  We’re glad we made it, it’s better than sleeping in the shed until tomorrow afternoon!

Once we got here we loved it.  A truely unique place that is vibrant and has a wide mix of travelers.  We’re looking forward to getting out and exploring the town more over the next few days, but here are a couple quick pictures from today:

One of the caves in Goreme

This is actually our room.

Checking into our room.  This door is actual size.

Us at dinner.  Not a great picture, but enjoying our first Turkish meal.

Cave Blogging

A Taste of Turkey

Can’t wait to do this!!