East meets west - Istanbul

Well i have written a new blog as the last one was Solo and from now on it will be in a group .

A group i mean our closely knit group + our Turkish friend in Istanbul and just the Indo french group the rest of the trip.

Set again to the Blue mosque but with the group this time and went straight to the prayer hall were only the locals were allowed but the guard mistook me for a local!!!!. onwards to Hya sofia , Underground Cistern and then Galata tower.Here my friend tried to flog me off as a local and got the local ticket with is cheaper but the guard at the lift had a bit more intelligence .He was able to spot that i was only speaking English and then told me off !!!!

Hya Sofia - Photo by Ms J

Next day

Then onwards to Taksim square and looked around lots and lots of walking basically .So we were both tired and looking for a drink .Stopped in a cafe to have EFES a Turkish based Pilsner which was decent and cheap .

It was time now to organise our onward travel .We had to book our onward travel to Anatalya.Our expert D s suggestion was to take Varan coach since they are nice and luxurious and it was about 15 or 12 hrs journey . Went into a Internet cafe to do the booking here we faced a very daunting problem .First we were all tired with all the walking around next the bloody website was having problems after having taken the pain of writing all the details required for booking !!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Bugger the bus was leaving in about 5 hrs and we didn't even have a ticket in hand !!!!

But D called them up to confirm it was their problem . So we both headed to Taksim again and booked the ticket and boarded the bus .It was now time to say good bye to Mr D who was a great help here with out him we would have missed out on a lot of local stuff like the fish sandwich !! or the nuts or travelling in the tram with his FOB.

Sadly i would take this opportunity to apologise to his flatmates for not cooking Chicken curry that i promised .Well next time