Last day in Istanbul

Thursday October 18th

We got up this morning eager to be off now. Up until now this has just been a long week-end holiday. Now we can really start travelling with our big rucksacks and permanently injure our spines, necks, knees, etc...

We got the train to the Marmara coast - South-side Sultanahmet to get the ferry from Yenikabi to Bandirmi. We hiked to the Cat terminal only to find that the times had changed and we were stuck in Istanbul for another six hours. So we headed back to the hostel to dump our rucksacks. Marcus elected to read his book so I walked down across Galata bridge and over to the Galata tower. It was a lovely day for a walk and I sauntered down, avoiding the traffic [I am just going to say a little bit here about Istanbul drivers. When I first arrived ın Turkey I thought them to be pretty okay compared to some places: Cairo for instance. Cairo has the only example I have ever experienced of a true entropic system at work. It is utter insanity. Taxis form around 99.9% of all traffic on the road. They are all huge cars with fake leopard-skin upholstery and fluffy dice. They career from side to side, over huge pedestrianised streets ın what seems to be a concerted attempt to mow down chickens, mules, donkeys, and terrified tourists. If you are mad enough to get in one you will find yourself driven around like a human ping-pong ball with some nut job with no teeth driving: screaming broken English phrases such as 'Ramsees three!!' at you over the pumping Egyptian radio. Traffic lights seem to exist merely for ornamental reasons and horns are used as a form of a language: to say hi to someone; to indicate lane changes; even to suggest you are going to do a U-turn in the street. You may well find your driver mystifyingly stopping to herd an entire family of people into your cab and then drive them in the opposite direction to your original destination with no prior consultation; although perhaps you get informed of this in horn-speak. It is all, good old psychotic fun and, more to the point - against all reason and logic -, it works. Traffic in Istanbul is not quite the same. Do not get me wrong: The drivers are as nuts. But they seem to obey the rules more - well most of the time. For instance: as we were walking to the catamaran this morning, a taxi driver, realising he'd missed his turned off from the bypass, decided to correct this by hand-breaking 40 metres down from it - right by us. Traffic peeled left and right from behind him like the finale at a red-arrows air tattoo. The driver of one car, that zipped past us, looked as thought he was having a heart-attack; I don't blame him. Tyres screeched in the fresh morning air as he slowly reversed back up the verge. One of the vehicles that passed him was a police car... it was marked traffıc polıce? They had the radıo on and were all bopping theır heads] taking in the beautiful warm day. Galata bridge is teeming with fishermen. Anglers to be precise. They all stand ın allocated slots on the bridge - rods at the ready - catching an inordinate amount of fish.



After the bridge you will fınd that many of the tourist shops disappear and give way to more... specific places. Here you can fınd shops dedicated to selling chainsaws, carbuerrators, sprockets, widgets, whatsits, whoojamaflips, thingamygigs, and all sorts. It is a dıfferent type of Turkey on this side of the river.



I finally wound my way up some steep streets to the Galata tower. This amazıng edifce ıs a testemant to the endurance of this cıty. It has been in existence sınce the Byzantıne days. and ıt has gone through an amazıng amount of facelıfts. It was first built in the 4th Century and through various periods it has fallen foul to earthquakes, culture shocks, and pillaging; ıt has had more face-lifts than Michael Jackson. in fact it reminds me of the routine from Only Fools and Horses:
Heroes and Villains (1996)
Trigger, Del, Rodders, Sid and Boycie chating in Sid's cafe. Trigger has just been presented with an award for saving the council money.
Trigger And that's what I've done. Maintained it for 20 years. This old brooms had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time.


Sid How the hell can it be the same bloody broom then?
Trigger There´s the picture. What more proof do you need?

Here ıs the utube lınk also:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSmSTpRUeLs,





So - I took the lıft to the top of the tower and took ın the view - Istanbul´s vısage. My God ıt was amazing! I haven´t got the sticky shift on my camera sorted out so I could not do the full panoramic view. However İ do have some amazing pıcs on Facebook.



Afterwards I strolled up to the hostel and Marcus and I headed off to Yenikabi once again. The trıp was pretty uneventful apart from we all had to run along the marina in order to sit on a half empty Catamaran. I slightly misread the map and thought the bus from Bindirma to Canakkale took 45 mıns - it actually takes 3 hours. We were going to stay in the equivalent lodging of the Crossroads Motel but we pushed on and ended up ın Cannakale at 1am. Tomorrow we are taking a tour to Galipoli.