Istanbul, Turkey

Sorry this took so long. Someone stole my ipad and it took me a week to replace it with something non-(rotten) apple.
Funny story about Istanbul - sitting on the bus traveling to ANZAC cove with Top Deck tours (worth every penny) and our local guide was rabbiting on about Constantinople. I had never actually put two and two together and realised they were the same city. 

Constantinople...or Istanbul. Dammit, I can never tell the two apart

It had just never come up in my history experience. I have either read books on ancient history, which is Constantinople cool and Constantinople is razed, etc, or learnt modern history (i.e. watched Bond movies), which is all nuclear submarines and oil pipelines. Now I think about it, that's not all that funny, but I guess I never really did understand 'humour'.

Is this humour? I was told its funny, but it seems awfully factual.

Arrival in Turkey was kind of reminiscent of Bali. As soon as I approached the baggage carousel am overly friendly local came over and kindly offered to assist me with my baggage. All the while he pretended only having limited English as I told him I was perfectly capable of pushing a trolley by myself. He remarkably remembered his English when I told him to go ahead, but under no circumstance would I tip him for his services. 

The Mosque. It is blue.

Upon exiting the airport another man came up to me as I was hailing an taxi. He proceeded to hail it for me also and carry my bags. I said no twice, but he just smiled and took my bags anyway. The look on his face was priceless when I refused to tip him as I explained I told him to leave me alone multiple times. At least the taxi had a meter. I arrived at the hotel early so I found the nearest pub grabbed some beers and learnt a few Turkish words from the (cute) barmaid. This was followed by check-in through my tour group, meeting my roomie, and a few more beers. That evening, I met the tour group.

Baiky, jumps in for first drink.

Suddenly he is the life of the party.

There were lots of cool people, all from New Zealand and Australia of course as we were all there for ANZAC day. Most of them lived in the UK. In fact, only my roommate and I had traveled from Australia. The evening finished with the group heading for dinner and many drinks, but it was kept pretty tame as we had an early start the next day for our trip to ANZAC cove. 

We met another mascot from the tour group. These two paired up in Hagia Sophia...and now Baiky has more friend's than me.

ANZAC eve and day were awesome! I will go into more detail in a later post, but if you get the opportunity I highly recommend it! In a nutshell you spend the night of the 24th crammed into the small space at ANZAC cove other aussies and kiwis alternating between trying to sleep and watching the provided entertainment. His included documentaries of Gallopoli, speeches by the many officials, and music from a military band (this year was the Australian Navy, but I assume this honour changes every year). As dawn breaks the service begins. There were talks from representatives from the Turkish, Aussie, and Kiwi governments, a few speeches from school students that won various essay competitions, and some random bloke causing trouble. After the dawn service the group hikes to either the Aussie or the New Zealand specific memorials for a few more speeches and laying of the wreaths. The Aussie MC was hilarious, and kudos for performing so well! After all this excitement we returned to Istanbul before smashing both dinner and drinks with wanton abandon. We woke early for the final day of the tour, a half day guided tour through some of the more famous sites of Istanbul. We visited the Blue Mosque, St Sophia's cathedral (Hagia Sophia), and the cisterns.

The cisterns were pretty cool, photos don't really show much.

The Mosque and cathedral were amazing and it was nigh on impossible to get a photo that does them justice and the cisterns were really quite beautiful as well. That afternoon I wandered around the city and some gardens before settling into a relaxing night of rest before catching my planets Malta. By that I mean traveling to the nightclub district, smashing beer and raki in equal amounts, getting into a physical altercation with a local, and getting back to my hotel minutes before my airport transfer arrived to pick me up!

In the gardens with Baiky, finally he is not causing a drunken scene.