Bursa, Turkey

Well, crossing into Turkey was our first border crossing for a while, since leaving UK in fact. We had forgotten how tiresome border crossings could be.

When entering Turkey, we had to organise insurance for Oscar, as well as a Vignette for the Motorways, but they are sneaky because when leaving Bulgaria, you go past signs for Duty Free and because you don’t want any Duty Free, you ignore them and head straight to the Turkish border. We were stamped into Turkey without any problem, but then when they wanted to stamp the car through, they asked for the Insurance papers. “But we haven’t seen anywhere to buy insurance. Where do we get it? we asked. “Free Shop” was the response – which turns out to be the Duty Free shop behind us.

So we had to park the car and walk back into the Duty Free Shopping Area. And this is where it gets tricky. There was a big barrier down the middle of the Duty Free shopping area with no access to the other side and it turned out that the Insurance was on the other side, so we had to walk all the way around the building… but there is a fence, so we went through the Office Admin area and finally got to the counter to buy the car insurance. And we also remembered to buy our Vignette which isn’t based on a period of time, but where you are driving, as in what roads you will need the Vignette for. So I imagine that if you are driving all around Turkey, the Vignette will cost more. But we got away with a Vignette for 50 Turkish Lire.

By now, Nick was feeling a tad stressed and wanted a nice cup of coffee with something yummy to eat with it. But the eateries were back in the other half of the Duty Free Shopping area. We could try to walk the short way around which meant walking back into Bulgaria and then U-Turning back into Turkey… we opted to give up on the coffee and go back to Oscar to finish our entry paperwork and get on the road.

Sadly, I have to say that open campgrounds in Turkey are few and far between, at least in December. We had a look at our various resources and there were 2 campgrounds “near” Istanbul but really, neither of them were really any good if you were going to day-trip into the city. And, of the two campgrounds, one was closed and the other one was rather expensive (€20 for one night, with power) but whilst there were showers, the hot water was solar so tended to be rather sparse. Nick didn’t enjoy his cold shower!

By doing a bit of research on various sites, we had heard about a Stellplatz very close to the Topkapi Palace, but it had no facilities (power, water, toilets, etc) but then we heard about another “informal” Stellplatz about 500m up the road and we stayed there. It was still €20 a night, but included power, hot showers, washing machine and internet, as it was walking distance to the Blue Mosque and all the good bits. By arriving around lunch, we had the afternoon to do some important admin stuff, like buying a SIM Card for Turkey. We decided to get a local SIM card because the International Card I’d been using in Europe was just too expensive for Data, which is the main reason we want a SIM Card. So for 90 Turkish Lire, I got lots of phone calls and SMS, and 2.25GB of data which will be plenty for the time in Turkey.

Did you notice how I failed to mention driving in Istanbul? All I can say is “MADNESS”! So far in our travels, we have always clung to our conviction that Russian drivers are by and large the worse drivers! Yes, Mongolian drivers sit on the horn and jump pedestrian crossing & traffic lights but Russian drivers are pushy, aggressive and always have to be in front, so therefore they do some stupid things. But then we started driving in Turkey! There is lots of horn honking – but sometimes they were honking at us because we were visitors, as in “Welcome to Turkey” kind of honk. But they are like the Russians in that they have to be in front of you and have a total disregard for basic principles of driving safely! They creep through red lights, they drive up the parking/emergency stop lane, buses & taxies stop anywhere to let off passengers, they park anywhere… the list seems endless. Yes, we made it into Istanbul but did have some difficulty finding our planned destination but finally we made it and poor Nick was almost a bundle of nerves. It was definitely a night to have a Bundy & Coke before dinner!

We ended up staying in Istanbul for 4 nights and had a list of things that we hoped to achieve, such as visit the Blue Mosque, the Ayasofia, the Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cistern, a boat cruise on the Bosphorus, visit the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market, and finally, have a Turkish Hammam. Tick – Tick – Tick, yes we managed to achieve it all. Though on our first day we weren’t sure whether we would manage everything. We were planning on the Mosque and the Ayasofia, and the Topkapi Palace if we had the time.

So we headed straight to the Topkapi Palace and did the self-guided Audio Tour through the Harem and the Palace. I sometimes wonder when we visit an attraction, and we are told that it will only take 45 minutes, or an hour. Do people run through or just listen and not look? The Topkapi Palace took us about 3 hours to do and we skipped some of the extra exhibitions, though we did go through the Exhibit and MJ was stunned to see the bowl of emeralds and chrysoprase (green semi-precious stones) as well as some of the emeralds, rubies and diamonds, with nothing smaller than ping pong ball!

The bonus of taking so long in the Palace was that, by the time we were out, “Papa” had left and we could get into the Ayasofia. The Ayasofia is… a church? a mosque? a museum? Yes, to all three! It was built as the largest church in Byzantine by Emperor Constantine and enlarged by Emperor Justinian and then when Constantinople was overrun by the Ottoman Empire, it was turned into a Mosque, but many of the murals and mosaics were kept and can still be seen today. Sadly, the scaffolding monster heard that MJ was going to be in town so one half on the interior of the Ayasofia was covered in scaffolding!

Day 2 in Istanbul was the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern and then after lunch, a Hamman. Thankfully, there is no charge to get inside the Blue Mosque, but it closes before each prayer session and the Muslims have 5 prayer sessions a day! So there was always a queue and a rush to get in before the next prayer session. You have to take your shoes off before you going into the Mosque and there is a carpeted section at both doors, with lots of signs saying “Don’t wear shoes on the carpet”, but what do people do? They stop on the carpet and try to put their shoes on and then wonder why the security people at stopping them. Yes, I understand that it was raining but you didn’t have to walk out into the rain to reach somewhere where you can sit down and put your shoes back on. Sometimes, tourists are just ignorant!

After a very nice lunch in a Turkish cafe, it was off to the Hamman for a Turkish bath. Just a short walk up the hill to help digest lunch and then it was into the Hamman and time to say goodbye to each other as we went off to the relevant male/female area. We had opted for the Deluxe which included a budy scrub, and bubble wash and oil massage, as well as much relaxation time on the heated marble slab as you wanted. We visited the Cemberlistas Hammam which was very good, but they need to get some good English signage up. We were a bit lost as to where to go next or what to do, but thankfully there were English-speaking visitors (ok, so Irish) who helped out, but the ladies in the washhouse, only had a few words of English like, “lie down”, “turn over” and “sit up”.

After a totally decadent afternoon and feeling like melted chocolate, we headed back to Oscar to get ready to go out to dinner with a Turkish family. Nick had posted a photo that he had taken of the Turkish Police BMW bikes on a BMW Facebook page and the next thing we knew, we had a dinner invitation to meet and have dinner in their home. So we got to trial the new Metro that runs under the Bosphorus, called the Marmaray and headed over to the Asian side of Istanbul to have dinner with Serkan, his wife and mother-in-law and had the most amazing dinner. Turkish food is similar to Greek & Lebanese cuisine in that the company and conversation is more important than the main course. So a meal starts with a variety of Meze dishes on the table and you help yourself and enjoy a glass of Raki with water (similar to Ouzo) and just sit, chat, eat & drink. Eventually, you will get around to eating the main meal which was the most delectable BBQ’d lamb cutlets. And another interest flavour was to sprinkle the cutlets with ground cumin – YUMMO!

Our last day in Instanbul was spent travelling around on the trams which looked very new and were comfortable and easy to use, looking for the Spice Market where we bought lemon rock salt and Ottoman BBQ Meat Spice. We also sampled a wide range of Turkish Delights, not just the normal sort, and bought a nice selection to eat (gradually) with our coffee at night. Our last shopping adventure was a trip to the Grand Bazaar were we found a very nice decorated plate to bring home, hopefully it is packed well enough to survive the trip home and finished the day with a cruise on the Bosphorus. On the boat, we got chatting with a lovely American couple who were fascinated to hear of some of our adventures.

On our way back to the Campground, we stopped off at the Bazaar just below the Blue Mosque, called the Arasta Bazaar. On our first day walking to the Blue Mosque, we discovered this Bazaar and ended up buying a lovely small kilim to use in Oscar as a bit of extra warmth underfoot. But as we were walking through this Bazaar, we found a shop window which had all sorts of caps on display and the majority of them were for Australian football (league & AFL) teams! It turns out that Ferdie and Mustafa collect these caps from visitors who donate caps to the window. As Nick’s old Bundie (Bundaberg Rum) cap had been finally replaced, we offered to donate the old cap to the window. Ferdie was estatic, so we made a detour to hand over the cap, have a cup of Turkish Tea and enjoy a chat about carpets, caps and visitors to Turkey. If you are going to Istanbul and want to see some wonderful carpets, then go to the Arasta Bazaar and visit the Troy Rug Store – you’ll have no trouble recognising it because it will have a selection of Australian baseball-style caps in the shop window. They have an amazing selection of Carpets and Kilims, and love sharing their knowledge and the history of the different carpets/rugs/bags. It would have to be one of the shops with the least amount of pressure to buy.

We have loved our time in Istanbul, done our bit for the Turkish economy (that’s my way of saying that we blew our budget!), enjoyed some amazing food (I am not going to tell you how often we ate Baklava…) and met some wonderful people. Now it is time to see the rest of Turkey!