Last Afternoon in Turkey

After our tour of Old Istanbul in the morning of our last day there, we had a bit of spare time, so wandered around a few of the streets near the mosque and museum that we hadn’t seen before.

This was the first thing we spotted.

Watch out tourists! Hehe.

On the next street corner we met a guy who asked if we were lost. Of course the reply was “not yet”. He then became very useful when Tom asked him if he knew of a seamstress. Tom had ripped a big hole in a very sensitive part of his jeans that morning, and we figured sewers in Istanbul would be a lot cheaper and easier to find than in the Greek Islands, our next destination.

As it turned, out the guy from the corner worked in (or owned) a leather tailor shop, so we trotted up there with him, paid 10 Turkish Lira (the equivalent of about $7), and got the hole repaired in about ten minutes. Of course the guy insisted that we try on a few leather jackets while we were waiting, in the hope that we’d fall in love with one of them, but it was fairly easy to resist temptation.

Then there was a quick stop at a patisserie where Tom bought a kilo (yes, a kilo) of pistachio baklava (and a few other Turkish treats). The man’s obsessed, I tell you. I am now entirely sick of baklava.

Next, Tom spotted this (sorry about the blurry photo).

We think they’re the traffic police, or something similar.

We had several options for spending the bulk of our last afternoon in Turkey. The cruise boat (which we had joined the previous night) offered a few tour options. A free one to Topkapi Palace that we had initially booked ourselves on, or another one that was a cruise down the Bosphorus Channel, the body of water that separates East and West Turkey (and, incidentally, the part of Turkey that lies in Asia from the part that lies in Europe). After chatting with a local tour guide we decided that we would probably prefer the Bosphorus Cruise. Then, we discovered that it would cost us 40 pounds each going with the cruise excursion. Hmm. With the Australian dollar conversion from pounds, that does not work out cheaply (around $124 AUD at the moment).

So, we decided instead to go for a walk along the waterfront to see if there might be any similar channel cruise available for cheapskates like us. And what do you know, there were lots of little buses lined up along the waterfront with guys in captains hats offering tours for 20 Turkish Lira. The equivalent of about $13 AUD. For about 10% of the cost of the other option, that definitely sounded more like us. And we found one that was only 15 Lira, so even better!

We spent the next two hours going up and down the Bosphorus, the banks of which apparently have some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

Upon our return from the cruise, we decided to walk up to see Topkapi Palace, which we had missed out on by doing our own little Bosphorus cruise, but somehow got lost along the way, and stumbled upon a few other interesting sights.

The first was the extremely impressive central train station.

Tom discovered my gloves in his bag, and was very excited about it.

We thought this statue of a man gazing at a tip truck which was in turn gazing at the Bosphorus was quite interesting. Actually I think the tip truck was there for another purpose, but it was certainly raised high enough to look kind of funny.

We found a cat sneaking past a guard dog fallen asleep on the job.

And then best of all, we stumbled across a gorgeous park, completely awash with tulips for the tulip festival.

This stone lion enjoyed a scratch as much as Allie does back at home. From the expression on its face, I was half expecting its back leg to start twitching.

We spent our last hour in Istanbul before hopping back on the cruise enjoying this park.

We even managed to climb a hill and get a fantastic view of the Bosphorus channel, with an old castle wall in the foreground.

We have no idea of the significance of this enormous pillar, but it looks pretty cool!

These tulips were my favourite.

Aren’t the colours spectactular?

Sigh. We’re generally not particularly into photographing flowers, but given that it was a special festival, and we stumbled across these completely unintentionally, we’re going to appreciate their beauty.

What a lovely end to our stay in Istanbul!

Next stop? Santorini! Bring on sunshine and warm weather!