Border crossing into Turkey was something of a nightmare. We waited over an hour to get to the first of the check stations, had our passports checked at 7 different stations, had to, on two separate occasions and from people who didn't speak any English, purchase visas and a green card which we hadn't realised we needed (rookie error on our behalf) and escaped from the crossing about 4pm, having got there about 1. Stopped at the first place we could after to refill our depleted petrol tanks and bellys with petrol and truck stop food, which I suspect could be interchangable.
Istanbul is unbelievably massive and greets you as you come over a hill with identical apartment blocks in huge blocks and, behind them, a hillside of colourful buildings and magnificent mosques. Guided by my supreme navigation skills, as Cumu was unable to comprehend the Istanbul road system, we made our way to our next stop, the "Bada Bing Hostel" which had a very cool atmosphere and the guests all hung out together, and is situated down a series of tiny roads that we initially mistook for rape alleys. Traffic in Istanbul is brutal, everyone just sort of pushes and pedestrians just step out into any gap left over but it seems to work somehow. There is also regular Islamic music playing from speakers on the mosque's spires and various tall buildings and gives the city a very cool exotic atmosphere.
After checking in and dumping our stuff we went out and grabbed dinner from a nearby kebab place, the first kebabs we had had on the trip (surprising given the number of kebab stands everywhere and our near-constant intoxication). Unlike aussie kebabs we were given kebab meat that was actually tasty on rice, with bread and vegies filling the plate and a starter of a huge cacoon-like hollow bread and variety of salsa-esque dips and cheese. We then went back to the hostel to share a 2L Serbian beer before teaming up with a group of Americans, Canadians and a couple of Aussie girls from our room, Cat and Amelia and going out with the Turkish guys who worked at the hostel, who took us to a bar called "Balanz Volt" and bartered the bouncers into giving us all free entry (instead of the $10 usual) and the bartenders into giving us halfprice drinks all night. It's very handy to have locals to go out with when in a barter economy. The bar was crazy, situated on a rooftop on the top of a hill with views out over the city from the dance floor and raised dance areas on both sides, plus Turkish dance music, which is very similar to ours but in Turkish so all the locals sing along, and Turkish dancing, which is a lot more ridiculous and over the top than Australian dancing. Got back to the hostel about 4am.
The next morning was a recovery day as Lewis was definitely feeling the effects of the previous night. Played a whole bunch of chess, got some traditional meat filled, lasagna style, pastries for lunch and made ourselves a stupid but very tasty multicultural dinner of pasta, tomato, donor kebab meat (which they sell in supermarkets the same as we sell steaks) and sweet n sour sauce. After dinner hung out in our room with Cat and Amelia and watched Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Our one outing of the day was to the Grand Bazaar to buy Lewis a new towel as he had left his in Romania but after fighting our way through the endless maze of street markets we found it closed. We hadn't realised it was Sunday, oops. Got 2 towels from a street vendor for ~$8.
Up the next morning bright and early in order to spend the whole day exploring the many sights of Istanbul. Showered, changed and headed downstairs with map in hand only to find Lewis on his laptop needing to "work for about an hour". Not wanting to make Lewis miss out Macky and I distracted ourselves for the "hour". Left hostel at 1pm.
First stop of our personalised walking tour was the big mosque on the other side over the bridge (We were staying just over the river from central Istanbul). The mosques in Istanbul are huge, immediately noticeable complexes of domes and spires surrounded by walls and all covered in minutely detailed mosaics and carvings. Very different to churches and staggeringly beautiful. The mosque was completely open to the public, requiring just that everyone entering remove their shoes and women cover their knees and shoulders, and allowed photography if you stood at the back. The interior decoration put even the remarkable exterior to shame and, coupled with the hauntingly lovely Islamic prayers and music made for a very serene but striking air. The open nature of the mosques, even during times of prayer and ceremonies, give them a much more accessible feeling to the churches we had previous visited with their restrictions and fees.
Went to the Palace via the Spice Bazaar, an indoor bazaar filled with all sorts of stalls, particularly, funnily enough, stalls with huge piles of various spices but we were dubious about the quality or even legitimacy given that some of the piles were claiming to be sapphron but at no more expense than any other spice. The Palace was closed off for what appeared to be renovations but we didn't go up and enquire due to the presence of a number of unimpressed looking, machine gun armed guards but did have a very nice garden walk which featured ruins from old Constantinople.
From there we went down into the Basilica Cisterns, an enormous underground room of byzantine columns and featuring 2 medusa head statues, all lit from below and with about a foot deep water at the base filled with fish. Very awesome and a nice relief from the blazing heat outside. After leaving we almost immediately stumbled upon a section of the ancient Constantinople city walls and the "million stone", the distance marker at the center of the Byzantine empire used to measure the distances of its various cities and borders.
Checked out the Hageah Sophia mosque and the Blue mosque, the 2 biggest mosques in the city and also stunning, but due to time didn't go in then made our way to the now open Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a giant building filled with stalls that form a seemingly endless maze of cheap, hugely varied (one can, I am told, find anything they want there and I did indeed see kitchen sinks for sale at one place) goods and a chance for us to do some bartering of our own. My personal success being getting 2 items priced at ~$30aud each for ~$3aud combined.
After this, with evening setting in, we made our way back to the hostel via the ancient city aqueducts and a different bridge over the river, which was also lined by fishermen the whole way across. When we got back the others jumped on their various internet machines while I refilled my water bottle and walked 15 minutes up another hill to Taksim Square to see the monument there for Turkey gaining its independence, which featured 2 statues of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder and first president of Turkey and also philosopher and the commander who inspired the Turks to victory at Gallipoli) leading the people to independence, on one side he is leading the soldiers and on the other the scholars.
Made ourself another mashup dinner of rice, kebab meat and tomato pasta sauce then had some drinks with Cat and Amelia before trying to sleep. The room was super hot, several degrees hotter than the corridor or outside, and, coupled with snoring Dutch guys, drunks in the corridors and the fact that I had just discovered that I enjoy coffee now, sleep was somewhat tricky to come by.
Woke up fairly groggy but packed up and checked out surprisingly efficiently and while the others packed up Cumu I went out and got us a box of baklava to experiment with one the drive. Baklava has supplanted Brastilava as the best lava, its super sweet and tasty but still very light, almost dripping in honey and ground pistachio with some unknown but delicious interior goodness. Drive itself to Eceabat, the main town on the Gallipoli peninsula, took about 5 hours but was very cruisey, bolstered by frequent baklava rounds. Arrived about 3:30, checked in at the "Crowded House" hostel, a fairly generic hostel with a cool aussie theme, and booked ourselves into 2 tours for the next day and then, after desperately needed showers, went for a wander around the town, which has only one real main road parallel to the water and is, aside from the location and Gallipoli campaign tourism, a standard small country town. Got dinner from a little kebab place, a bunch of which in a row appeared to be the only real food options open, likely due to it being the 2nd day of Ramadan, and had a quiet one in readiness for the long day ahead of us.
Set our alarm for 7:30 but it didn't apparently go off so we were woken at 8:40 by staff asking if we were still intending to go on the snorkelling tour. 10 minutes later we were all dressed, muddle headed and stuffed into a car taking us to "North Beach", the beach just to the north of Anzac Cove, and by 9 we were waist deep in water, checking our fins and cleaning our goggles before swimming out about 100m to where, 5m below the surface, we got to snorkel around and explore a sunken Anzac landing craft, deliberately sunk to create a breakwater for the rest of the landing. After having our fill of that we went back in and moved around to Anzac Cove itself where we spent another hour snorkelling around the reef, checking out the vast array of fish and searching for ANZAC souvenirs. Macky found 3 bullet casings and a piece of a pottery rum bottle and I got a fired bullet casing. We then went up to pay our respects at the Anzac Cove cemetary and memorial and also found a tortoise friend. Got back to the hostel about 11:30, showered the salt and sand off ourselves and got downstairs just in time for the 12:30 Gallipoli site tour.
First stop of the second tour was across the road for a complementary, much needed, lunch before jumping on the tour bus and driving across the peninsula to "Brighton Beach", the intended, but missed, landing spot for the Anzacs which would have been a much easier site and changed the campaign hugely but they got lost in the dark. It is now a really nice tourist beach with hammocks, beach umbrellas and a few little shops, plus I earned myself a free ice cream by answering a question about the Gallipoli campaign (it was originally meant to be a solely naval operation but they fucked up the mine clearing).
Next we went through the memorials and cemetarys at "Hell's Spit", Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu and North Beach, the ANZAC landing sites. They make up a beautiful series of little headlands and beaches with crystal clear blue-green water but turn around and you are faced, as the ANZACs were, by a very inhospitable looking series of steep ridges and sharp gullys covered in thick, meter high shrubs.
We then moved up onto the top of the ridges to see some of the important battle sites. First up of these was Lone Pine, well known in ANZAC folklore, which is now the main Australian memorial and cemetary and has at its centre a pine tree grown from a seed grown in Australia from the original Lone Pine pine tree (obviously there was only one pine tree, hence the name) that was sent home by a Digger during the campaign. The memorial and cemetary plot covers all the no man's land in between the ANZAC and Turkish trench lines and so it gives a good look at how closely the two sides lived and died over the course of the 9 month campaign.
On the way to our next stop, the memorial for the Turkish 57th Infantry, we stopped on the side of the road, deliberately built through the line of no man's land, at an area where the ANZAC and Turkish trenches were little a thin road's distance apart and were regaled with tales from our Turkish guide about the two sides forces in the area, the ANZAC one commanded by an Aussie called Johnston, exchanging foods and cigarettes over the gap, now called Johnston's Jolly. The Turkish 57th Infantry who's memorial we then reached is famous in Turkish history as they were ordered by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk "I do not expect you to fight, I order you to die" as they were out of ammunition and facing a major ANZAC onslaught, and who held off the ANZACs long enough for the Turkish reinforcements to arrive but were completely wiped out in doing so. Here I was also rewarded with my free ice cream, which tasted like victory. Also like blackberry.
Our second to last stop was The Nek, made famous from the Mel Gibson Gallipoli movie and the enormous casualties suffered here by Australian forces thanks to British incompetence. The front lines here were only about 50m wide and 25m apart so it boggles the mind to think of the amount of casualties suffered in such a small area. We then got to our final stop, Chunuk Bair, the main Allied objective of the campaign as it is the highest point on the peninsula and has amazing views out over the entire area, all the way from Suvla Bay in the north to the tip at the south and across to the Dardanelles channel and the city of Cannakale on its opposite bank. The peak was only held once by the Allies, from August 8 - 10 when it was taken by New Zealanders but were then relieved by English troops, who promptly, of course, lost it. It is here that the main New zealand monument is and also a huge statue to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (king of the hill champion since August 10, 1915... too soon?).
Got back to the hostel about 7 for another kebab dinner and then after our long day of tours, heat and intense history we spent the evening playing cards, zoning out of comfy couches and having a much needed cold beer or 2.
The next morning we woke up in time to make the complementary breakfast that our incompetence had deprived us of the previous morning and ate enough to justify the 2 mornings worth and keep ourselves energised for the long drive from Turkey to Thessaloniki, our first stop in Greece.
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