Turkey – Day three

Photos here

Well, this one is going to be a short one, despite the day’s being quite a long one. We mapped out and planned our journey from Istanbul to Cannakale (Chan-nak-a-lay) the previous evening, even going so far as to practice getting there via the metro. I have no idea how we managed this – considering how full the previous day had been, it shouldn’t have been possible. Maybe days are longer in Istanbul – maybe they attach a couple of extra hours to the middle of the day. That would explain why it’s so hot – extra sunlight hours… This practice journey was interrupted at one point, when I noticed that a guy had followed us from the tram to the metro and was periodically stopping to wait for us to catch up every time he got too far ahead. This began to worry me the third or fourth time he did it, so I suggested that after he had gone through the turnstile, we go find lunch at a café or restaurant somewhere nearby. I have no idea what his intentions were (maybe he was just trying to be helpful…), but I’m glad that we didn’t have to find out. Funnily enough, this was the point where we finally met some people from outside the tourist areas, and found them to be honest, generous, polite and helpful. I’m afraid that we must have come across as rude and impolite, because we were so suspicious by this point of generosity that we tried to refuse the free bread that they put on our table. But we had an excellent lunch at about a third the price that we’d been paying so far, and I at least began to form some very definite opinions on how to go about this tourist thing…

So anyway, on day three, we got up and moving at an unreasonably early time, had breakfast on the terrace, and made our way out to the otogar (bus station), through the beginnings of rush hour on the metro. Fun. The otogar is a bit confusing at first – the website gives you where you have to go (get out of metro station, find otogar, building number 102), but when you get there, you interpret the information by comparing it with what you already know about bus stations. In New Zealand, we’d have been looking for one building, which was the bus station, with the word ‘Otogar’ written somewhere on it. In Turkey, they take the whole capitalist competition thing VERY seriously. We got out of the metro station, looking for a sign saying Otogar in the large (and I mean LARGE) square outside. It turns out, as we figured out after wandering around aimlessly, that every bus company has it’s own building, and that there are some 160-odd bus companies. It was a true forest-for-the-trees scenario…

So we eventually managed to get on a bus, having eaten another excellent meal at some place that didn’t consider tourists as people to be ripped off as much as possible, and found the bus to be somewhat more comfortable than otherwise expected. They have service staff on their buses for God’s sake! Unfortunately, however comfortable, you’re still stuck on a bus for 7 hours from Istanbul to Cannakale, so it wasn’t the best day of my trip. Still, we got to see a lot of the countryside, which can be best summed up in the word ‘arid,’ and a little entertainment, as the steward guy, having become bored, got into a water-fight with his manager, and then decided to come and bother me. Gareth, little **** that he is, ever quick to seize upon opportunity, whipped out his camera and pantomimed that the guy should pose for a photo, which I put up with, and then give me a kiss. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to put up with that, so Gareth got the picture you see on the site above.

In the end, we reached our destination, traveling the last bit by ferry across the Dardenelles. Having found Cannakale, we went for a bit of a wander around the town, found somewhere to eat, looked at their grossly touristy wooden horse exhibit, and then had a few drinks before bed.