Further Wanderings

Our unfortunate arthropod incident behind us, we boarded an afternoon bus for the town of Afyonkarahisar (which translates, rather dramatically, to Black Opium Castle) or, as its friends call it, Afyon.

It was a lengthy bus trip, which started rather unpleasantly: stuck in the back row of a full bus, bouncing up and down, sun beating on us through the windows and A/C non-functional. I only mention this because bus travel iun Turkey is generally so pleasant and comfortable that this portion of the trip seemed especially miserable by comparison. Normally the buses are beautiful new models, with drinks snacks and water served regularly, refreshing lemony-alcohol based stuff splashed on your hands a few times thorugh a trip, and movies shown (true, they are dubbed into Turkish, but at least the bus companies are considerate enough to pick titles that don’t require dialogue to be comprehensible [e.g. Pirates of the Carribean: The World's End.])

Anyhow, the unpleasantness of the bus trip behind us, we arrived in Afyon late in the evening and with the help of one of only two English speakers we met during our stay there, found a Dolmus (collective minibus) into town.

Afyon Castle [read on]

After a last coffee and last goodbyes with Michael (and Carmen’s brother Henry who had driven us to the airport) Sarah and I were off to Istanbul for the first solo portion of our trip.

We arrived at Ataturk airport and after obtaining my visa (Canadians have the most expensive visas for Turkey [double the price for Moldovans, who are next on the list] and Kiwis don’t need one at all) we climbed on the Istanbul Metro, and after a quick train trip and a tram ride we were in the tourist centre of Sultanahmet.   (As a side note, I am NEVER AGAIN flying into Istanbul’s other airport, Sabhia Goecken.  I like the idea of its being named after the first female combat pilot, but it’s about 40km from the centre of town with very limited public transport.)

I had an astonishingly good memory of where everything was, and we quickly found the same hostel I’d stayed at last time.  Even more surprising than my recollection of the geography was the fact that I remembered a couple of the guys who worked at the Paris Hotel!

We got ourselves comfortable in our room, went up to the rooftop terrace to watch the lovely sunset and were thus well prepared to properly begin our visit to Istanbul.

 

The sun setting over the Sea of Marmara.  Just about the only sunshine we saw during our stay in Istanbul.

[read on]

Our last four days in München were just as packed as the first four.  We spent lots of time with Carmen's family, did some more wandering around München and even got out of town a few times.  In fact, now ... [Continue reading this entry]

We arrived in Munich (carrying on with the practice from the previous entry, Munich shall hereafter be referred to as München) and, as was already becoming a habit on this trip, didn't really know what to do with ourselves. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Sara, Sarah and I took the train to Gatwick Friday afternoon and were quickly whisked away to another country. It's astonishing how easy (and inexpensive... the train tickets to Gatwick cost almost as much as the flight) this is ... [Continue reading this entry]

As per usual, I didn't really "realize" I was on my way until well after my mom and dad dropped us off at the airport. It probably wasn't even until British passport control that it felt like I'd left ... [Continue reading this entry]