Author: admin

I left my two loyal blog readers hanging on a knife edge yesterday with my post about our failed attempt to get a train from Istanbul to Ankara. I’ve heard a lot about the ‘otogar’ now, but it wasn’t a word I knew last week, but it’s the bus station and Jonathan had to reroute us there. It’s fair to say that after the last week in Turkey, it’s not a word I’m likely to forget.

Back on the metro.

Back to Yenikapi where we started off.

Then off to Otogar metro station.

This is the main bus station of Istanbul and it’s a huge and confusing complex of ticket offices, buses and people trying to sell us stuff.

I’m not sure where they were taking that large screen that looked in good condition to me. I did wonder about asking if we could have it, but I wasn’t sure how to negotiate getting that on the Wizz Air flight next week.

The set-up is that agents try to pull you into their ticket office where they sell you the bus ticket. I mean, it’s not for the fainthearted and we left the first ticket office before we liked the second ticket office more. After some translation issues, Jonathan managed to arrange us two tickets by coach to Ankara. Fortunately, one of the staff there spoke some English, which saved some more complex phone translation arrangements.

And here we are, ticket safely acquired. Jonathan was very brave with all of this, but he is the Turkish travel expert of the pair of us and so I was reliant on his help. For those who prefer easier arrangements and booking options, there are Flixbus operations (which may or may not actually turn up) which are easier to book, but they’re quite a bit more expensive.

And we had a wait of just fifteen minutes for our coach, it was certainly starting to feel like a bit of an adventure….

This signage should be placed on more public transport around the world…..

I’m very conscious that I’m, once again, behind with this blog and so I’m going to try and speed matters up. Our plan for the third day was to get a train to Ankara from Istanbul, a process that we thought would be easy, so we had hotels booked in the country’s capital.

The grand metro station of Yenikapi which opened in 2013.

Downstairs in the metro station.

On the metro and it was all going so well.

Safely at Söğütlüçeşme railway station where the high speed train from Istanbul to Ankara departs from.

Some nice views over the city from here.

And a nice old locomotive to look at outside of the station. This was all going ever so smoothly and we wondered which of the main trains we would be getting to Ankara.

The answer was none. There was no signage or ticket machines, just a ticket kiosk. After we meandered pointlessly around a ticketed area and were guided back, we visited the ticket kiosk and the staff member said that there were no tickets available to Ankara today.

I considered this sub-optimal as I had a hotel in Ankara and started to wonder what the options were, especially as I had no Internet (but I didn’t complain). Jonathan was less panicked, he’s a Turkey expert and so had plans to get us back on track. Note the clever pun there. Anyway, this all meant that we realised we were naive to think you could actually book a train on the day between two major cities, something we didn’t think would be a problem.

Back on the metro, this is Jonathan showing me his plan. And it led us into another adventure, but we’ve had quite a lot of those this week….

The Obelisk of Theodosius originated in Ancient Egypt as one of two monuments commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmose III to stand outside the Temple of Karnak in Luxor during the 15th century BC. Carved from red granite, it commemorates the Pharaoh’s victory during a crossing of the River Euphrates. The monolith remained in Egypt for centuries until the Roman Emperor Constantius II had it transported down the Nile to Alexandria in 357 AD to celebrate his twenty years on the throne. I mean, it’s either that or you build yourself a nice ballroom, although I suspect the engineers responsible were probably a bit stressed by traipsing this thing about.

Perhaps the engineers couldn’t be bothered by it as it lay on the docks for decades until Emperor Theodosius I successfully moved it to Constantinople in 390 AD to decorate the middle bit of the Hippodrome. During the transition, the obelisk was shortened to nearly two-thirds of its original height to facilitate transport which sounds like something my friend Liam would do to make things easier. Then I would discover that my precious obelisk has arrived with a chunk missing.

It was eventually mounted on a marble pedestal featuring detailed bas-reliefs that depict the Emperor and his court watching chariot races. Despite surviving numerous earthquakes and the fall of empires, the monument remains in its original Byzantine location today in what is now Sultanahmet Square. Incidentally, those bronze cubes act as shock absorbers in case of more earthquakes.

The sheer age of this is something of a joy to behold, the history that it has now just in its creation, but its moving about by Roman emperors and then in the heart of Istanbul for centuries.

And here it is at night.

The Blue Mosque, also known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which was constructed between 1609 and 1617.

Approaching the mosque, which was built by the Ottomans on the site of former palaces and there was controversy over the funding to build it. Some clerics said it should have only been paid for with money taken from conquests, but Ahmed I hadn’t won anything so had to use money from the state treasury.

The mosque’s courtyard and this is where the main entrance is and there were a large number of visitors, seemingly mainly tourists. It’s free to enter and visitors are made welcome, with the usual protocol of having to take your shoes off.

Inside and it’s a spacious and light space, with a grand domed arrangements. Pope Benedict XVI visited here in November 2006, only the second time that a Pope had visited a mosque.

The interior has been designed to amplify the voice of the imam so that 10,000 people could hear without the need for amplification.

A common local account attributes the construction of six minarets to a linguistic misunderstanding between the Sultan and his architect. According to this story, the Sultan requested ‘altın’ minarets, meaning gold, but the architect mistakenly heard ‘altı’ which is the Turkish word for six. Although historians generally view this tale as a myth, the mosque is historically significant as one of only three in Turkey to feature this specific number of minarets.

My previous photos might suggest that this is a quiet place for spiritual reflection, but this is more the scene.

The majority of the interior is either painted or tiled and there are over 21,000 tiles here.

The main dome is 43 metres in height and that’s supported by four pillars and it’s fair to say that they’re quite chunky in size, nicknamed ‘elephant feet’.

And a photo of the mosque at night, it’s a beautiful site given the way they’ve managed the lighting of it.

The city’s spice bazaar which has around 85 shops selling a variety of spices, chocolates, souvenirs, nuts and other assorted items. It’s quite an impressive arrangement, especially since it’s been here since 1660. Not surprising gives its name, it was primarily where spices were sold in the past, but that’s diminishing a little now as it caters for a wider market, not least tourists.

It’s a busy arrangement and it’s part of the property of the New Mosque which was also built at the same time. Although referred to as the Spice Bazaar in English, the name is the Egyptian Bazaar in Turkish, apparently because it was originally built with taxes charged on people in Egypt.

There’s a security process to get into the bazaar, although that’s commonplace around Turkey. There was an explosion here in 1998 which killed seven people, but it’s never been stated exactly where it was a gas explosion or terrorist attack.

We didn’t buy anything inside, but Jonathan treated himself to a football shirt outside, but more of that later on.

Here are a few photos of Istanbul at night, we visited some of these places in the day as well so I’ll surprise and delight (or something like that) readers in other posts with more details.