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….