Istanbul not Constantinople

I've been waiting for so long to be able to use 'Istanbul not Contantinople' for a heading and now my chance has finally arrived...

I went to Turkey last week. My main reason for going was to go to Gallipoli for Anzac Day, however I had a few days in Istanbul too.

Istanbul is a fantastic city - it's so cool the way that the old mosques are incorperated into the layout of the city amongst the more modern buildings. I visited a few of the mosques there but I think they look better from the outside than they do on the inside. I also went to the old palace for the Sultans. It was interesting to see, my favourite bit was the Harem, where the Sultan lived with his family and his concubines (anywhere between 300 - 500 at one time!)

One day I went on a cruise with Carmen (from Dublin) and her friend along the Bosphorous (the stretch of water that separates European Istanbul from Asian Istanbul). We went right to the end of the Bosphorous to where the Black Sea starts. From there we climbed up a hill to see some ruins of an old fort. The fort itself wasn't too spectacular but the views were magnificent. To the left you could look along the Bosphorous with both sides of Istanbul on it's shores. To the right was the Black Sea, heading towards Russia.

We found a few interesting things for sale in Istanbul, particularly the 'Natural Turkish Viagra' (I will have to put the photos up for that because they are hilarious). I'm firing on all cylinders so I didn't get any but Carmens friend tried some and said it tasted spicy.

The day before Anzac day I went down to the Gallipoli peninsula to get ready for the dawn service. My bus arrived at about 7:30 and I met up with a few friends from Dublin who had got there a bit earlier and were saving me a seat. We spent the night sitting in our sleeping bags in freezing cold weather listening to the pre dawn program. This included a military band playing songs that were popular at the time, interviews with historians and a couple of documentaries about the campaign at Gallipoli and was pretty interesting. The seats were bloody uncomfortable and so I only managed about 5 minutes sleep all night.

The dawn service started at about 4:30 and was ok. But I spent most of the service looking the opposite direction to the stage to see the sun rise over the hills there. Everyone knows how tough it was for the Anzacs, that they landed in a difficult spot to climb up the hills, but to see the shape of the hills emerge from the darkness of the night with my own eyes made it seem so much more real to me and made me appreciate (at least somewhat the impossible task they were given.

After the dawn service we walked up to Lone Pine cemetary where the Australian service was held (there were separate Turkish and New Zealand services). This service was a little more light hearted than the dawn service and I thought it was a bit better because of it.

That evening I watched the Gallipoli movie with Mel Gibson in it. I hadn't seen it since high school and it was good to watch it again while I was in Gallipoli.

The next day we watched a documentary, made about 20 years ago, which interviewed veterans of all nationalities from the battle at Gallipoli. It was really interesting and moving at times to hear what they had to say. The part I found most interesting was how the Anzacs and the Turks maintained a great respect for each other despite the fact they were trying to kill each other every day.

That afternoon we went back to the peninsula to have a look at some of the cemetaries and the main monuments on the site. We saw the Australian, New Zealand and Turkish memorials which were good to see without all the crowds that were there on Anzac day. Our tour guide had a key to the Australian memorial so we got to go inside and sign the visitors book there which was great. We also saw some of the cemetaries around the peninsula and some of the original Anzac trenches. Finally we went to 'The Nek' which is what the final scene in the Gallipoli movie is based on.

The next day I went on a 'cultural tour'. The first stop was Troy - the ruins here weren't very impressive and the replica wooden horse was even less so. In the afternoon we went to a village called Assos in which there is a council rule that all houses must be made out of the rock from the mountain so that they all look like traditional Turkish houses (at least from the outside). Apart from that there were also some ruins from an old Greek village at the top of the mountain. From there you could see across the water to the Greek Island of Lesvos.

In the evening we went to the village where our tour guide grew up. It is just an ordinary Turkish village and no other tour groups go there so it was very interesting to have a look around. It was strange and a little bit sad that some of the houses are just one room rock shacks, some of which don't have running water, but almost all of them have a satellite dish for tv reception on top. It makes you wonder about peoples priorities. We went to visit our tour guides parents house and his mother cooked dinner for us - it was delicious. We had salad, yogurt, bread, rice, potatoes and a pastry which had spinach and fetta inside and rice pudding for desert. It was particularly special because all the ingredients, apart from the tomatoes, were home grown and everything was home made.

My last night in Turkey was spent back in Istanbul watching the final of the world cup. I'm glad Australia won it (as I predicted they would, see 14 March post) but it was a boring game to watch. If it was any other game apart from the final I would have gone home because I had an early bus to catch the next morning.

I've got heaps of photos and I will try to put some of them up in the next day or two for you to look at. Pete!