Victory Day!

Metro bus must be Turkish as they have pretty decent service on board, which was a great surprise after our experience buying the tickets. Very comfortable reclining seats and a bus attendant who served water, tea, coffee, and snacks. The border crossing was quite random. We had to get off the bus three times, once to leave Bulgaria, once for duty free and a toilet, and once to get into Turkey. That was a funny experience as it was between three and four in the morning and there was a van load of drunk Turks coming back from the casinos just over the boarder. They didn’t want to line up with the bus load of people and were having some heated Turkish discussion with border control. We however made it through with no questions at all.

The bus also arrived an hour and a half early into Istanbul. Not sure how this can happen, but hey we are here! Bit of an assault on the senses getting off the bus into the throngs of people, the bus station is huge! We ended up getting a taxi from a really friendly driver who made sure we could use our card to pay for the ride and called the

hostel to make sure he knew where were going. He also shook our hand at the end.....I think it may have been because we paid double the expected rate for the ride, but it was still less than £8. Things are cheap here.

Because we were so early, we woke up the hostel worker. We were all in different states of awake, but the coffee he made us was much needed! After he gave us some city maps we took the hint and went for a walk until we could check in.

Our hostel, which was £7 a night each, is located one block from Taksim Square in the new town. We headed up to the square to find some breakfast. There were a lot of people around and a lot of important looking people in military uniforms. Intriguing. We picked a cafe with a roof terrace overlooking the square to watch. Once the bus load of soldiers turned up and marched around and the brass band started playing we did some research and realised it was Victory Day, Turkey’s national holiday to celebrate their defeat of the Greeks in the War of Independence in 1922. However this parade was nothing like ANZAC day as it took everyone about an hour to sort themselves out but the official part only lasted for 15 minutes, then they all left quick smart!

From here we walked down towards Besiktas, and the waterfront. We were now standing at the eastern edge of Europe. The part of the city over the bridge is Asia. Istanbul is the only city in the world that is in both Europe and Asia. We headed down the waterfront of the Marmara Sea and towards Galata Bridge. We passed a lot of Mosques on the way, they are everywhere. In this city of over 15 million people there are over 3000 mosques. You are never far from one. We walked around the waterfront doing some shopping and then headed back up the hill towards Galata Tower. On the way we

stopped for some çay at a teahouse, which was someone’s living room. Was a funny broken English /Turkish conversation over cups of tea. The people are so friendly here!

We went up the Galata Tower which is the oldest tower in the world tourists can go up. There was a tower first built here in 500 AD. It was a great spot to get a view over all of Istanbul and see how massive it is, you can't see the end in any direction! Afterwards we walked up the hill back to the hostel to check in and sort out our lives. We spent the rest of the evening meeting everyone in the hostel and planning our next few days here. So happy we have finally made it to Turkey!