Instanbul

Turkey has a population of over 76 million. Istanbul sits as its coastal capital with over 12 million and is the fourth largest city in the world. It is the only country in the world that is in two continents. One side of the harbour is Asia and the other side Europe, a handy trading location not lost on its various custodians and occupants.  

The 40+ coaches were jostling to get closer to the base of the gangways. We sidestepped our way through them to the taxi rank for a 20-euro city tour. We started the day visiting the Topkapi Palace, built by Ottoman Sultans, which boasts a Royal Treasury displaying diamonds, rubies and other rare gems, some larger than chicken eggs, encrusted into swords, dinnerware, curtains, bedspreads and clothing. In the Harem, the curtains are woven 24 carat gold thread. The Palace is fully furnished and accessible. You could spend a whole day just walking the grounds of this place.

We left the Palace to find our pre-paid taxi gone and assumed that he had to assist a more needy disabled person or perform some other humanitarian good deed. We wished him well in colloquial Australian that mixed in the humid air with the many other linguistic expressions being uttered and lost to all but those with the right ear.

The coaches had begun to arrive at the Palace and excrete camera-clicking tourists collected from the four cruise ships now in the harbour. We escaped 500 metres down the road to the breathtaking St Sophia Church built by Emperor Justinian with pillars stolen from the grand buildings of the then Greek port of Ephesus.

I admit to being a bit churched out by now; they are all magnificent and unique yet all the same.  We did not linger long and likewise at the amazing Blue Mosque, just a bit further down the road, famous for being very big and blue on the inside, glistening with over 20,000 blue Iznik tiles.

We walked for a while, electronically recording the old part of Istanbul, then taxied to the centre of New Istanbul, Taksim Square. We sat down to lunch and some EFES beer in a near deserted square. At 3pm someone sounded the proverbial lunch bell and the result was a frenzy of people crowded wall to wall as far as you could see. In the middle of the milieu of walking human hunger a small suicidal group of political activists decided to march through the square shadowed by a larger number of fully geared up riot police and an ambulance. We then noticed a Police water cannon vehicle had quietly taken up position in another corner of the Square. An almost-English speaking waiter suggested we should leave the area immediately as “these politics, they not end good” hence the ambulance.

We did not need to be told twice so quickly headed across town to shop at the Grand Bazaar housing over 4000 stalls of genuine fake everything, not at all slowed by what we imagined might be happening back at Taksim Square. The Bazaar is so big it has its own post office, school, bank and police station. This place is certainly the benchmark for all bazaars.

Churched out, shopped out and sweating good Turkish beer we floated back to the dock, found a local café and waited to sail away with some animated backgammon with the locals. Australia lost 3 -5 to the pipe smoking Turks.