England

With a some spare weeks up our sleeve we picked up some nice cheapish EasyJet tickets from Istanbul to London. After a little hick up where the immigration absolutely would not let us in without a contact address, but did not care whatsoever what it was. It's incredible just how backwards and proud (of it) first world nations can be.

On making our triumphant entry onto British soil we were met by Jacq's long lost cousin Ben (who never quite made it home from his OE), and were whisked away to exotic Woking. I think I would have to be have been born there to work out in which contexts Woking is part of London and in which its not. I think its mostly not as there are a lot of trees and the sense of green is very pervasive, but with decent train service its only a half hour from Waterloo so not nearly so far removed as say Torbay.

We spent most of our time there in good old whanau time, catching up/getting to know Ben, his wife Trixi, and their two kids, breaking only for me and Jacq to run outside and stare at the first rain we'd seen since Morocoo. On Friday we squeezed everyone into Ben's sensible family car and went out for a look about Windsor Castle but with an almost twenty pound price tag for entry we decided we could make do with a look around the outside and a poke around the ships and down to the river Thames for a spot of swan feeding.

The next day was Saturday and Ben, Jacq and I headed into the city to watch an ill-fated game of rugby at the pub. Jacq and I were both terribly excited as the most rugby we had had all year was a highlights package in Bolivia, and the occasional snippet on BBC World. But with a poor showing from the AB's we were left a little bit mopey but went put and visited the queen anyway. Buckingham Palace is actually not that exciting but I quite enjoyed the statue in the roundabout (aka the Queen Victoria Memorial) with its Greco-British angels (in gold or white marble) was quite fantastic not to mention that most of it was covered in people just hanging out on their favourite lion or hippogriff.

Sunday we transferred into Stu and Leah's lounge and then we all rushed off to Yum Cha with a whole bunch of people I used to work with in Auckland (and associates). Yum Cha was pretty good and was served on a floating restaurant in the old Dock district and certainly brought back old times. This was then followed up by a trip for spaghetti shaped ice-cream over at Leicester Square.

On our own on the Monday we headed off to the Natural History Museum along with every other Mum and child in London. The queue was convoluted but involved more exhilarating rain, and was entirely worth it as the (free) museum was pretty damn awesome. Dinosaurs skeletons, life size whale models and stuffed large mammals make for a very good day out. And then to top the whole day off  Jacquie made her world famous lamb cous cous, all be it with inferior British lamb (all the supermarkets proudly declare that they only stock 'fine' British Meats), and we went out for another remarkably green walk around the local park which of course was the residence of  the bishop of London for 900 years, history, history, etc, etc.

The next day we hit up the (free) National Gallery and I tried very hard to make up for 30 years of complete disinterest in art by forming opinions on many fine classical works. I officially like Van Eyck, and some French bloke called Seurat, both of whom must have been teased horribly at school.

We also took the opportunity to spread the misery of hosting us around by turning up at Thomas' flat and we immediately astounded at just how small a flat someone can live in and still be generous enough to let two people crash with him. The flat was built into the attic space of a big old townhouse and so had only one vertical wall with the rest being the inside of the roof and therefore pitched at about 45 degrees. While perfectly adequate to the needs of a young bachelor about town it was a pretty tight fit to get the inflatable mattress down in the 'lounge'.

We made it out the to the British Museum over a couple of days. It is gargantuan but luckily its free (seeing the theme yet) so you can take it all in bite sized chunks. We immediately sought out the supposedly superior Egyptian artifacts but they were pretty similar to what we say in Egypt (I'm not sure why I thought they would be), but the Babylonian stone gates were awesome, I particularly liked the fact that the winged horsey centaur things had extra legs so that no matter what direction you looked at it from it appeared to have four legs.

The subtle problem we found with London was that as the temperature was quite cool we could quite happily walk for miles without passing out from heat exhaustion, unfortunately this meant that we soon learnt we had been avoiding walking in the foreign heat and subsequently had quite sore legs the whole time. The upshot of this of course is that London is a cool town to just wander round, lots of little churches, old buildings, random monuments and the occasional interesting shop too.

Our last couch stop in London was with Mike, another old software development friend of mine. We very generously had a whole bedroom to stay in, and were very impressed with the view from most of the way up a rather lonely apartment building. One thing we had never realised about London is that while it may be densely built up the vast majority of buildings are under 5 storeys so we could see London laid out before us pretty well.

The last cultural edifice on our list was the Tate Modern. I was quite keen as I quite like some modern art but it's fair to say my tastes are not nearly modern enough for the curators and I was lift pretty unsatisfied with the days visit. I was in fact slightly more impressed with the building itself, some kind of old warehouse with a vast space left open for no apparent reason.

We finally had a chance to meet up with some of Jacquie's friends on our second weekend so we packed some filled rolls and headed off to Greenwich. It has a large park as well as the small Royal Observatory which had some very interesting displays regarding the race for accurate time keeping couched in terms of Britain's naval superiority.

Having worn out our welcome in London we took a bus out to Oxford to see Jacquie's old uni friends Shane and Mel and their new boy. We spent our time fairly evenly between just hanging round and talking, eating, and wandering the lovely green lanes of Oxford. With a little side trip into Christ Church, one of the largest colleges that make up Oxford. It was pretty much as advertised, old Gothic stone architecture, and beautiful lawns with the odd hurrying student who stayed too long in yoga class and was late for lunch. Unfortunately with lunch on we weren't allowed into the dining hall which they used for all the Harry Potter movies and is apparently quite something.
Jacquie reminded me that my other first while in England was getting stung by a Wasp. We had been walking by the canals when a large bug had flown into Jacquie's hair which of course fell in my manly sphere to remove. Unfortunately it turned out to be a Wasp and I now know that I'm not allergic and that it is quite a good idea for me to immediately remove my wedding ring from the affected finger as I got quite a good swell going on.

Thanks a heap to all the folk that put us up on our stay. Ben & Trixi, Stu & Leah (and flatmates), Thomas, Mike, Shane and Mel for all putting us up while we were there, we had a fantastic time.

Turkey

Our border hop into Turkey was really quite short (at least if it wasn't for the sloooow Turkish authorities) and soon we arrived in Antakya (aka Antioch). Antakya is a pleasant small town built on a river nestled amongst nicely wooded hills, and with plenty of kebab shops ready to supply us with required nutrition. The main drawer in town was the small museum specialising in roman mosaics before moving on. The museum was quite something as every floor and wall was covered with relocated genuine roman mosaics, naked gods and goddesses, animals and plants were everywhere, all in delicately shaded patches of stone about 5x5mm. The other highlight turned out not to be the courtyard of randomly stacked amphorae and assorted roman column bits but the gloriously air-conditioned inner room with a fantastically carved roman marble sarcophagus. With hunting scenes intertwining in 3D around the outside, while a full-size likeness of the occupant reclined lazily upon the lid.

After Antakya we made our way into the heart of Turkey heading for the little village of Goreme in Cappodocia. The place has been a bit of a tourist mecca for years due to the unique 'fairy chimney' rock formations of the region. But getting there turned out to be a real mission. We caught a nice overnight coach most of the way from Antakya , but the idea that anyone would like to get any sleep seemed to be really foreign to the staff as anytime one or two people got off, they would turn all the lights on and wake up the entire bus. When it was our turn to get off it was about 4am, and we were both supremely shattered. We were put off at a junction with a massively overpriced roadside diner (no one does locational overpricing like the Turks), and left to flag down any passing bus headed in our direction, luckily we didn't have to wait too long and as the sun was coming up we squeezed onto a luxury coach, only to have to alight and take yet another bus to finally get to Goreme.

We decided to shake off our morning fog and walk up to our chosen hotel, where we were shown to our very own lovely cave room. The town is famous for its pointy rock formations and all the cave houses that past owners have chipped into them so the most natural thing in the world for all the local hotels is to continually dig themselves new rooms. It was quite pleasant as several feet of rock is remarkably good for keeping the room cool, although the ceiling above the shower had a habit of disintegrating on me which was a little worrying.

The main tourist spot in town is the so called Open Air Museum. This is a cluster of preserved cave dwellings and temples built by early Christians to hide away from the authorities (before the Byzantine empire eventually became officially Christian). A couple of the caves had some very good paintings of saints and the like although most of the art was in fairly poor repair (look this good when you are 1600 you will not).

We headed all the way back to the coast pretty soon and stopped in a small seaside vacation town called Kizkalesi. We arrived in town and wandered through the narrow streets trying to find a recommended hotel and ended up asking directions from another hotelier. He didn't speak English but immediately summoned a nearby shopkeeper we had the best room in the hotel with a view over the castle in the harbour for a 40% discount and were left feeling quite confused by the sudden outbreak of hospitality. The following day we got to explore the landward castle and had a very good time exploring the ruins alone except for some local tourists who kept reappearing from unexpected directions.

We broke up the trip along the coast to Antalya by stopping in Anamur, but were so confused by the local buses and distracted by high quality internet provision that we couldn't even be bothered going to the beach (but we did have good kebabs). Our trip really did need breaking as the coastline is incredibly windy but incredibly picturesque. It's steep hills crashing into Mediterranean waters with the occasional town surrounded by miles of banana greenhouses for variety.

Antalya is a big tourist town and quite developed, but manages to remain a certain amount of charm with a relaxed old town by the remains of a roman dock. We just wandered the streets for a fare while before venturing out to find some of life's little comforts (namely Internet and Burger King).

Where I really started to enjoy myself in Turkey was when we arrived in Olympos. The day was looking dire after another three bus mission in Turkish heat, involving confusing Antalya buses to the mall outside of town, and then discovering that the mall was enormous and that the required connecting bus stop was at the far corner (perceived pack weight is directly proportional to ambient temperature). But two cheap bus trips later we were in the tiny seaside village of Olympos and things were looking up. The accommodation in the village is divided between backpacker oriented party hostels and more turk oriented camps. Always wanting to avoid the party crowd we found ourselves a wee free standing cottage in the camp nearest the beach and immediately rejoiced as the breakfast and dinner buffets we had bought with our accommodation were fantastic.

Getting to the beach at Olympos is a bit of a walk beside a small river between two hills scattered with ancient Lycian tombs. We did have a proper explore later but on our first day we headed straight down to the pebbly beach for a dip in the water. Quite unlike anything at home the hot stones make for hard walking, and the water is incredibly calm and clear. So after finding us a spot on the packed beach we immediately jumped in for a cool off. Not being much of a swimmer at all I'd been trying to practise whenever I've had the chance on this trip and I can't recommend the Mediterranean enough for learning to swim, calm and buoyant it made my life very easy and by the next day when we took a day cruise out to some of the nearby islands I was able to do short bursts around the boat balanced by a lot of lying on my back. The cruise itself was great, pottering around the bays and islands and anytime it was getting too hot it would be time to jump in the water again.

The other thing we did in Olympos in the five days we ended up staying (other than swimming and eating (a lot)) was a trip around to the next bay to the eternal flames at Chimaera. After a hike up a decent sized hill with the rest of our van mates we could eventually smell sausages and just after we arrived at a barren patch of ground from which foot high flames spurted. The quite believable story goes that these methane fires have been present in more or less the same spot for at least the last 2000 years. And sure enough some enterprising turk had brought a long fork and a pack of pre-cookeds and was proceeding to have a cook up.

Next stop was the larger town of Fethiye where again we booked a day cruise and headed out into the islands. My swimming had improved to the point where I was quite relaxed in the water now and could swim back and forth between boat and land pretty happily (although both of us were left with pretty sore shoulders the next day). Again it was a great day although we had less luck with our boat and ended up on a bigger and much more crowded vessel.

We did two more day trips out of Fethiye. One out to Saklıkent Canyon where we joined the crowds wading past the freezing clear water springs and up the rocky canyon river. The other was just over the hill to a nearby swimming beach. The odd thing was that our bus passed through a quite sizable British holiday enclave plastered with signs like "£5.50 Chinese buffet", and "Every FA Cup match LIVE". The british seemed well entrenched but our bus driver often wouldn't even stop for them as they obviously annoyed him immensely seeming to expect to be able to pay for everything with British coins and for the bus driver to speak perfect english. Turks are helpful and generally want to understand you when you mispronounce the name of your intended destination, but most of them don't speak any English beyond basic counting. Once we got to the beach the cultural contrasts continued with a bunch of skinny english girls gleefully wandering around topless. The Turks quite rightly pride themselves on their tolerant secular society, that is to say almost all of them are observant Muslims but don't expect other people to be, but when one of the aforementioned girls plonked herself down next to a motherly Muslim women covered head-scarf to ankle I thought there was at least going to be words exchanged. But instead the women just turned her head and looked incredibly embarrassed for the young girl and waited for her to leave before going back to splashing her feet in the water.

Further up the coast Bodrum, is the party hard version of Fethiye. The hotel that we checked into immediately announced that they were just across the road from the loudest disco in Europe and then proceeded to demonstrate the sound deadening powers of their double glazed windows. Also home to the former wonder of the ancient world, the Mausoleum of Mausolus unfortunately most of the mausoleum was recycled into the fort guarding the harbour and now just a hole remains. The fort itself was worth a look though as it had passed hands so many times, it was quite rambling and had one tower built by each of half a dozen different European nations. But apart from just strolling amongst the the square white houses overgrown with Bougainvillea (they apparently have very strict building codes) there was not much else for us here and we soon headed further north.

Northwards was the small town of Selchuk and the ruins of the roman city of Ephesus (as in Paul's letter to the Ephesians). Selchuk is small and actually quite friendly, we had very pleasant hoteliers and the general tone was quite good but by this point we had seen so many roman ruins that the great city of Ephesus (largely talked up as the greatest roman ruins around) was a little underwhelming.

Which was OK as our next stop was a short look around the Gallipoli peninsula and all the emotions that entailed. We stayed at a nearby town over the Dardanelles from Gallipoli and took a morning ferry across to join up with our tour group. The ferry was so busy that the crew abandoned the attempt to collect money from walk-on passengers and just focused on the traffic. About midday we set off around the peninsula under the guidance of a young local turk who did a very good job of explaining the history of the area to everyone. Most people on the tour were Australian, Kiwi, or British but somehow a middle-aged West Virginian couple wound up on the tour too. They seemed completely confused the whole day as not only did they have no idea what the tour was about (they had been to Troy that morning and thought it was more of the same) but they had absolutely no idea what our guide was saying at any point. I won't say much else about the day except that I really felt it was worthwhile and that I can see exactly why everyone has been advised to stay away on Anzac day, there really isn't a lot of room (it's hardly the kind of a place that suits a crowd) and any more development will just further degrade the site.

After Gallipoli we made our first of three trips into Istanbul. I will write about them all here rather than chronologically for my own sanity. Our first visit we stayed in a dorm room downtown in the old city right near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, but it was really quite unnecessary as Istanbul has a good public transport system with regular trams with connecting funiculars (cable cars) along the normal tourist route. And if we had wanted to go further afield we could have taken one of dozens of overworked ferries across the harbour (to Asia), or up the river.

As it turned out my aversion to dorms was again proved well founded as we had a very interesting night. Jacquie and I were sharing one bunk in a twelve bed dorm with me at ground level. As the night progressed the person I was sleeping head-to-head with gradually advanced their arms and their pillow into space I was fairly fond of keeping my head in. But with plenty of spare bunks I decided to just relocate rather than excerpt my territorial claims. Crisis averted right? Several hours later the door I was now sleeping next to opens and in wanders a young shirtless man who proceeds to have a slow wander round the dorm and then started interfering with my pack. Needless to say I was less than impressed and hauled him bodily out of the dorm and into the reception where the startled nightwatchmen had to try and make sense of the whole business. The interloper claims he was trying to go to sleep in his bed (which had been issued to me earlier in the day) but luckily he was erratic enough for the nightwatchmen to simply pronounce "You don't stay here more" and I could return to bed for a few hours sleep.

The Hagia Sophia itself was damned impressive. A huge enclosed space with an enormous dome, and also quite impossible to photograph properly. It was under renovation when we were there (as it must be most of the time) and so unfortunately there was a neat blue scaffolding structure built inside the dome about 15 storeys high complete with elevator. The Hagia Sophia started out life as the chief cathedral of the state church of the Byzantine empire back when Istanbul was Constantinople. But shifted over to use as a mosque in the 14th century when the Ottomans took over. It was converted to a museum by Ataturk soon after the Turkish republic was founded, to ensure its accessibility to all Turks but with Muslims never being particularly shy about where they down their prayer mats it seems to still get a lot of use by the local Muslim population. The upstairs mezzanine allowed a great view of the structure as well as some of the gold leaf covered Byzantine mosaics that had been restored so far. Apparently the whole inside used to be covered with them but when the building was converted to a mosque they were just plastered over rather than being destroyed, an enlightened principal that would have gone a long way amongst the early Egyptian Christians.

The Blue Mosque facing the Hagia Sophia across the park, is still however very much a mosque. We were allowed inside to have a look but the majority of the space was roped off for use by the local parishioners. But we got a good look at the fantastic Islamic tiling and plaster carving that decorates the interior. The rest of town is pretty lively and we managed to spend quite a bit of time just walking around the harbourside and through the near by shopping areas.

We had a spare three weeks up our sleeve at this point so we flew to London and back, and did a bus loop out to Sofia in Bulgaria too but those are the topics of other posts.

Syria

Our entry to Syria was pretty odd, we had to catch a shared taxi to the border then another specialist border crossing taxi across it (the drivers passport was awesome), and then a bus from the border to the Damascus bus station and then yet another taxi to get downtown to where the hotels are. The only problem was we had no Syrian currency, we bought some biscuits from a shop at the bus station and tricked the guy into changing 4 Dinars for us, assuming there'd be ATM's and things in the big city. Unfortunately 6 ATM's later we discovered that the banking network seems to take the day off on Friday's (it is the Islamic weekend after all). But after wandering around for a bit looking very worried about how we were going to be our taxi driver, we were approached by a not terribly dubious character that spoke some English and offered his services as a foreign exchange dude. Of course this involved walking past the closed exchange office to his fabric shop where he whipped out an enormous brick of cash and gave us exactly what Jacquie had calculated as the fair exchange rate for our remaining Jordanian funds and sent us on our way. So far Dubya's Axis of Evil spiel was looking pretty thin.

Damascus is a pretty run down, busy sort of place. So busy the locals actually use those overpass bridges that optimistic governments often erect over busy thoroughfares. We had some trouble finding a hotel as the guide book recommended ones had suffered from both recent high inflation and a glut of guide-book reading tourists. But after getting lost trying to find a backup option I found a reasonable room on the 2nd floor of a startlingly non-right-angled old courtyard house. Every time we climbed the two flights of stairs there were terribly amusing head bending and body leaning episodes as we tried to stay aligned with the escheresque floor, wall, and ceiling angles.

While I am not really a fan of bazaar's as a shopping destination, having gotten over the exoticness of it all quite a while ago, I had read a herald article about the Damascus Grand Bazaar, and I was surprisingly undisappointed. It is probably the oddest placed Victorian building on the planet with a long long central mall with heavy cast iron arches crossing overhead with the occasonal hole in the opaque panellng (probably glass) between the arches letting in spots of light, it was one of those rare buildings that actually made me happy. Of course there were a whole mess of shops and people desperately trying to sell us all manner of junk, food, spices, and even the occasional knick knack that you might like to take home with you.

Passing through the more warren like section of the bazaar you eventually come to the Umayyad Mosque, one of the few mosques we've actually been allowed into throughout the middle east, they go so far as to provide goofy grey robes for all the inappropriately dressed females (basically anyone not already wearing robes). The building is actually really significant as it is one of the oldest mosques around, started being exclusively Muslim in 706 after being a shared use church/mosque since pretty much the start of Islam. It also supposedly houses both the head of John the Baptist and the remains of the great Arab General Saladin. Beside from that it is actually quite attractive and family friendly place. With kids running around, people resting and talking around the outside men and women praying in adjacent sections the same mosque (it seems that mostly if there is actually a women's section to a mosque it is above and out of sight of the men's section).

Continuing on from the Mosque there is more bazaar then the old town opens up into the Christian Quarter which is a little more well to do, is decorated with the occasional original nicely preserved roman column, and even sports the odd liquor license. Why do Christians get their own quarter in the heart of a very very Muslim country? Obviously because they're in the bible (t00). Unfortunately the Chapel of Saint Paul was all closed up tight when we eventually found it, but it commemorates the spot where the Apostle Paul got lowered over the city walls in a basket to flee his persecutors.

We are the worst tourists ever when it comes to buying souvenirs, but we almost always manage to sample the local food stuffs and in Damascus we were pretty keen on the local take on soft jubes, which appear to actually be made with fruit but will congeal into one sticky uber-jube if you leave them in the heat. This led to one of my finest hours as I devoured an apple sized sticky monstrosity with Jacquie looking on in horror (now how often does that happen).

We also visited the National Museum of Damascus on what was a scorcher of a day. The musuem was unusual in that they'd taken the front of some fortress or another and reconstructed it around the doorway so there was a big faux castle gate welcoming you in. The museum had quite a good collection of statues and things from around the region but all was forgotten when we discovered that there was a reconstructed Byzantine family tomb underneath the building that was at least 15 degrees cooler than anywhere else. Not just that but all the little drawers that the various people had been interred in all had a nicely carved portrait of the occupant on the front.

After Damascus we hit the road out to the finest Roman ruins in Syria at Palmyra. We were there before the tourist season and it was insanely hot, but we had the place pretty much to ourselves,and could wander around the ruined roman road and baths through all the columns and arches chasing lizards to our hearts content. We had our first motorcycle souvenir seller as a local fullah drove right the way across the site to try and sell us some arabic 'tea-towel' headwear. Apart from the reasonably standard roman ruins, there is a fairly rare Temple of Bel (or Ba'al) on site, but apart from the (closed) tunnel for bringing the sacrificial animals it was pretty standard too. Big stone walls closing off a courtyard, and a small better decorated inner shrine for the priestly fold to do their thing in. Unfortunately by this time we were pretty much cooked and all the local taxi drivers were smarter than trawling the deserted ruins for fares so we had to walk back to town in the 40 plus heat. Luckily there was a small restaurant where we loaded up on fluids and were provided with samples of local fruit by the owner.

Making it back into Palmyra town we headed to the bus stand where we had left our backpacks, until we were cut off by an approximate facsimile of the American Army. Smoke was pouring out of burning oil drums, as a huge crowd of locals gathered to watch some heavily armed jeeps race up and down the streets under the watchful eye of several movie cameras. But by the time we got there they seemed to have gotten their shots and we cam become much more interesting to the assembled children than the movie making.

That same night we made it into a small town called Hama famous for its oversize all wooden water wheels (aka norias). Hama is actually quite a pleasant, quiet little town and we had a good time wandering around on foot. Down the river we passed several of the norias that are kept turning for the tourists. They were built to raise water from the river into several aqueducts leading away from town. The really distinctive thing about them is actually their noise as they continuously creak along on their wooden pivot, but don't seem to be terribly effective at moving water.I wouldn't want to own a farm relying on them.

Out of Hama we did a day trip in a van to two near by crusader fortresses. First up was the smaller fortress of Masyaf situated in a small village it looked the worse for wear but turned out to be quite a fun explore with just me, Jacq and the japanese guy and three random eastern europeans we had brought with us. The fort is quite twisty and as you climbed up or (indeed down into the depths) you were never really sure where the next door would pop you out.

After Masyaf it was onto the main event, Crac des Chevaliers. Before tackling it though we braved the tourist trap restaurant our driver recommended. Against all expectations we had an enormous and reasonably priced mixed mezze lunch served by definitively the most camp man we had met in many months. Fortified we wandered into the castle, and up the huge broad entry ramp. The castle featured a broad wall between the keep and the nearest hill which had spectacular views across the valley, while the keep itself was damp, cool, and many arched and felt like you really could shelter quite a sizable army safely under its thick stone walls and roofs.

Next (quick) stop was Aleppo where the main thing to see was the citadel in the centre of town. Somewhat conical with a huge broad base you enter up a causeway and then find that someone left a small village up the top. There were narrow alleyways, unoccupied shops and homes, a small palace and even a small roman style theatre (they really are everywhere, I think we need one in Dargaville).

Latakia is a very (culturally) western town on the west coast of Syria up near turkey, full of students and bad attempts at western food. But it was somewhat relaxing and we took off on a fairly long walk along the promenade along the cliffs above the Mediterranean Ocean. We were there on the weekend and it seemed like a very popular place to be, loads of families lined up to buy fresh boiled corn, and occasionally heading into the expensive restaurants thereabouts. We spent a while watching the sunset and looking for Cyprus before taking a taxi home and thinking about getting to Turkey the next day.