Week Fifty-Five

We get in 45 minutes late, I dump my rucksack in left luggage and head back to the flat where Milla, as well as being super-ecstatic to see me, is almost completely ready. We make up a short list to do, but time is against us: Milla spends all morning packing, while I look for somewhere to develop my Transylvanian films (unsuccessfully - or at least, not within the time we have). Both of us are less than successful, in fact, since it takes Milla until 13.30 before she's ready to leave the flat - we still have important documents to photocopy (for back-up and security reasons), Milla's leftover stuff to mail to Scotland, and to say good-bye to Milla's mother.
We hit Milla's mother's flat first, where there's a guy doing tiling: Milla goes to xerox and post almost immediately, and is away for ages. I do my best at conversation and play with Tina for a bit (she was happy to see me as well): we were going to leave at 14.30, to hit the station for a comfortable 15.00, but 14.30 comes and goes. Then 14.45. Me? I would have left, frankly, but Milla's got my passport (to xerox some pages) which proves she's as smart as I am. She returns just before 15.00 and there's a rushed and tearful farewell before we bundle out and try to hail a cab (way too late for public transport - we had to take a taxi to her mother's as well). The streets of Bucuresti are, of course, packed and it's not until 15.45 that we reach Gara de Nord where, conveniently, the buses leaves from. We buy our tickets and then, with the woman insisting that the bus must leave on time, I dash off to get my rucksack. I breeze past security at the door (they almost don't want to let me into the station since I don't have a ticket), rush up to the left luggage desk and find it empty and un-manned: they seem to be on a break until 16.00!! I manage to rouse someone from the opposite office, who comes and gives me my bag. And then it's back out, to where my fellow passengers have vanished: Milla's at the corner, waving frantically for me. The bus, it transpires, actually leave from a block away - it already has its engine running and pulls away as the door closes behind me.

So we're off, but without buying any supplies for the trip and without getting rid of my excess lei (about $15 worth) and without even moving stuff to/from my rucksack (like euros/dollars for the Turkish border). We drive for a couple of blocks and then part and wait, apparently for another driver, for 15 minutes: great. When we're finally stocked up with enough crew, we set off again but instead of hitting the ring road we proceed right through the centre of Bucuresti to make a second pick-up on the other side of town. The back of the bus is full of gypsies, the front is full of Turks, and everyone seems to pretty much know everyone else. The back of the bus also seems to be full of puppies, in little canvas bags which intermittently yip away to themselves. Our collective trip through Bucuresti takes an hour (!), and then the B-road to the border at Giurgiu takes another 40 minutes (Bucuresti's right down next to Bulgaria). We drive through the dull town and then along cracked and narrow tarmac through the port, where we stop at Passport Control and Customs. I'm a little worried, since my Romanian entry visa was seven or eight months ago (people have said that I didn't need to extend it - various officials have said that - but that's no guarantee). Passport control, although taking another 45 minues, holds no problems and neither do Customs - a guy shines a torch in the hold amd then wanders along the bus (presumably looking for guns or something). The fact we have no problems may also be because the puppies have been sedated and, in their little bags, put in the hold. Now they just look like irregularly-shaped luggage.
The bus drives onto a cold and windy ferry (we have to walk aboard): there's a lot of moving stuff around quickly (that would be "stuff" as in boxes of alcohol, cigarettes and other undisclosed products): this could be the reason we're using a cold and ancient ferry when there's a perfectly good, nice, new bridge across the Danube here. After 15 minutes, the boat finally starts to move: to add insult to the delay, we chug upriver almost to the bridge, and then back downriver - the half-hour trip, rather than the two-minute drive. Our last views of Romania, in the darkness (we've taken so long that night has fallen), are of the industrial shore and water-slide at Giurgiu.

Final thoughts? Lots. It's a kind of mixed-up country, Romania, embracing haphazardly the last fifty yearsr of Western "culture" in an attempt to catch up. Little details, like "Nice Cow" cheese, are sweet and remind me of Singapore 12 years ago. Gypsies are everywhere, of course (though less in Transylvania), collecting scrap iron in horse-drawn carts, or selling imported toiletry products, or simply stealing, or begging with one hand out and the other holding a baby. And with Schengen letting Romanians in, and the EU saying gypsies can't have distinct passports, I guess this pattern is spreading all across Western continental Europe. And there's the strangely corrupt medical system - the dichotomy of a country where you can get corrective laser surgery for myopia, but there area larger number of cripples, deformed or missing limbs, or simply people with only one or two remnants of teeth. You often get people (even inside churches) begging for money for operations/treatments which they can't affrd (carrying around test results or prescripions as evidence): and this is an a country where medical treatment is supposedly paid for by the state.
And having left Bucuresti, I suppose I finally have to give it a score - for the first couple of months, that would have been 2/10 but I've grown fonder of it. There's a lot of life and opportunity and offbeat vibrancy, shoulder-to-shoulder wit the grey blocks, the dismal winter, the poverty, etc. So it finally gets 4/10, 'cos it wasn't too bad a place to live and, with insider knowledge, you can buy or do pretty much anything you want to.

Meanwhile, back at the border, the ferry's misaligned itself with the dock - so all the passengers get off, but the buses can't. While they try to fix this problem, five busloads of people trail across the concrete landscape of the empty, partly-overgrown and hollow cargo terminal of Ruse ("Pyce" - we're in Cyrillic again). A cold, chill wind slaps us about, and I reflect that this is the most hostile, unwelcoming and depressing entry to a country yet. We smoke, and stamp our feet among the yellow cranes, concrete huts and stray dogs, and eventually the buses join us and we get to board (no idea why we had to get off). And then the buses are processed in the order they reached Giurgiu (there must be a clutch that leave Bucuresti at 16.00) - ours, of course, was last.
It's 20.30 by the time we finally get through Bulgarian immigration and, shortly after, we stop at a little roadside café (a PECTOPAHT) where we get a meal of sorts (hey, it fills a space) and a toilet stop (first since - well, the side of a concrete hut at the Bulgarian border, if the truth be told). And then the long drive through Bulgaria, during which we sleep off and on, and observe the differences between Romanian and Bulgarian blocks (Bulgarian ones have bigger windows). Milla's been to Ruse before, but no further, so this is further south than she's ever been. After a little while, the bus company gives us all a glass of champagne (sorry, fizzy wine), presumably to help us sleep - we like them already.

At 04.00 there's another stop, still in Bulgaria: we clamber off for a cigarette. The gypsies unload their little canvas bags from the hold (unload by tossing out onto the tarmac). The little, kicking bags are briefly opened and soon there are puppies pissing everywhere - thoroughbreds, mostly, and large dogs: St. Bernards, a Dobermann, a couple of American Spaniels. They're all very cute, and a couple of the passengers (eg. Milla) are a little concerned, especially when the big gypsy woman rounds up the (about ten) puppies and gives them another dose of sedative with a large syringe. Then they're bagged up, tossed back in the hold (which is now mysteriously half-empty compared with when we left Bucuresti - the border ferry is probably to blame) and off we go again. They'll presumably be sold in Istanbul, our little furry fellow-travellers.
Fifteen minutes later we're at the border, and it's the usual routine leaving Bulgaria: someone from the bus takes all the passports; they're checked and stamped; then a controller walks through the bus making sure that the faces match the passports. At the Turkish Entry, however, just after the crew have stocked up on Duty Free, we have a delay - I need a visa, and Milla and another guy need their passports checked since this is their first time in Turkey. "Ten pound", the police cashier (200 metres back up the road) tells me: I ended up paying in euros (16) - he had change in a whole bunch of currencies - and I get a little sticker in my passport and then finally an entry stamp. You'd think the bus crew would know the routine and get it sorted out before we all queued and had to be told by the Turkish passport control people. Ah well.
There's a big hold-up at the customs - men in black leather jackets and men with guns are doing some kind of operation. All the luggage is removed from all the coaches, which are then searched, and a man briefly checks all the bags (we all have to stand with them, outside in the light rain). Presumably they're looking for drugs or something else specific, or else money has changed hands, since the inspector walks straight past the little puppy bags (some of which are still twitching, despite the recent sedative). Hey-ho: the gypsy woman was worried for a while, though, judging by the way she was talking on the mobile phone. Finally, at about 06.00 in the morning (when we originally scheduled to arrive in Istanbul), we head out into Edirne and Turkey (country 22?) and get some more sleep.

We wake in bright daylight, a little after 08.00, with or driver negotiating the stop-start morning traffic of downtown Istanbul (the "I" has a dot above it, signifying an "ee" sound - otherwise it's more of an "uh" sound: due to keyboard restrictions, though, I'm sticking to one type of "i"). The bus stops in a little, fairly central bus station and the other passengers disembark and scatter, many into waiting cars. We don our rucksacks, fish out the 20,000,000 lira (yes, that's 20 million) which I brought from the UK and head east according to my cheap plastic compass. The bus terminal is apparently in Laleli (stress on the first syllable), perhaps 3 kilometres from eastern Sultanahmet, were all the hostels are. Quick geography lesson - old Byzantium was built on a eastward jutting spur of land at the south end of the Bosphorus. Modern Istanbul occupies this spur (Topkapi in the NE corner; Sultanahmet in the SE corner; Eminonu west of Topkapi, Beyazit south of Eminonu, Aksaray west of Beyazit), the hilly land over the Golden Horn to the north (Beyoglu, including Karakoy at the bottom, Galatasary halfway up, and Taksim at the top), and much of the Asian shore (including Uskudar opposite Beyoglu, and Harem appropriately opposite Topkapi).
All that aside, we've arrived in Beyazit and have quite a walk to our hostel of choice (I've been carrying a leaflet since the Czech Rep for the Orient Hostel). Istanbul has a unique atmosphere - chaotic energy mixed with a huge social variation; tacky tourist trap mixed with genuine historical metropolis; and traditional Islamic culture mixed with high-tech sophisticated modernity - and all of that is topped with an awful lot of people. And an awful lot of that awful lot, at least around Sultanahmet, is backpackers and other tourists. Even before 09.00 the hostel touts are out, the racks of postcards are up, and the tourist stalls are open. We walk past Hagia Sophie (wow) and down the hill towards the shore and find ourselves in backpacker land. Hostels, laundries, cafés, rooftop terraces, travel agencies and (this being Turkey) carpet and ceramics shops. We look at the Orient, leave our bags in their locked luggage room, and look round other places in the area. They're much of a muchness (we check out their terrace views as well - all of the Bosphorus, none inland) and the going rate is 10 million (million!) or $6/£4 in a dorm, $8 in a double/twin. We liked one of the touts on the way down (very sympathique) and he was offering us $5 each in a dorm or $6 in a double, and we took a flyer. The hostel is down the hill and west of the Blue Mosque - there's a little cluster there, which we also check, but the Ararat (Arafat?) hostel seems optimal.

We get cash from an ATM, find a coffee place, have a little breakfast, decide to take a double room (it's sort of a delayed honeymoon, after all), go back and pay the guy and then decide what to do. It's only the middle of the day, so we head back along the Hippodrome. The basic shape still survives - the track has become roads, and the large SW stadium has now been mistaken for a small hill and someone's built a small school on top. There's a park along the middle which contains a number of tourist landmarks, mainly the stuff that ran up the middle of the racetrack: all of these are now in little pits, since the ground level's been rising for ages. There's a neat Egyptian obelisk, from Karnak, which has really sharp hieroglyphs on it and must have been a real pain to move from halfway down Egypt; it's on four tatty metal blocks, on a large marble base with pictures and inscriptions. Next is a twisting metal column which they (the Roman/Byzantines) nicked from Delphi - it's really impressively worked considering its age, and must have been even more impressive when it had three snake's heads radiating out from the top (some drunk Polish count apparently knocked them off). Finally there's a really tatty second obelisk, made from blocks: it's overlooked by most tourists because it's dull. It used to be covered in bronze plates (which the Crusaders nicked), and is tatty because in later centuries Janissaries used to climb it as a test of strength/bravery: it's less tatty at the top, which implies most of them didn't make it.

Also in the Hippodrome park is a boring modern (1902) "fountain": in Turkey fountains are ornamental gazebo-like affairs with taps which dispense water around the sides. And directly opposite that end of the park is Hagia Sophia. Biggest church in the world, largest unsupported dome in the world, and so on - the outside is a bit of a mess. It's like a big Pantheon, with extra semi-domes on all sides: it's also got four solid minarets now, from its mosque days, and a whole bunch of irregular solid buttresses which have been added over the years to stop it falling down. Oh, and most of the outside walls are painted a kind of dull pink, which is peeling. So, externally, it may be famous but it's a disaster.

The way in faces the Hippodrome, and out nasty nasty surprise is that it's $9 each (less for students) and a further $9 if we want to go up on the balcony: having paid for four days at the hostel (we already reckon Istanbul's a five-day sort of a place), it's turning into an expensive day. We fork out the money bitterly and go around the side - tourists now get to enter through the Emperor's special door - passing a few remnants of the previous Hagia Sophia church on the way. Inside is a wide vestibule, like in an Orthodox church (I think it's called a "narthex") with panels and displays. Then there's a second wide narthex, with postcards, books, jewellery and the like on display, and then through the high, massive, Pantheon-esque doors and we're inside.

The first thing you notice is the scaffolding, taking up exactly a quarter of the space under the main dome (what a pisser - I went to the Cistine Chapel, and they were restoring that as well): the second thing you notice is just what a huge space it is. There's an expectation in buildings this size that there are going to be massive central columns holding the whole thing up - but they don't exist here. It's a huge, graceful, echoing space - quite different from the shabby, block-like exterior and quite impossible to convey in a photo. And it's looking in good nick for a 1500 year old still-in-use building: in fact, I think it comes second only the the Roman bridge in Cordoba in that respect. The inside was probably covered in mosaic and frescoes, and they're mostly gone, replaced by fake marble panels: we don't know whether by the Ottomans or by the current restoration work (which has been going on for years already).

Definitely dating to the mosque-period are the various fittings inside: the off-centre mihrab (niche facing Mecca), proving that it wasn't built as a mosque; the pulpit (minbar); the Sultan's Loge - a private, raised room where there was less risk of him being assassinated. The most noticeable additions are several gold-on-green disks with Arabic text - "Allah", "Mohammed" and brief Koranic notes: they've hung just above the first floor gallery and seem permanently on the point of crashing to the floor. On the way out, attention is drawn to the famous mosaic of the Virgin Mary being presented with the city (by Constantine) and the church (by Justinian). After that, you pass the particularly graceful "fountain" (all mosques have fountains or taps, for ritual and symbolic washing - head, hands and feet).

Outside, we follow the route of the old main Roman road (and now main road into Sultanahmet), Divan Yolu: the section in Tourist Central is virtually pedestrianised with restricted access except for the large and massive Istanbul trams. At the point where it widened to Constantine's Forum, you can still see Constantine's Column (as it were) - truncated, but loud and proud. Other remnants include shards of peacock-feather white marble columns, by the sides of the road. Eventually we reach the Grand Bazaar, a massive covered market (over 4000 stalls) where you can buy . . . well, pretty much everything, at a guess. Postdating the Ottoman conquest, it's remarkably close to the old Theodosian Forum at the western end of the Roman main street. We spend a couple of hours in there, and in the neighbouring streets (into which the Bazaar has overflowed): it's easy to get lost, and there's a constant barrage of greetings, which can be quite wearing. The most useful thing about it is that types of merchandise (eg. for luggage) tend to be clustered together, which presumably keeps prices down (or at least similar).

We emerge from the Book Market (we've already decided that we need a specific guide book for Istanbul, and are looking for an affordable but good one) at the back of the Beyazit Mosque. We wander back along the main street, stop at a supermarket (Milla asked a policeman for directions), and then find a cheap café where we have "pide" (Pee-day) - they insist on calling in "Turkish pizza", but it's nothing like pizza (Italian or American): it's a thin bread base in a long thin oval with curled-up edges and an omelette of mixed ingredients in the middle. Actually, it was quite good and cost about £1.
After that, it was back to the hostel and sleep, after discussing tentative plans for tomorrow - Topkapi features high on the list.

After an acceptable but small breakfast (Milla lifts some bread for later), we head out mid-morning: like yesterday, there's a little rain to start with but it soon clears, though never really gets hot. First stop is the Arasta Bazaar, a row of shops being the Sultanahmet ("Blue") Mosque, the rent from which provides income for the mosque. There's good quality stuff here, and the traders are much less agressive in their techniques, but the prices are higher than elsewhere. After that, and after we find the way in, it's the Blue Mosque itself.

It's a wonderful, delicate graceful thing (actually white and grey) which easily out-impresses Hagia Sophie: the minarets, for example, look as if they're meant to be there. After removing our shoes, and Milla donning a headscarf, we go inside and the first thing we notice is the smell of sweaty feet inside - this later proves quite common for mosques. It's bright inside, thanks to all the windows: also, there are massive, flat chandeliers hanging about three metres above the floor as if, despite building a huge, high dome, they actually wanted something small and cosy instead. Also, most of the walls are tiled (that's where the "blue" comes from): the Turks are very proud of their Iznik (formerly Nicaea) ceramics, though they seem fairly average to me. Once you stand inside for a while, you notice the main difference with Hagia Sophia - the four immense columns they had to build to keep the dome up. It's much more like a conventional large building in that respect.

Outside it's sunny and we cross Sultanahmet to Hagia Sophia, wind our way round the side, and come out at Topkapi (the final "i" actually has no dot). Actually, we come at at Topkapi wall, which runs all the way round the complex. We eventually find our way in and, after locating the ticket office, get another nasty surprise: like Hagia Sophie, entry to Topkapi is $9 - entry to the Harem and the Treasury are a further $9 each: $27 each to see the whole complex. Ouch. Ah well - we're in Istanbul, and we can't not see Topkapi: after yesterday's scary $100, it looks like today's gonna be a killer as well.
Topkapi complex is divided into four increasingly smaller courtyards leading in from naer Hagia Sophia to the northern (Bosphorus/Golden Horn) shore. The First Courtyard (which you don't have to pay for) contains little except the old Hagia Irini church: it's just a courtyard. The Second Courtyard (past the metal detectors and x-ray machines) is more your regular courtyard - it's flanked by the kitchens (displaying Imperial crockery - not a patch on Vienna's Silberkammer) and the stables (closed to visitors, possibly not to horses): it also has the ornate rooms where the council met, complete with little window from which the Sultan could watch and listen (and presumably check attendance).

The Third Courtyard is more what we paid to come and see: the Sultan's throne room; the fantastic Library of Ahmet III (empty of books, dull on the outside, but pretty cool inside); the Treasury (at this point we decide $9 is too much for four rooms, and skip it); and the collection of relics. The relics are pretty cool - they have bits and pieces from Biblical and Islamic history, some of which are more convincing than others. As far as relics go, Islam has a great advantage over Christianity in that it was an open, established religion before Mohammed died - so locks of Mohammed's hair, his sandals, his stationery set (seriously) are all liable to be genuine. Items like Abraham's turban and Moses Rod are more doubtful: interesting items include models of the Dome of the Rock, and a bunch of keys and locks used at the Kaaba when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

The last of the four rooms of relics, which contains the holiest Islamic stuff, has a little man in a booth chanting from the Koran; unlike the other rooms, virtually no-one is talking in this one, which may have been the point. That notwithstanding, a mobile phone rings and the owner retreats quickly, embarrassed. The holiest item, Mohammed's cloak (they have a couple of his swords as well), is in a gold casket in another room - you can look at it only from a distance. The best item is a letter her wrote to the Coptic Christian leader (Patriarch?) saying "Come and join me - we're on the same side really - things could go badly for you otherwise" in more flowery (but still quite blunt language). Interestingly they have an old pair of his sandals, and also a footprint which seems to be in marble (?!) - anyway, either this latter is a fake or else his feet were too big for his sandals. Other collections in the Third Courtyard include weapons and clothing - I was particularly taken with Selim II's Red-with-Yellow-Polka-Dots kaftan: this was presumably to help distinguish him from Selim the Grim.

The Fourth Courtyard is the prettiest and most photogenic, mostly made up of gardens and kiosks (where stuff was stored and issue, rather than the modern variety selling cigarettes and newspapers - there's a pharmacy, one for the turbans, etc.: the storage niches are very ornate), and views across the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. We potter round and then head back to the Harem. Visits are by (rushed) guided tour, and a set number of people are allowed through every ten minutes or so. I suspect people are turned away towards the end of the day (it closes at 16.00): certainly, during the summer months, they stop selling tickets fairly early in the day. We end up at the very end of a group, and see people behind us trapped in the turnstiles. Ha.

The guide system doesn't work that well - she speaks in Turkish and English, and people talk loudly during both. Ah well, the Harem's kind of interesting anyway. We start in the Black Eunuchs' areas (there were 200 Black Eunuchs, who pretty much ran the place), go through some wives' living quarters, then the "Valide Sultan's" rooms (that's the Sultan's mother, at several points in history more powerful than the Sultan - which must have made Harem politics interesting), then the Sultan's quarters (including a personal toilet which no-one else was allowed to use), then a double room which the Crown Princes used (again, with the neat built-in niche shelves) and finally the area where the Sultan's "favourites" hung out ("favourites" were one level below wife, one level above normal Harem women). The whole thing takes 35-40 minutes, only covers half the rooms (the other half seem to be used for administration/offices), and after that whirlwind effort we decide it's time to split from Topkapi - our favourite bits were Ahmed II's library, and the Crown Princes Double Room in the Harem. Final thoughts? Nice, crumbling in places (true of most of Topkapi), but not worth the money and not really competition for the Alhambra in Spain.

On the way out we try to get into Hagia Irini (an ex-Orthodox church which easily predates the Topkapi palace complex), but they're setting up for some concert and shoo us away. Just past the outer wall (buses really have to squeeze through the gate) is Ahmet III's other great contribution - a large and ornate "fountain". Next stop, we figure we really need a guidebook, and set off back to the book bazaar to find one - Milla recalled seeing one really cheap there, but that turned out not to be the case: even so, she managed to get £1 or so off the price of our selection. Almost the first thing we read in it, of course, is that you can't negotiate/haggle at the book bazaar . . .

We try to cut north through the University, but it's walled (?!) with a huge and impressive gate and the guard won't let us through, so we have to talk around it to get to the Suleymaniye Mosque. Milla's become quite taken with Roxelana ("Hurrem Sultan") and her tomb is here, as is that of Suleyman the Magnificent (Suleyman the Law-Giver, he's known as here), but both are closed. The "Tourist Entrance" signs are down for the mosque itself, but Milla insists we visit. it's one of the grandest in Istanbul, designed by Suleyman's architect Sinan (his name keeps cropping up too, and he's buried just over the street from this mosque), and has nice windows and tiles. to be honest, all these imperial mosques are beginning to look the same to me - I'm trying to work out a system for identifying them on the basis of number of minarets and numbers of balconies around each minaret.
We emerge in the darkness and head downhill through some dodgy areas, emerging in Eminonu by the Galat Bridge, where the local ferries dock at four terminals. After checking the times (we mean to do a cheap late-night cruise, ie. by ferry, sometime), we have a truly awful kebab (it's mostly "kebap" here) and then head back uphill to the hostel, nipping into a late-night stationery place to buy pens.

We'd quite like to eat/drink out tonight, and recheck a place we saw this morning - their singular whirling dervish is a bit lame, and only whirls for five minutes every two hours, so we have a late night wander instead. We stop between Hagia Sophie and the Blue Mosque for some late night photos with the mini-tripod: in the little park there are a few street dogs, which cheers Milla up. All we've seen to date are cats: lots of them and often looking comfortably well fed, especially around the tourist sites. Then it's back to the hostel to bed.

Observations up to this point: I quite like the wandering tea-sellers, in antique costumes with urns strapped to their backs. Also, Turkey is football-crazy - there seem to be endless matches on TV, and almost all the papers are almost all football. And Turkish women's legs are almost without exception horrible: you don't see many adult women with short/medium skirts, but all the schoolgirls wear just-above-the-kneww skirts - to be honest, if they can't manage good legs at 14/15/16 then they're never going to. I haven't worked out if this is why most of them cover up, or if it's a sort of selective breeding consequence of concealing Islamic clothing (many of them have nice eyes). Don't suppose it matters . . .

Conversation with two Swedish fellow residents last night (we have Slovakians as well - they've brought a seemingly endless supply of canned food; the Eastern European equivalent of Pot Noodles) reveals that they got into Topkapi Palace, Harem and Treasury totally free with their ISIC cards (it's a UNESCO site, and ISIC's supposed to be a UNESCO card as well). We really need to get fakes; so far they would have saved us each about $25! Firstly, though, some essentials: I'm up and out to the laundry (the one in backpackerland was the cheapest we found), and a brief spell at an Internet place (things have been too hectic previously) and get back in time for breakfast with Milla. Outside it's raining - the last couple of days have been a bit grey, but today that grey has resolved itself into occasional showers. Our targets for this third day are twofold - the "new" town over the Golden Horn (Beyoglu), and a trip by water to the Asian shore.

We start, however, with the Museum of Turkish/Islamic Arts in Ibrahim Pasa's palace (strangled on the orders of Milla's beloved Roxelana), mainly because it's very close to the hostel, just off the Hippodrome. There's some jewellery and ornamental personal items, some fantastic calligraphic pieces (Turkish was written in Arabic script up until Ataturk/1922), some average ceramics ware and a couple of rooms of carpets. I don't know about everyone else, but I find I develop a transient expertise as I travel: in-depth knowledge of specific local subjects, which fades very quickly. After this museum and the last couple of days, for example, I know a little about each of the most famous Sultans (and can date them); I can recognise ceramic ware from the various Anatolian/Mesopotamian centres; and i can identify different types/origins/dates of old Turkish carpets - for example, there's a major type known as a "Holbein" (divided into Major Holbein and Minor Holbein), because these carpets appeared accurately depicted in his portraits (they were a luxury import into Western Europe). Also, each Sultan has his own "tugra", a stylised signature, but I'm still miles away from recognising these. All this temporary information will be gone (except the basics) within a couple of weeks.

Downstairs they have a less interesting display on Turkish domestic life which is mainly worth seeing because, even though they've been settled here for 800 years and ruled one of the most cultured and civilised empires of its time, there's still a real focus on their nomadic origins. They have stuff on yurts and black tents (derived from Bedouin nomads), and the carpets, and so on. Apparently there are still some nomadic groups in the far east of Turkey, though I doubt we'll get to see them . . .

Istanbul's drying out and getting very bright when we leave, after a couple of hours, and we head back to the Topkapi complex to visit/revisit Hagia Irini. There are lots of people connected with the setup of the concert (tonight as well, apparently), but no-one at the door looking for money, so we just stroll in. Dating back to Justinian (so about the same age as Hagia Sophie) it's a vaulted Orthodox/Romanesque church with a balcony and a high gallery. Its walls are pretty much bare brick now, except for a simple black-on-gold outlined crucifix above the apse (obviously from the time of the Iconoclastic Controversy). it's elegant and spacious and peaceful, and out the back we can see at least one porphyry sarcophagus (a number of Byzantine Emperors were laid to rest here, but most are now round the corner in Istanbul's Archaeology Museum). A man in a dark suit eventually insists we leave, but only after we've had a fairly good look round.

We head downhill towards the Galata Bridge, pausing to give a cigarettes to an old shoe-shiner (Milla thought he was sympatique) and to look in camera shops to see what costs what. We hit another covered Bazaar - the Egyptian (or "Spice") Bazaar: much smaller than the Grand Bazaar, its focus is on spices (obviously) and other foodstuffs. It's pretty busy, and mostly with locals (like the Grand Bazaar), so I guess it's good stuff at good prices. On the other side of the Bazaar is the Galata Bridge (and a tram terminus, a bus terminus, the various ferry piers and the New Mosque), which is very solid for a bridge - it has shops under the road which go right down to the water, ie. the bridge seems to pretty much block the Golden Horn except for a gap in the middle (where the bridge apparently rises when required).
just past the north end of the bridge is one end of the Tunel, for most of the last century Istanbul's closest approximation to a metro system (they have one now). It's a little old pair of electric trains, which save you climbing the hill (Naples has something similar): you buy a token, rather than a ticket, and the token lets you through a turnstile onto the platform. The little journey only takes two or three minutes, and I can tell Milla's disappointed.

This side of the Golden Horn used to be a Galatian district (the Gauls/Celts in Anatolia - my lot again), and was called Galata: the Genoese later set up shop here, building the landmark Galata Tower in 1348. After that, it gradually became the European district: the streets are quite unlike the rest of Istanbul: baroque and other European-styled buildings dominate. There are a clutch of impressive consulates (embassies until they all moved to the new capital Ankara), and a number of Catholic churches built just back from the streets (apparently it was illegal for a church to open directly onto the streets, so they all have gates and paths). The Church of St. Anthony is the most impressive of these, both because of its size and because it was never turned into a mosque. There are a couple of Orthodox churches as well (Greek and Armenian), but they are less open.

There's a restored tramline, with quaint old trams, which runs from the Tunel exit up to the main Taksim square, but we prefer to walk (en route Milla pauses to buy fake perfume, which causes another little falling out between us). Taksim Square itself is really dull - it could be any Western European city, lined with bland modern buildings (only the Ataturk monument and Turkish flag distinguish it), so we turn around and head straight back down towards the bridge again. The Galata Tower is an obvious stop, but they charge about $4 just to climb to the top, so we skip it: our last target on this shore is the "Arab Mosque", which we reach after a diversion caused by ill-informed locals.

When the Moors were finally kicked out of Granada (1492?), a lot of them came to Istanbul where the government siezed the old Dominican Church (seems fair) to convert it into a mosque. Unfortunately, unlike Byzantine/Orthodox organic domed churches which were quite easy to turn into convincing mosques, this turned out ot be a vaulted Gothic rectangle with a belfry. Boy - I bet the Moors were pissed off. They use the tower as a minaret, and they've put a lower artifical ceiling on it (which almost comically truncates the high Gothic windows at the apse): the only thing it had in its favour was that it (presumably accidentally) almost exactly lines up with mecca. It's an interesting curiosity, rather than being particularly aesthetic, and forms an interesting counterweight to the mosque-cathedral in Cordoba, at the other end of Europe.

We cross back over the Galata Bridge, just in time to catch sunset (unfortunately not over Topkapi, Hagia Sophia or the New Mosque), and then nip into the New Mosque/Yeni Cami ("Jammy" - c is pronounced "j" is Turkish). "New" is a comparative term in Istanbul: just as Beyoglu is new as in 400AD, the New Mosque is new as in in 16-something. There's a superb calligraphic frieze above the courtyard entrance, and inside is light and airy (the supporting columns are better disguised than in Sultanahmet Cami) with a lot of blue/purple tile work.

The long walk home is via a pharmacy for cough-stuff - I've been getting progressively iller through the day (and hence in a worse and worse mood, I'm informed), and my throat is killing me - also, I have a headache and my nose is beginning to get blocked. Goddamn. And then it's pretty much straight to bed - we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

I'm still feeling pretty bad when we get up, and it seems Milla's starting to come down with the same. Great.
Undeterred and loaded up with various medicines, after breakfast we hit our closest site - according to various city maps the Kucuk Aya Sofia mosque (formerly Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus) should be just around the corner from where we're staying. A little wander finds first a minimarket run by the guy who enticed us to the hostel (they're a family of Kurds, cousins and brothers, who have a hotel, hostel and shop all in the same little area) and then the little mosque. It's at the end of an alley, behind trees, and has a courtyard with some small shops and cafés, but it's also pretty deserted: a couple of people offer to shine my boots while we look around. Inside is very attractive, spacious with intricately-carved capitals, a frieze running around the balcony/gallery, and in a state of decay - bare patches on the plaster, cracks along the walls and so on. There's a man hovering, who won't let us take photos and tries to sell us a nice set of 8 for an extortionate price instead: we end up leaving them out loose change, with which he's underwhelmed.

Our next targets are also in Sultanahmet (it's our day for hopefully finishing the historic centre and going west a little - also, we might try that ferry trip). First up is the Mosaic Museum, hidden behind the Blue Mosque amid the Arasta Bazaar - it's part of the old Roman Palace Complex, below the current ground level, and the mosaics (much faded and warped in time) have been recently extensively well-restored, cleaned and so on. It's very impressive, far more so than the larger area of the Mosaic Museum in Constanta, and essentially comprises one floor (courtyard or walkway). It's mostly figures or little groups of figures, engaged in pastoral scenes, with a lot of symbolic animal stuff: there's also a wide floral border al the way round. Perhaps 30% survives in patches, and we're most impressed by some of the animal action scenes, an old guy sitting thinking, and a couple of very impressive faces. Well worth the money.

We nip into the Roxelana Baths, opposite Hagia Sophia: again designed by Sinan, they're really two baths (male/female), worth a quick look, and now a carpet shop and museum/display (ie. free). Over the road, just west of Hagia Sophia, is the Basilica Cistern - definitely not free. It's . . . well, it's a massic cistern laid out by Justinian (not personally): bizarrely, when the Ottomans took the city they didn't know it was there - they found it because people were collecting water (and fish, apparently) through holes in the bottom of their basements. There are fish there now, but probably as a tourist attraction: there's very little you can do to mak a cistern more like a tourist attraction. They've put in walkways, a special "wishing" area at a re-used one of Constintine's old peacock-feather columns, a "Tannhauser" soundtrack (actually quite effective) and so on. Apart from the mix of columns (there are some new concrete ones here as well), the only really interesting bit is where the builders used a couple of medusa faces as column bases - one upside-down and one sideways. No-one really knows why (possibly just to confuse later generations). Bizarrely, from the name, Milla (and others) were expecting it to be some kind of place of worship, rather than the Cistern beside the Basilica.

We wander down the hill beside Hagia Sophia and nip into a couple of student travel agencies on the way - they all seem quite happy to issue us with ISIC cards for varying amounts of money: the cheapest we find is $20. Damn, we think. We should have done this immediately: just with Hagia Sophia and Topkapi we'd already have made our money back easily - as it is, we've probably forked out on the most expensive sites in Turkey. Damn.

Before actually getting the cards, we continue downhill to the Sublime Porte: the fate into the government offices - ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire used to be known as ambassadors to the Sublime Porte. It's unfortunate, we think as we eat Magnum Doubles (no Magnum Whites in Turkey) that it's currently covered in plastic sheeting for repairs. Even so, there's a serious-looking guard with a serious-looking gun outside, so the gate presumably still serves the same purpose as it used it. Our final stop in this area is the Sirkeci station, the grand final stop of the Orient Express: it actually turns out to be quite dull and not at all impressive, so we catch a tram back up the hill and go to collect photos and dollars for our ISIC cards.

The process takes about half an hour, mostly waiting while one of the people there goes to collect blank cards (presumably from someone cheaper whom we failed to find). No-one there speaks more than a handful of words of English, but the time passes discussing football - Romanian players in Turkey, mostly (from Hagi onwards). Football is a true national obsession here. And then, suddenly, we're students - at least until the end of this year, when we'll presumably have to try and find other cards in Egypt.

Next up? The Suleymaniye Mosque again, on foot, to visit the Tombs of Suleyman (the Magnificent) and Roxelana: they're both very impressive and ornate - the large but simple coffins are tilted in the direction of Mecca. They're holy ground so we have to take our shoes off, and we also get into trouble for kissing inside - Islam has this thing against public displays of affection, especially in holy sites. Ah well - Turkey's supposed to be a secular state after all. One other interesting note on the tombs - there's a "Do Not Touch" sign up, in Turkish and Italian: since this is the first Italian language sign we've seen, we have to assume that Italian tourists have a tendency towards touching, at least in tombs. Next, over the road to the University which, inside the walls, turns out to be a collection of large and boring buildings (ie. a University), a statue representing the education of the country's youth (at a guess), and a large marble-covered tower of no discernable educational purpose.

From the University we strike northwest and hit the Prince's Mosque - the "Prince" in question was Suleyman and Roxelana's eldest (he died young) and the mosque was Sinan's first major commission. Inside it's obvious why he got lots more: it's flowery and decorative compared with his later ones, and there's so much light that I don't need to use either long exposure or the flash. Also odd is the fact that it's fully symmetrical, which makes it seem larger than it is (though it's pretty large anyway). Virtually adjacent to the Prince's Mosque is Valens' Aqueduct, 60% of the 1km length of which is still in situ. Frankly it's just an aqueduct - what's more impressive is that the entire water supply (pipes and aqueducts) used to run for over 100 miles.

We head downhill, through a cheap residential district of minimarkets and other little shops, and hit the main E-W street (called Ordu Caddesi here) just as it forks in Aksaray: also the site of Istanbul Metro's first stop. The Metro's easy to figure out (they always are, with the possible exception of Paris) and soon we're at the main bus station. actually, it's not that soon because the bus station's 10km out - past residential areas, waste-ground, industrial and post-industrial zones, and so on. not only it its locale singularly depressing, but it's a huge sprawling affair of concrete, roads and buses: there are at least 100 bus companies operating out of here, they all have stanzas and they all have ticket offices. It's fairly chaotic, but we find three lines going to Canakkale ("kale" seems to be a fortress or castle of some sort) and take a note of times and prices (¤6-¤8 each). Then it's back onto the Metro to Aksaray and a trudge to the hostel. We're both feeling fairly ill, and don't fancy going out, so we get some beers and cheese pastries and spend the evening up on the terrace watching ships going up and down the Bosphorus. We also write an excessive number of postcards.
A final, confusing note for the day - I used a public toilet today (not unusual, despite the normal state of them) and was surprised to see pieces of old newspaper provided for drying your hands at the sinks - nicely leaving a black newsprint residue on my otherwise newly clean hands.

We're going to have to stay another day in Istanbul: according to the original plan, today was going to be our last day and tomorrow we'd be in Bursa (half-way to Canakkale). A combination of factors have put us behind schedule - our late mornings, the fact that neither of us is totally well, and the large number of places in our Istanbul guidebook which we'd never heard of but now want to see. apart from wanting to get some films developed and sent home, we also want to revisit Topkapi to see the Treasury (it should be free with our Unesco ISICs, so that'll be a good test of them), the Theodosian Walls, the St. Saviour Church in Chora, some time on the water and, of course, Istanbul's Archaeological Museum.

We start off with admin stuff - dropping photos to be developed and posting yesterday's postcards - and then it's straight to Topkapi, where our "student" cards are accepted without question. Fantastic. We walk straight through to the Third Courtyard and show them to the Treasury security people, who also let us straight in without paying anything. Even fantasticer.
Like the rest of Topkapi and indeed Istanbul, the Treasury's busy: it's only four rooms, with items in niches and explanatory text around the walls. There's an anti-clockwise protocol in place, so we take our places and gradualy shuffle round. I do a little overtaking (I probably read English faster than anyone else in there) and so finish ten minutes before Mila: it takes about an hour to do the full circuit. It's an odd sort of collection, containing a little bit of everything - for us the highpoints were the arm and skull (just a bit) of John the Baptist in their gold- and jewel-encrusted cases (I'm sure he would have apprved, the original Mr. Nuts-and-Berries); and the Topkapi Dagger (it's really quite staggering - go see the film again); and the huge Kasikci Diamond (found on a rubbish tip and sold for three spoons, it's huge but badly flawed - the mounting is much more impressive than the diamond itself). Other less-impressive stuff includes some crowns and thrones, a couple of pen-cases and stuff like that. Half of one room is given over to the various medals awarded by oher European countries - Legion of Honour, Order of the Garter, etc. Total waste of space.

We eventually emerge, or break free (poor Milla was overtake by a busload of young Turkish schoolchildren) and meander down the hill to the Archaeological Museum (it's in the Topkapi grounds). The guy in the ticket office waves us through, though the chap at the fate has more reservations: still, we get in for free again! It's our first real saving, since we'd earlier decided not to do the Treasury if it cost that much. The Archaeology Museum is actually several museums, which open on various days (they possibly don't have enough staff to man them all): my main priority, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, is open today and our first stop. It's divided into four sections - Arabia (Yemen, Sheba, etc.), Egypt, Mesopotamia (the largest) and Anatolia (Hittites, basically) - all of the places pretty much fell within the old Ottoman Empire: the Levant is curiously missing, and is ony semi-covered by the others - no idea why.

The Arabian section is small but really interesting - not an area I know much about, especially in antiquity: apart from the Nabateans, my knowledge pretty much only starts from the point Mohammed burst onto the scene. The Egyptian section is okay - a few mummies, some scarabs, and so on: the British Museum stuff is much better, and I can't wait for Cairo. The Mesopotamian section is real jewel: they have some excellent stuff from neolithic times onwards, including some duck-shaped weights which are 4,000 years old. There's also a lot of the Ishtar Gate (from Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzer) here - it was all glazed tile reliefs, both the long approach and the gate itself. They've also got some excellent cuneiform fragments here. Finally is the Anatolian rooms - a lot of massive Hittite stuff, and a copy of the Kadesh Treaty between the Hittites and Rameses II, a peace and mutual defence agreemet from 1269 BC, originally written in Akkadian (a foreign language to both powers, but obviously the lingua franca of the day). Amusingly, the notice says that the Egyptian copy was edited to give Rameses II more emphasis - I'm sure the notes on the copy in Cairo say the inverse.

Milla's bored (we had a cigarettes break half-way round) so we nip into the Ceramic Museum in the Tile Pavilion to do a qick whip around before going on to the main building and even more bits of sculpture. As anticipated, the ceramics were really dull: the best bits were the exterior, and a little fountain belonging to the original building.

The main, neoclassical building (fronted by the unmarked porphyry sarcophagi of Byzantine Emperors) houses the museum's famous Classical collection. It ranges from the pre-Classical grotesque/stylised (the god Bes at the main door is excellent), through the Greek archetypes (the best pieces are probably a young athlete resting, and an excellent head of Alexander), to the Roman realist portraits (they have a great one of Marcus Aurelius - he looks like a real regular bloke). We're halfway along one hall when an attendant starts ushering people out - the museum is apparently "closed": it's only 15.00, and there are some arguments. Milla, for example, heads deeper into the museum: by this time, though, I've spotted the firemen jogging through the halls so I go outside. Milla joins me later, amid the crush of police, fire engines and press: we wait in the little courtyard until they've finished (there was some activity with ladders and water, but we didn't see any flames).

The last wing we do is sarcophagi from the necropolis at Sidon: they seem to have the whole thing here, so I'm no longer sure we need to visit Sidon later. There's a good one with weeping women carved around the sides, but the best is the "Alexander Sarcophagus" - it portrays scenes with Alexander and his generals and the guy who was buried there (casually worked in, as if he was there). The metal weapons have been long-since nicked, but there are still traces of the original paintwork: it's very impressive.

We leave in the late afternoon and, despite the hour, catch the tram and then Metro out to the Theodosian Walls at the Topkapi Gate, from where we set out north to the Edirne Gate (there are a few things around that area on our list still to see). The walls are high and solid, actually two layers of walls with a wide ditch (presumably moat) outside: they enclose a huge area and, since the Ottomans kept them in good repair for a long time, ae still in fairly good nick. Several sections have been rebuilt/restored, which gives a good idea of what they used to look like, especially the high block-like towers. The area is pretty dodgy, however, and rapidly gets worse: barefoot children, hostile looks, pot-holed roads, homeless living in the crumbling wall sections - that sort of thing. Along the outer side of the walls, we can see a nice wide road and we cut through at the earliest opportunity, passing lean-tos, piles of litter and grazing horses as we do so. Interesting contrast.

One of Milla's sandal straps came loose earlier and, just past the Edirne Gate, we ask a tailor if he can help. He directs us to an ageing cobbler sitting in an alley just around the corner, with a little circle of his equally agéd friends sitting around him. They pull out a little plastic chair and, after half an hour of needle-chewing and glue-work, and stitching with some type of thread that needs burned before it'll break, Milla has a fully functional sandal again. The old men wave us off, and Milla leaves the cobbler some grapes (as well as money).

Down the hill, through some residential streets, we eventually come to the Church of St. Saviour in Chora (church, then mosque, then museum) which apparently has some fantastic mosaic-work. I say "apparently" because, being a museum rather than a mosque now, it's closed by the time we get there. Damn. We head further down, past supermarkets and other shops (Mila wants to shop), and find the Church of the Pammakaristos: there's a house in its grounds, and a family living there, but it seems equally closed. For a while it was the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate (presumably after Hagia Sophia became a mosque) until it too was mosquified.

We set off steeply down towards the Golden Horn, taking "down" streets whenever we find them - this being a residential area, and school being out, we're followed by a small but persistant group of kids. Most we pass try out school English: "Hello. My name is . . . . What's your name?" That kind of thing. The more streetwise (or those more exposed to Western Capitalist values) manage "Hello. Money." and hold out their hands. Lovely - good to see progress has reached here.

We finally hit the shore at the curious all-metal (built in Vienna and the pieces were shipped here) Church of St. Stephen: the Viennese donated it to the Bulgarians, for no doubt political reasons, when the latter wanted to break away from the Greek Patriarchate. It's in a nice little park, but also seems very locked. Ah well - we head for the current Greek Patriarchate - that, at least, should be open . . . We find it quite easily, but the whole area is full of police and black limousines, some with diplomatic plates and flags, and men in shades and dark suits. We are politely turned away, mysteriously: it's apparently not our day to visit churches in this area.

There's a boat service which runs up and down the Golden Horn and has a stop here, but checking the timetable at the jetty reveals we'd have a forty-five minute wait - we opt to try our first Istanbul city bus instead. There's a stop nearby and an elderly Armenian in a black suit takes us under his wing. He also imparts the information (after all, he and Milla are both Orthodox, so naturally a conversation starts) that the Greek Patriarchate was closed because it was receiving Simeon - that's Simeon, who would be King of Bulgaria, but is now its president instead (it being a republic): Simeon who doesn't use a surname. Our Armenian gets us onto a bus, where we pay one of our fellow passengers - there's a sort of electronic ticket system which seems t work on most of Istanbul's public transport (buses, metro, Tunel, possibly tram) on the basis of credits stored on the card. Our friendly ticket-holder beeps his pass twice for us. Our Armenian, who knows how the buses work, unfortunately hasn't a clue about where we're going. "Eminonu," we'd told him, but he gets us off after only a couple of stops and indicates that we should catch a further bus. We opt to walk along the shore instead.

Galata Bridge, when we reach it, is in its raised position: it doesn't seem about to close, and no ships are passing under it, so I suppose it might just have been for cleaning or maintenance - quite impressive, though. We catch a tram back up the hill (I'm not feeling well, and am popping Strepsils) and then wander back to the hostel. Later (that's even later) we return to our café of Tuesday for more pide: at the end of the meal, the waiter insists on splashing "Ody-Colownyee" on our hands - this turns out to be really cheap scented (Lavender? Lemon?) perfume. Possibly they use it as a substitute for keeping their hands clean: it's applied liberally, splashing over the floor. Back at the hostel, we discover the smell doesn't wash off easily, and go to bed.

Sunday, and when we get up it's obvious that Sunday is a schoolday in Istanbul (we look up at a school from our room). Milla packs and I go and drop some films to get prints: net I go back and collect Milla, and we get out the hostel just before the check-out time of 11.00. On the way out, we meet one of the Kurdish guys who run the hostel - he's out touting for business: times are good, he says, since there's no fighting. "Fighting" - presumably Western against Islamic states - has presumably bee the main killer of business in recent years. Collecting the photos leaves us carrying an envelope of prints/negatives to mail back to Scotland: our rucksacks are in the kitchen at the hostel. According o one of our various maps, there's a bus which will take us almost to Chora - and it leaves from just opposite a post office. Perfect, except that the post office seems to be closed when we get there. We buy bus tickets and try to board the bus, but our bus doesn't seem to want to take our bus tickets.

Confused, we watch the bus drive off and then visit a nearby Tourist Information for help - bizarrely, it's staffed by a woman who doesn't speak any English. Language barrier notwithstanding, she manages to impart the information that all the post offcies are closed today, except the main one in Eminonu: she also manages to explain that bus tickets are only useabe on I.E.T.T. state-run buses. In this age of privatisation, it transpires that diffrent companies run buses on the same city routes - for non-I.E.T.T. buses, you have t pay onboard. There doesn't seem to be a I.E.T.T. bus doing the 90-B route today, so we put the tickets away and fork out again (the guy at the booth doesn't want to buy them back from us). Actually, there only seems to be a single bus running this route today, since we get the same driver who told us we couldn't use our tickets on his bus.

The bus drops us a few blocks (downhill, of course) form the Church of St. Saviour in Chora, which we eventually find with the aid of a couple of locals: again, our supposed student cards get as a 5 million lira discount, out of 7 million. The church itself is comparatively unknown and of unknown history, but is nw famous for it's 1315-1321 mosaics and frescoes. Somehow, most of them survived its transition to a mosque despite them being a.) Christian and b.) depictions of living things: in fact, the mosque seems to have been known as the Mosaic Mosque.

The building comprises a nave and adjacent paracclesion (burial chapel), both of which are fronted by two narthexes (perpendicular vestibules). The nave is almost empty of mosaics - there's a good one of the "Dormition" of Mary (the Othodox church seems to believe she went to sleep, rather than dying) just above the door. The two narthexes, on the other hand, are covered in mosaics - scenes from Christ's life and ministry, and from the life of Mary (taken from the apocryphal Gospel of St. James): a number of those on the ceilings are badly damaged or missing, but most of the rest are recognisable and excellent quality. The paracclesion is all frescoes rather than mosaics - a big one of the Last Judgement, and one of the Anastasis, and lots of saints along the walls. It takes about an hour and a half to have a good lok around, and then we set off down the hill again.

Narrowly avoiding the area full of kids, we come out next to the current Greek Patriarchate now open) and look inside. It's much the same as a large Romanian Orthodox church, with a slightly different layout: the main doors are actually welded shut in honour of a Patriarch who was hanged here in 1821 for encouraging the other Greeks to revolt against the Turks. Hey-ho: it's a good thing our efforts didn't open it, then.

Knowing the bus routine now, we catch one back to Eminonu (we take a pay-on-board bus, after waiting for a I.E.T.T. bus to use our tickets in): at the stop, Milla gets in conversation wiht a Greek woman called Stella - this entire area seems to be full of Orthodox believers! Our bus takes us back to Eminonu itself, probably because we chose it rather than some ill-informed Armenian. I'm feeling much better now, except for a sore throat and a blocked nose, but Milla's getting steadily worse. We detour through the Egyptian/Spice market to buy a marinated cucumber, her general pick-me-up, but even that seems to have only a temporary effect.

After hitting the post office, to finally post the envelope we've been carrying around all day, we go back to the hostel to collect our rucksacks. We're putting them on when the Swedish couple come in - they were supposed to be on a train to Izmir by now, but the girl left her passport in the safe. Hey-ho. We wish them all the best, and take the tram and then metro (after a killer uphill walk from the hostel) out to the bus station. It turns out, of course, that we've just missed a bus and will have to wait an hour and a half until the next one. Thankfully the little coach office has a waiting room - I have a coffee, buy supplies for the journey, nip outside for cigarettes and so on, while Milla lies across two chairs and makes a couple of long toilet visits. It's possible that we should have stayed in Istanbul another night for her benefit . . .

Eventually it's time to leave, and we board the modern and comfortable coach (run by a company called "Radar") - despite all our guidebooks complaining about all the smoke on Turkish buses, this coach is non-smoking. Goddamn. We set off through the outer suburbs (and a lot of open spaces) of Istanbul, and I keep waiting for us to cross the bridge between Europe and Asia: after an hour, with night falling and the inhouse/inbus video in full swing (The Mask, dubbed into Turkish - which in no way detracted from the experience), I finally twig that we're driving along the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara and will cross to Asia later, presumably by ferry. Hm - and what score for Istanbul? Well, I quite like its wooden houses (there are a lot of wooden houses in central Istanbul, some of which are pretty decrepit) but it hasn't really got anything outstanding exept the inside of Hagia Sophia and some of the mosques - Topkapi's pretty dull, the Imperial Mosques all begin to look the same very quickly, the mosaics in Chora are only really impressive because of their age (and at 700 years, not that old). That said, it would be okay to live in (good shopping, good museums, tourist areas can be avoided) though I probably wouldn't choose to - so, on balance, 6/10.

We get tea or coffee on the bus, and a slice of sultana cake, and then the steward runs around and splashes us with "Colonyee" from a plastic litre bottle: the film ends, and we stop at a roadside services. At the toilets (which are quaintly flushed by an attendant with a bucket) your entry fee gets a free 2-ply tissue and a splash of "Colonyee" again - I've also noticed that to refuse this dreadful stuff seems to offend. At the stop, the bus also gets a (thorough) wash, and then we're off into the rain and night. Milla deteriorates as the journey progresses, and is sick a number of itmes into a little plastic bag provided by the bus company. by the time we drive onto a car ferry in Gelibolu (that would be Gallipoli) at 22.30, the lights in he bus are out and she's sound aslep. I go up on deck, for nicotine, and as we chug across the Dardanelles say good-bye to Europe and hello to Asia (albeit a very Minor part of Asia). I also watch the ther ship traffic around us (busy, but not as busy as the Straits of Gibraltar), and notice how low our ferry is in the water (presumably/hopefully no real waves here). And then it's back on board for the last thirty minutes along the coast to Canakkale.

The bus doesn't drop us at the bus station, and it takes us a little while to work out where we are (a local misinforms us, again: why don't these people know where they live?). Then it's straight to our first Lonely Planet stop (Milla's not well enough to choose accommodation, or walk further), where we're charged a rip off £8/$12-50 for a en-suite shower double - it doesn't include breakfast, and the guy isn't interested in negotiating. He can obviously see that we're tired, and it's past midnight by now.
I have a shower, and unpack/repack some stuff while Milla as a quick snooze: after half an hour she bounces up again, reassuringly her own self (I was thinking that our first stop tomorrow should be a doctor). "How much?" she demands: "We're not paying that - I'll talk to them tomorrow," and she bounces around the bed.
We'll see how she is tomorrow . . .