Istanbul – a city on two continents

It has been quite a few months since my last blog and a lot has happened since then.  However, more of that later!  We are currently hauled up in Bulgaria, at our apartment in Sunny Beach on the Black Sea and have just come back from a fantastic two day trip to Istanbul.  We had thought about driving to Turkey in our motorhome (Sonny) but had heard the roads into Istanbul are very busy so we opted for a coach trip.
The coach picked us up at 4.45am and was full of mostly Russians, Ukraine's, 10 Germans, 4 Brits, 2 Irish ladies, and one Lithuanian.  Setting off at 4.45am in the morning, it's a 370km journey but the roads are slow and it took us nearly 8 hours (including a 1/2 hour rest stop) to get to our hotel in the centre of Istanbul.  An hour of that was spent at the border with passport checks, plus as Turkey is not in the EU Brits have to purchase a visa, which costs about £15 per person.  To save time we purchased online beforehand, otherwise you can do it at the border.  About 20kms outside of Istanbul traffic becomes a standstill and you crawl all the way into the city, which took a further 1 ½ hours - nightmare! 

Our hotel, Buyuk Sahinler, is rated as a 4 star, but it is more like a 3 star in UK terms.  That said, the rooms were clean, staff friendly and the buffet breakfast served from 7am to 10am is vast with everything from fruit, cereals, yoghurt, pastries, ham, cheese, eggs, umpteen salads, bread and even soup!

Buffet breakfast at the hotel

Arriving at the hotel, it was a quick basic lunch of salad, chicken and veg and fruit and then we were off on an afternoon sightseeing trip. Istanbul straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait and is the largest European city, with a population of about 20 million.  Istanbul is famous for its Ottoman architecture and mosques, with over 3,500 of them and there are plans to build more.  The most famous of them all is the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet), built in 1616 with its beautiful blue tiles covering the interior walls.  It is distinguished from the other mosques with its 6 minarets, others have only 2 or 4. To enter, women have to have their legs, arms and head covered.  Men only have to wear a T-shirt and shorts to their knees.  They provide scarves and hideously large and very long skirts, if you are not dressed appropriately.  Luckily, I was dressed in long trousers and brought my own scarf and Mel's shorts were the right length - not sure how he would have looked in the long skirt haha! You also have to remove your shoes at the entrance to the mosque and are given a plastic bag to place them in.  Given the amount of visitors they have daily, you can just imagine the amount of plastic wastage!

Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet)

Inside the Blue Mosque

Aya Sophia - former Greek Orthodox Christian Cathedral.  Build in 6th century, now a museum.

Sultanahmet Square - a public square with remnants of an ancient Hippodrome, for centuries the site of chariot races and Egyptian Obelisk

German Fountain in Sultanahmet Square - presented to the Ottoman Sultan by German Emperor Wilhelm II in 1898, marking Turkish-German friendship

Rüstem Paşa Mosque and Süleymaniye Mosque rise above the Istanbul skyline

St Stephen Church, is made of cast iron one of the few remaining in the world and inside is very ornate. It is a Bulgarian Orthodox church and belongs to the Bulgarian minority who live in Istanbul.  During the 19th century, the Bulgarians were allowed by the Ottomans to construct a separate church for themselves, due to nationalistic movements.

St Stephen Church

The home ground of Beşiktaş FC, in the centre of the city

In the evening we had a night trip on the Bosphorus with a meal, drinks and traditional dancing - including the religious dance of the Whirling Dervish, belly dancing and folk music - great fun!

Night view of the Bosphorus Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia

Boat Trip

The next morning it was off to the 15th century Grand Bazaar, the largest and oldest covered markets in the world.  It is a gigantic labyrinth with over 4000 authentic shops selling spices, jewellery, leather, pottery, carpets and of course Turkish Delight!  The smells, colours and vibrancy of the Bazaar are incredible; however you do get hassled a lot from the traders to buy their goods.  Remember the price they start out, will come down and down if you are prepared to barter, as we did! There are 11 numbered gates into the bazaar, all security controlled and one tip would be to remember the number of the gate you enter otherwise you can spend hours trying to find your way out and back to your hotel.  A Lithuanian guy who was on the trip with us took 2 hours trying to find his way out and back to the hotel!

Posing at the entrance gate to the Bazaar

A little courtyard inside the Bazaar

Time for mint tea, Turkish coffee and cake - yummy!

To get around the city in a van for deliveries is near on impossible, with traffic at a standstill most times of the day - cars, motorbikes, buses, coaches, tuk-tuks, push bike - every form of transport you can think of. So most things are carried in on sack barrows.  They pile them high and they must be really heavy but I guess they are used to it and take it all in their stride!  There is a good tram system that runs around the city and is really cheap, you can get on and off anywhere along the line for about 6 TRY (just under 1 euro).

Delivery man in Istanbul with his heavy sack barrow.

The afternoon was finished off with a daytime boat trip on the Bosphorus, going up the eastern side and then back down the Asian side.  After enduring near on 35°C temperatures around the Bazaar it was nice to cool down on the boat. There are a fantastic mix of mosques, palaces and some fantastic houses, built for the rich on the Asian side.  Our guide told us that they are not allowed to build anymore houses on the Asian side of the Bosphorus due to there being so many.

The Golden Horn Bridge

Ortaköy Mosque on the bank of the Bosphorus, beneath the Bosphorus Bridge

Old city walls from the days of when Istanbul was known as Constantinople

The coach set back off to Bulgaria at 7pm, arriving back in Sunny Beach at 2am.  We were exhausted but the 2-day visit to the city was amazing and would recommend that you all try and visit Istanbul at least once in your lifetime.  We hope to go back again one day but not by coach!

As mentioned at the beginning of the blog, a quick summary of our last 4 months.

We got back from year 2 of our travels on 3 January 2019.  Our house was still being rented out, so we stopped with our daughter and fiancé for a couple of weeks. Caught up with family and friends and then flew out to Spain (Punta Umbria) and stopped with our son for 3 ½ weeks.  We got back mid-February, our tenants moved out, we got our belongings out of storage and we put our house on the market, with a plan to buy a smaller house. We sold our house within a week, then it became a waiting game for it all to go through – 14 weeks later it was sold and we were homeless, as we couldn’t find a house we liked.  So, all our belongings went back in storage and we headed to our apartment in Bulgaria.

We travelled through 9 countries (UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) in 6 days - a distance of 2093.8 miles (3350kms).  Our daughter and her fiancé joined us 5 days later in Bulgaria, for a week in the sun.  We plan to stop in Bulgaria for a few months, maybe driving into Greece for a short while before travelling back north through Europe.

Sally x

Seeing in The New Year at Arras and Remembering those at Vimy Ridge

Happy New Year to you all! We saw the New Year in at the lovely town of Arras, which was our next stop after leaving the Aire at Villeneuve-Renneville-Chevigny.  Heading out of Champagne land and on to Arras, the weather started warming up, going from 1°C up to 10°C – almost T-shirt weather ha-ha!  Most of the way the roads were quiet, straight and long.  There are so many of these lovely tree-lined roads in France, which Napoleon had planted so his troops could march in the shade.

Arriving at the official Arras Aire, the spaces were tight with everyone packed in like sardines with hardly enough room to open your door to get in and out - not ideal.  It’s a free Aire, with a couple of electric points but we didn’t need any facilities, as we were full of water and both leisure batteries fully charged, so we decided to find somewhere else. A quick check on the ‘Park4Night’ App revealed a parking area down by a canal, so that’s where we headed (N50.298673 E2.777644).  We were the only motorhome there and it was lovely and peaceful, apart from a couple of farmyard animals (a donkey, a few ducks and hens) just over the way from us.

Sonny's New Year spot at Arras, by the canal

From here it's a little over one km walk into the centre.  Arras is famous for its Flemish-Baroque style squares – Grand Place and Place des Héros. They were both virtually destroyed during WW1, including the cathedral, bell tower and town hall and only 5% of the houses in the town survived intact.  The law of 17 April 1919 relating to war damages ruled that ancient monuments should be rebuilt to what they had been before the damage and the 155 houses around the square were made listed buildings and rebuilding took from 1919 to 1934 to restore the square to how it used to be.

Place des Héros

Town Hall and Belfry in Place des Héros, with the New Year's Eve Farmers Market taking place

Former site of The Chapel of the Holy Candle of Arras - in its place now stands a café and chocolate house!

The last time we were in Arras was a few years ago in summertime and the Grand Pace was converted into a giant beach, this time it was a Christmas village, although they were in the process of dismantling it.

We started our New Year celebrations early by having a couple of lunch-time drinks in a bar with the locals.  Everything was starting to close up for New Year Celebrations and we had originally thought we would eat out but with few restaurants open, we decided to buy some food off the Farmers Market on the square.  It all looked lovely the Fish, the meat, all the cheeses and cakes.  Our first though was go for Salmon but at an expensive €32 a kilo we gave it a miss! We bought a couple of Steaks, mushrooms, garlic, and veg and some delicious strawberry tarts.  The steaks weren't cheap at €13 but when cooked were one of the nicest we have tasted!

We had two New Year celebrations, as the clock struck midnight in France and fireworks going off all around us we popped open the champagne.  We then counted it down with Jules Holland on the TV - UK time and as the clock chimed midnight we phoned our daughter, who was celebrating with her fiancé and our son and his girlfriend, who were over from Spain.  We all sung Auld Lang Syne down the phone to each other and the champagne was flowing on both sides of the water! We eventually hit the sack just before 2am surprisingly quite sober!

We set off from Arras midday and headed 10kms north to Vimy, where the ‘Battle of Vimy Ridge’ took place.  The battle was a turning point in the First World War, taking place from 9-12 April 1917.  As part of the British-led Battle of Arras, four divisions of the Canadian Corps came together and captured the German-held high ground of Vimy Ridge. The Canadian Corps and British XVII Corps captured more ground, prisoners and guns than any previous British Force Offence and its capture enabled the British Forces to advance south.

Four days of intense fighting cost the lives of thousands and inscribed on the memorial are the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were posted ‘missing, presumed dead’ in France.  The monument is the centre piece of a 250 acre preserved battlefield and built on the highest point of the ridge.  It took 11 years to build and was a tricky operation not just because of the size of it but given the fact that the site is littered with bombs and shells.  The two pylons represent Canada and France and the life size figures all bear a meaning.

Canadian National Vimy Memorial, unveiled on 26 July 1936 by King Edward VIII

Within the grounds are many wartime tunnels, closed off to the public apart from one and can only be visited by an arranged tour. Some of the trenches have been rebuilt and you can walk around these.  You can only try and imagine what life must have been like for those soldiers.  The site is full of craters and most of the area has electric fences around it, as there are still a lot of unexploded devices and traps on the land. In 1998 Colonel Watkins, a British military explosives officer lost his life whilst trying to dismantle an unexploded mine that lay 22 metres under the site since World War 1.

Over the years we have visited many war cemeteries around the Somme, Normandy, Brittany and other parts of Europe. Seeing all the graves makes you realise all the sacrifices made.  Although this is a memorial, with no graves the fact that there are over 11,000 names of those who died fighting makes it nonetheless moving.  Fom Vimy, it was a short drive to Maisnil-les-Ruitz (N50.44049 E2.57465).  It’s a barriered Aire within a park - for €9.50 you get all the usual facilities plus electric.  As it is part of a camping/Lodge area there are heated shower and toilet blocks as well.

We move on to Calais later today in readiness to catch the train through the Channel Tunnel tomorrow, as our Year 2 travels around Europe comes to an end. We have spent the last few days reminiscing about all the places we have visited in 2018 and where we go next.

In 2017 we did 11 months straight on the road but this year was a year of 2 halves, January to July, then August until now.  We love motorhoming and the lifestyle, and we are lucky to be able to travel and see so many wonderful places. We are not sure though if we could do another long stretch on the road so our next tour will probably be between 3-6 months, health and money permitting.  It is sad that this tour is coming to an end but we are looking forward to going back to the UK and excited to see our daughter and son again.  And then, who knows what 2019 has in store for us! 

Wishing you all a Very Happy and Healthy 2019.

Sally x