Day 35 - Dubai

Today is the last day of our sensational holiday through Greece, Turkey and Dubai, glad to be going home to the boys but it will be strange to go back home and not be going back to work.

We started the day with a late breakfast before the four of us headed to the Dubai Mall at 11.00am for our adventure to Burj Khalifa. On the way through the mall there is a huge aquarium which is fairly impressive.

The tower is the largest skyscraper in the world but you only get to go to the 124 floor which is at 425metres up one of the fastest elevators in the world. The views are amazing from the worlds highest observation tower.

 

We had lunch at the mall before heading back to the hotel to laze around the pool for the afternoon. We will go to the Sheraton Club for happy hour then head for dinner before we are picked up at 10.45pm for our 2.05am flight home to Adelaide. We should land about 8.50pm so a long flight but a least we should have some new movies from last month to help kill the hours.

Signing off from our Blog - Grecian Dreams and Turkish Treasures. J&N

Day 34 - Dubai

This morning Noel and ticked off one of my bucket list items (Ski Dubai) and we had a lot of fun. Didn't even fall on my butt once neither did Noel. They supply everything apart from gloves and hats and lucky I had my gloves I bought in Turkey when it was snowing. Noel however didn't have any and found it was fine so long as you didn't hang onto the chair lift bar on the way up.

We both did really well and Noel even  braved the experts slope. The ski slopes are nice powdery ice not like Mt Thebarton was all ice so it was easy to ski. The place has 5 runs and the longest run is 400mtrs with a decent of 60 meters. The place is run really well from getting your gear to retuning it, the place is a well oil machine. Great fun to do if you are ever in Dubai and cost about $120aus for 2 hours for the both of us with locker hire, all the snow gear and ski's.

In the afternoon Noel and I did the Dinner Safari which included dune driving through the desert in a 4x4, Arabic style dinner at a Bedouin style camp, henna painting, aromatic shisha (hubbly bubbly), belly dancing and camel ride if you wanted.

We drove about an hour before we came to the Dubai Desert Conservation  Park where they let down the tyres ready for the dunes. First stop was a demonstration of falcon hunting where we also saw some young wild gazelles. The dune bashing was fantastic, a little scary in some spots but mostly good fun. Our friend Jim would have loved it. We stopped to get some great sunset photos before heading to the Bedouine camp. We also scored a full moon which just made it all perfect really. We sat with the other Aussies Bree and her daughter Billy and the American guy Eric who were in our car for dinner. We were also joined by a guy from Turkey who was impressed we had just come from there and all the places we visited. The camp looked great with the sand dunes light up behind us.

 

 

Myself, Bree and Billy got some henna painting done and Noel went for a camel ride. We had some starter and before dinner went and tried an apple shisha. We then had dinner which was very good, lamb, chicken, Dahl, rice, noodles, salads etc. Then came the belly dancer who very good and such a difference from the booby dancer in Turkey.

We really had a fantastic day today, one of the highlights of the trip, tomorrow Burj Khalifa the worlds highest superscraper before we complete the last stage of our journey home tomorrow night. J&N

 

Noel with his 2million dollar new car

Day 33 - Dubai

We only slept until 9.00am so we wouldn't miss the day due to the very late access to our rooms at 4.10am. Noel and I had breakfast in the Sheraton Club over looking the magnificent views of Dubai. Finally a decent coffee, the first in a long time. Greece and Turkey don't do coffee well.

After breakfast we met the tour person form Arabian Adventures to confirm our Dinner Safari tomorrow for Noel and I and tried to book the Burj Khalifq but she couldn't do it as they had lost their connection so in the end I did it myself on my phone. This stopover is jinxed I think. You need to book as it is so busy here in Dubai due to the holiday. This is the main reason we didn't get our rooms when we should as the greedy Sheraton over booked to cash in. Met some other people this morning who also pre booked and paid in May and they did not get a room at all and we're sent to the Radisson for the night. I think we were lucky to get our rooms by the sounds of it.

 

After a quick trip to the supermarket we met and headed for Atlantis. We got a taxi to the Cresent then caught the monorail along the palm to check out the fronds with all the fancy homes on them. All the homes are exactly the same. No neighbourhood competition I guess. Donna and Mark stayed to go to the aquarium which they enjoyed while Noel and I headed back for a Mexican lunch at the mall. We are so over donor kebabs.

 

We hit the pools in the afternoon on the roof top 24th floor which was very pleasant and again the views are incredible. We went to the Sheraton Club for happy hour which includes drinks and snacks that were quite sufficient for dinner with satays, Samos, mushroom balls, cheese and biscuits etc with a few red wines I finally hit the wall after only four hours sleep. 

Might try Ski Dubai tomorrow morning but till then J&N

Day 32 - Istanbul to Dubai

Our last day in Turkey and as we don't get picked up for our airport transfer until 4.00pm we decided to head into the area of town around the Grand Bazaar even though it is closed for the holiday. Other shops in the area are open so we had a walk around looking for a leather jacket for Donna. Shopping success so now Donna now has three leather jackets. Had our last freshly squeezed pomegranate juice which Donna and I have become accustomed to.

There are lots of people around as this is also the area with the Blue Mosque and Sultans Palace. We stopped for lunch and then headed back to the hotel to pack and relax for a while.

Spent the obligatory boring two hours at the airport before our flight to Dubai. Huge airport and it is really, really busy. Our gate is the furthest away, I think it took about 20 minutes to walk there.

I am now sitting in the exclusive lounge of the Sheraton Hotel Club 22 at 3.00am writing this blog as they do not have our rooms ready. The four of us plus another two South Aussie can't get a room for two hours. Needless to say myself and the other lady gave it to them as we paid for 24 hour check-in and expected to get it. It's not like it is during the day, it is late and we are all tired. So now we have been given access to the Club 22 for our entire stay which means we get breakfast up here away from the crowds, access to the Jacuzzi, free drinks and food during happy hour and upgraded faster Wi-Fi. 

We could go shopping however to kill the time as the mall we are staying on is open 24 hours for the holiday, shame my suitcase is full. 

Cheers from Club 22 J&N

Day 31 - Istanbul

Today we had the luxury of sleeping in until 8.30 even though we got woken up by call to pray around 5.00am. Mark isn't feeling well today so after breakfast Donna and I headed off on an adventure on the metro to find a pharmacy. As it is a holiday today there is only about 4 open and there wont be more than that for 4 days.

We managed to catch the metro really easily once we worked out which ticket machine to use however finding pharmacy was the hard bit. After about 30 minutes of walking around asking several people who didn't speak any English even though we had the name of the pharmacy the hotel had given us we finally found it.  It was closed. It is supposed to be open and lucky an English speaking young man help us understand the signs on the door and from this we decided to give up. We got the metro back easy enough but took the wrong exit out and had to get directions from another hotel back to ours. We did find another closed pharmacy near our hotel on our walk back so I took a photo of the names of the pharmacy's that indicate the ones that are open so if Mark gets worse we can find them.

After a bit of a rest from our adventure Donna, Noel and I headed to the waterfront on the Bosphorous to have one of the amazing hot potatoes we had seen the day before for lunch. The traffic was still fairly quite at this stage so our taxi got us there quickly. We ordered them from a vendor that spoke English, made our choices of toppings that are nothing like we get at home then ate our potatoes in the sunshine before we headed to our next destination the Rumeli Fortress.

The Rumeli Fortress or as we like to call it Castle of Dead Ends was built by Sultan Mehmed ll and it overlooks the narrowest point of the Bosphorous. The fortress was built in 1452 and it has 15 towers in big, medium and small sizes. We climbed up to a number of them but there is no hand railing and some of the steps a quite narrow in places. The only problem was between each tower you had to go back down as the wall did not continue between or when they did you couldn't get into the tower to pass through which was a real shame. The views from the walls however were amazing and we helped burn of lunch will all those stairs.

 

After our taxi ride home which this time encountered more traffic as the locals are coming out now after their lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon just being lazy and recharging the batteries after 2 weeks on the road.

One more day in Istanbul then off to Dubai tomorrow night. J&N

BTW: I have never had this set of instructions in one of my hotel rooms before.

Day 30 - Istanbul

It is the last day of our 3850km tour of Turkey and today and we started with a tour of Topkapi Palace the home of the Turkish Sultans for four hundred years. We saw the amazing jewels, the Treasury, the armoury, the Sultans costumes and the collections of clocks in the council rooms and the residence.

We also decided to visit the Harem which was probably the most impressive building in the whole place. The Turkish tiles in here are amazing and the place is a labyrinth. One of the Sultans had 256 concubines so this explains the size of the place.

From here we visited the Blue Mosque from the 17th Century and then a few of us headed to the Basilica Cistern during the lunch break. The cistern is one of the magnificent historical structures of Istanbul. This enormous underground cistern was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian 527-565. It is nicknamed the sunken palace with its 336 columns. The cistern is 9,800square meters and has the capacity of 100,000 tons of water storage. It definitely is a site worth seeing.

After lunch we hit the Grand Bazaar with its amazing sites and colours. After some shopping it was amazing just to walk around and take in all the sites and sounds of this shopping wonderland.

After 1.5hours in the Grand Bazaar we did our cruise of the Bosphorus which is a natural strait that divides two continents Asia and Europe. We saw beautify mansions, Palace of Ottoman Sultans and castles which we hope to explore tomorrow.

After our cruise we had our end of tour celebration dinner at a restaurant called Poisson on the waterfront in Besiktas. It is sad to say goodbye to everyone including our driver Turguy and our wonderful tour guide Orhan. After 2 weeks sharing our travels with all these people you do build relationships. Our guide has even invited us to all come back and stay with him if we ever return.

We have 2 more nights in Istanbul before 3 nights in Dubai. Tomorrow is the religious sacrifice festival were they slaughter mostly sheep and give 90% of it away to people who need it like the poor, orphanages and charity's. The sites and shops should open around 1.00pm so we can have a nice lazy morning not having to stress about getting bags out on time or what time the bus is leaving.

Until tomorrow J&N

Day 29 - Canakkale to Istanbul

After and early start we made the 8.00am ferry across the Dardanelles Straits to Eceabat and drove to Anzac Cove. We stopped first at the site were the hold the Dawn Service on ANZAC Day and read the descriptions along the wall of the war. From here we walked to Anzac Cove were there is a very moving monument next to the graves of the Australian Soldiers with a message from Ataturk who was responsible for allowing the Australians and other countries to come and properly bury their dead, build memorials and hold the dawn services. If you can read it of my photo you should it is very moving.

 

Our next stop was the Lone Pine Cemetery which is also an Australian site and were after the Dawn Service they hold other ceremonies. On this site there is also a pine tree which was planted in 1990  to commemorate the 8700 Australian Soldiers who died at Gallipoli from a seed germinated from tree that was germinated from a pine cone that was sent home to Australia by a soldier in 1915. The tree is the one right next to our bus.

 

Our next stop was the Turkish Memorial to honour the 10,000 Turks who died in one battle. We also stopped at the New Zealand Memorial as we also had some Kiwi's on our tour. Here were you can see the trenches where the Turkish Soldiers dug in. At this site Ataturk was injured and were the British and New Zealand Soldiers advanced up the hill.

All up there are 22 War Memorials on the Gallipoli Peninsular and it is a very moving place. Another Tour bus was also at the Australian Site and some of them sang the National Anthem which was quite emotional. When we were crossing on the ferry a lady asked Noel if he was Australian and she gave him a couple of Poppy badges for us to wear which was really nice. After our visit as we drove along the peninsular our guide played and Australian war song about a soldier who went to Gallipoli which I think brought a tear to even the American, Canadian and South African passengers.

After this we began our 360km drive to Istanbul stopping at Tekirday for lunch. Istanbul city tour and cruise on the Bosphorus tomorrow which will end our tour. Free night tonight so we headed into the square for dinner and had a clay pot kebap which they smash open just before they serve it. J&N