Day 11 - The return to Istanbul

Who the fark wakes up at 4:30 in the morning? UGH My phone being extremely low on battery and the power point was too far up a wall for me to charge my phone, we relied on SOME ELSE's phone to be the alarm. You would expect that when your alarm is loud is enough to wake up the building goes off, that person would get up and turn the alarm off. Especially since no one else knows where the phone is in the dark. But some people were able to sleep through the alarm whilst waking up the entire building. Freezing at 4:30 in the morning, we drag ourselves out of bed and grab our suitcases to check out. Guess what? The elevator is broken. So ontop of waking everyone up with an alarm that went on ringing for about 5 mins, we dragged our suitcases down the stairs whilst making a huge racket.

We go around the corner to look for a taxi to Syntagma square which is like the Martin Place of Sydney so we can catch the airport shuttle bus from there. Ok, I know I don't speak perfect Greek, but I can't have been that hard to understand!? After the 3rd Taxi refusing to drive us, we finally found a guy who understood what the hell we were talking about. We make it to the bus stop just in time to hop onto the bus and on our way to the airport.

Checking our luggage in, we decided that it was time for some coffee and food. We go to the Maccas at the airport and tried to order a Ham, Cheese and Tomato Crossiant without the ham. We asked the bitch at the counter whether she can just take the ham out she gives us a dirty look like we just asked her to flash us her tits. THAT BITCH! I hope you slip on a piece of ham on the floor and crack your head on a block of lard. But I guess it was a good thing since the bloody crossiant, which was about the size of a crumpet would've cost us $7.

Getting onto our flight, we pass out and fall asleep. Note to self: Never fall asleep during a plane landing. I swear I lost 3 years off my life when we bumped onto the runway. It felt like I was sleeping on a bunk bed and someone threw me off the bed onto the floor in the matter of 2 seconds. FFS don't you people know how to land a fuckin plane!? Then they make an announcement over the PA and said something something blah blah "after dessert". ?? WTF?

We flagged down a taxi to the hotel. After leaving the airport, we noticed that most of the roads have been barracaded by comps and all the traffic was getting diverted to a different area. We keep driving and we notice that the route we were going was also getting blocked off. I turned around and mouthed "OMG Its a bomb!" thinking that it was a joke. Now I actually kept a journal for the whole trip making notes of incidents that happen during the day. In the taxi, after circling the city and making verious detours for about 20mins I wrote in my journal:

"Police barracades EVERYWHER! Bomb?"

Someone turns and looks at what I was writing, nods and then laughs. THERE WAS A FREAKIN BOMB SCARE!? I quickly wrote the following note:




What type of sick person doesn't tell me that there is a bomb scare and leaves me practically peeing my pants worrying about my life? I show the note to the asshole who turns and laughs in my face. !?!?!?! Well after about another 5mins, we realise that it was actually a bloody marathon that caused all the road closures and not a bomb. Yet someone didn't even bother clarifying that with me even though I was shitting my pants and writing out my will in my head. Oh btw, we got trapped in the taxi for 1.5hrs whilst circling the city trying to find a way to the hotel.

We get to the hotel and check into our room. Not before this woman in the reception PULLED DOWN HER TOP AND FLASHED US HER BOOBS! UGh! I need a shower, for my eyes as well thank you very much. I hop into the shower and half way through the shower, theres a blackout. FFS! CAN'T YOU BLOODY PEOPLE LET ME SHOWER IN PEACE!? I managed to finish showering and get dressed in complete darkness without slipping and cracking my head open. I walk into the room only to almost fall through a hole in the floor! There was this massive indent in the middle of the room covered by carpet. If you stepped in that stop, the whole floor sags in! The whole place was falling down around us! None of the power points work so I couldn't charge my phone again.

After our "budget" holiday in Greece, we head to the nearest turkish restaurant and ordered two main meals per person. Yes we were being greedy but the whole meal cost about 50% of what we normally paid in Greece only we were getting twice the amount of food. Now this is the place where we met this freak of a waiter who would walk up to our table and move our plates around. Not that there was more food coming. He just wanted to move our plates for the sake of moving it. If he saw me not eating a particular dish at the very moment he looked over, he would come and move that dish closer to me and move everything else around on the table. Sometimes he'll just come and nudge my plate over by 2-3cms. !?!?!?! The restuarant we were at was right outside a train station. All of a sudden there was a really loud announcement over the PA. Since it was in Turkish, I asked my friend what they were saying. Without missing a beat, he turns to me and says:

"The train's coming. We have to move the restaurant"

And hence the famous quote was born. After scoffing the food and laughing at the same time, we ask for our bill and paid the waiter. He walks back to us with the change and puts it down on our table. My friend turns around and says "Thank you". The waiter picked up the change and walked off. What the!?

I give up. You people are nuts. I'm heading to the asia side of Turkey for a bit of normality. We jump onto the ferry, and I mean JUMP because there is no ramp from the shore to the ferry, we head towards the asia side. The minute we get off the ferry, this guy walked up to us and dragged us up 3 flights of stairs in this cheesey looking building. Of course I don't get an explaination as to what is happening from some people and just assumed I was walking into a brothel. We get up to level 3 and it's a bloody VCD/DVD/CD galore! *cough* I browse whilst my friend gets dragged into a back room where I thought the prostitutes were. When he gets out, we quickly run from the building which was when he revealed to me that he scored some free porno DVD. I'm disgusted that he didn't get any for me. After exploring the asian side, we head to the hotel and dump all our things to go to Profilo.

We satisfy our stomaches with mass amounts of Kofte and do some CD shopping before I head to the Internet Cafe whilst someone goes and gets a haircut. I sit in the net cafe for over an hour inhaling second hand smoke and almost die before my friend rocked up to go back to the hotel. We decide to have a nap before heading out clubbing. The only problem was we were so buggered from our early morning start that when I managed to wake up later that night and get changed, my friend opens a lazy eye and says "I'm too tired" and then goes back to sleep. WTF? You ass! You owe me a clubbing session!! The least you could've done was told me before I got up and got ready to go out! I even had my shoes on!