Day 2 - Istanbul

We wake up early to head to Ortakoy. So early infact, that none of the stores are open, and there are no tour ferries til 1:30pm. We walk around for awhile and take some photos whilst the shops open one by one. We walked past a tarot card reader about 5 times, each time wanting our cards read, but refusing to pay $25 for it. We head to the next best thing. A fortune telling rabbit. Thats right. Moishii paid $1 for a rabbit to pick a fortune for him. Thinking that that wasn't too bad, I also pay $1. The rabbit refuses to tell my fortune. The guy starts grabbing the rabbit and shoving its face into the pile of fortunes, but it refuses to pick one out for me. Finally, another rabbit jumped in and told me that I should get getting news. For $1, I find out that I will be getting news......

After wasting our money on crap and gobbling down a "stuffed potato", which is a baked potato where they mash the insides with cheese, we grab a ferry ticket and head over to the maidens island. There are numerous tales about this island. One legend states that a King received an premonition that his daughter will die of a snake bite. In order to save her, he locks her in this tower in the middle of the sea all by herself. Unfortunately, she died when she got bitten by a snake that was hidden in the food delivered to her. Apparently her body is buried in the St Sophia's Mosque that has two holes in her coffin that is supposed to signify the snake bites.

After climbing the tower and taking a whole heap of photos, we sit at the cafe at the top of the tower to sit back, relax and enjoy the views. Suddenly, this woman grabs her baby and shoves his bum right into the window we are staring out of. I thought she was about to strip him and start changing his nappy right infront of us. After a few seconds of shoving her kids butt in our faces, she picks him up and walks into the cafe and plonks him on our bench. The baby then proceeds to trample all of the place and practically sits on our drinks with the help of his mother. The kids father walks over and tells his wife to move the baby so he won't bother us (Its too late buddy) and the mother replies "But the baby is enjoying the view!". FFS woman, this cafe has a 360 degree view of the harbour with about 20 windows, and you choose our window for your baby to enjoy!? You're lucky I didn't kick you down the stairs!

We scull our drinks and quickly run around grabbing photos and disturbing the local dogs that sleep under benches, we head back to Ortakoy where I get to have my Kazandibi again. Its basically a burnt milk pudding that tastes oh so good! Its the one thing I've been craving for ever since I left Istanbul last time. We sit down at Mado cafe only to find out that they use Chicken in their pudding.......so thats whatI forgot to add....... *Cough*

We had some time left before the sun set, so we decided to head towards Pierre Loti. I ask Moishii whats at Pierre Loti, and all he said was that it was some place to do with a french guy. No duh.....We hop into a taxi and tell the driver to start driving. The only problem was, this guy had no idea where Pierre Loti was. He drives us around in circles whilst using his mobile to call his friends for directions. Somewhere in between, he grabs a bottle of some clear liquid and shoves it in Moishii's face. He declines but grab the bottle anyway. Moishii screams "Hold out your hand" then proceed to slosh this liquid all over me. Like what the!? Then he yells "Put it on your face". I did what any normal person would do in this situation, I splashed all the liquid over Moishii instead. After much arguing, I finally found out that that liquid is supposed to help cool you down if you smear it over yourself on a hot day. You know, it would help if you told me that BEFORE you splash that crap all over me...

Anyway, back to the taxi driver. Whilst all the splashing was happening, he was going around in circles. He finally pulls into a taxi station to ask for more directions, only to realise we've been going in the wrong direction. He cuts 3 lanes and pulls onto a free way. Now what happens next can only be described by my crappy drawing.......(We are the yellow one)


Waiting at a red light at the intersection.....wait. Let me rephrase. At a red light at the intersection, the taxi driver slowly starts to pull into the intersection trying to turn left to point C WHILST THE LIGHT IS STILL RED. He manages to block all the traffic in the lane nearest to us trying to get to point A. This happened at the exact same instant that the traffic light turns green for people trying to turn into point B. This caused complete gridlock. The taxi driver keeps trying to edge forward even though there is absolutely no room for him to get through. This is when the drivers and passengers from all the surrounding cars jump out and start screaming whilst running towards the taxi. I was half expecting them to pull a club lock out of his pants and start beating the shit out of us. After much screaming and slapping of the taxi, the guy manages to force the taxi driver to reverse back enough for the red cars to pass so the blue cars can turn and hence clearing the way for us. Not that the taxi driver waited for all the blue cars to turn.....he tried forcing his way through the traffic once it started flowing again....That has got to be the worst traffic indicent I've been in so far.....

After surviving that near death incident, we finally make it to Pierre Loti where I practically throw myself out of the taxi. We make a run for the nearest hill and try to find out what this bloody Pierre Loti thing is that almost cost us our lives. We start walking and all we see is a cafe, and lots of graves. We walk around the place and end up hiking up a huge hill and end up back at the first cafe we saw...we're exhausted by this point and drop into the nearest table we see. This is when we finally realised what Pierre Loti is......basically a French guy visited Turkey, fell in love with a married Turkish woman, and he would come to a cafe very similar to the one we're sitting at to think about her. Then he got famous for his books. Thats bloody it. I almost got killed for that bastid!! Realising how much our lives are worth, we head back to the hotel ready to kill the bellboy who sent us there in the first place.....

We catch another taxi (No we never learn) back to the hotel, only to be told to get out about 5 or 6 blocks early because the traffic was really bad and that we should walk the rest of the way. No arguments from me after that ride today. We walk along the street towards the hotel, when Moishii gets attacked by a parrot in a cage that was being carried by some guy. We can't even walk without causing an incident. I practically get run over by a tall guy riding a kids motorcycle that was 1/3 of his size. His knees practically touched his ears! This was after we saw a guy beat the crap out of another guy on the streets. He even pulled out an extendable baton to beat the guy.....

To calm ourselves down after that much excitement, we head to the nearest kebab place to buy a cheap $1 half kebab (half size). Somehow I ended up with a full size kebab for $2.50 and Moishii ended up buying 4 massive pastry/breadrolls as a "snack".....This is right before dinner where we meet up with Bellboy instead of killing him for sending us to Pierre Loti. After dinner, we head back to Sude Konak (The hotel where he works and where he tried to hold me and my luggage ransome on the first day) and we plonk ourselves at their terrace bar having turkish coffee. Suddenly more people appear. Enter the Reception guy. Somehow we convinced him to read my Coffee cup, and according to him, there are 4 roads ahead of me.....and the 4th road is closed......by a guy holding a gun. What the? (Photos to come) After we freak out thinking that its either Mykonos, or New York, or even Sydney, we decided that we needed to get away from the place and head to the most "happening" clubs in Istanbul. "My Day".

We walk in and there is about 10 people in there........all sitting at tables having drinks......in a court yard......that doesn't have a dance floor. Yes, I did say we're going clubbing. Apparently clubbing in Turkey is a tad different to the clubbing the rest of the world knows it as. People would stand up from their seats and just dance on the spot. Theres no dance floor as such....people just dance at their tables and then sit back down. And by "happening", it means more than 20 people in the same place together.....The only highlight of the night was watching this tart stand on a balcony and flash her undies non-stop to everyone down below and practically having sex with the railings.....theres only so much of that you can take. Eventually we leave the place.

We walk into Taksim. Let me refresh your memory, Taksim is like the Pitt St Mall of Sydney. Only 50 times the size and about 10 times more people. We start walking along Taksim towards the taxi stand when the ENTIRE CITY BLACKOUTS. I took down Taksim......walking in the dark guided only by the moonlight, we somehow manage to stumble our way to a taxi stand. This is a HUGE taxi stand. There is about 20 taxis waiting in line. We jump into one of the taxis near the front of the queue. This is when we find out that the taxi infront of ours is broken and would not start. So our taxi driver decides to jump out and help push the taxi DOWN A FARKIN HILL INTO A STATIONARY CAR!!! Luckily they managed to stop the taxi right before it slams into the parked car. This is when we realised that in his rush to help his mate, he forgot to put the brakes on in our taxi. We also start to roll down the hill when the bellyboy and the terrace guy manage to leap into the front seat and put the brakes on.

The taxi driver finally gets back into the cab after we saved it from rolling down a hill with us still in it. The taxi driver tries to restart the cab only for our engine to die as well. Without missing a beat, his fellow taxi drivers quickly run behind us and proceed to push us down a hill after we just stopped the taxi from rolling. Here we were rolling down the hill headed straight for the taxi that almost hit the stationary car when the engine manages to start in the last split second, just long enough for us to swerve into oncoming traffic and miss the parked cars......Lets just say, I'm glad I was wearing my black pants.

We get back to the hotel around 2:30am, and instead of heading back to our room to crash, bellboy insists that we go to his hotel, sit at the terrace bar to eat watermelons......After consuming huge amounts of watermelon, we finally crash into bed around 3:30am.