Day 34 - Last night in Istanbul with the taxi ride

We've given up trying to go to the Princess Island and making it to breakfast. Today was our last harrah in Istanbul. Of course, we start the day off at Maestro:

Strong morning tea to wake us up at 2pm

I went for a Kofte platter

Breakfast plater for Moishii

Cheapskates are skimping on the bread

Our bill comes in a little treasure chest

As we walked out, we took some last minute photos with the waiter/bible basher:


We also got a photo of the car parking guy. I don't know what exactly what he does. He stands in the middle of the road trying to help people park cars, but no one goes to Maestro except us??


We run back across the street to the hotel to grab our stuff when we noticed that the Lobby has turned into a store room. Looks like a Korean tour group has checked in, and they've bought a crate of instant noodles with them!!!


We had a little plan hatched, which involved us visiting a photo shop. More on this later.

Seeings it our last day, we decided that we need to hit the Grand Bazaar for any last minute shopping. We start making random purchases, before finding ourselves at the Greek Scarf guy's place where we played dress up again. This time round, he doesn't even hide the fact that he's looking down my top. He shakes my hand and doesn't let go so he could get a better look.


Out of nowhere, one of his friends popped up and took a photo with me as well. I finally had enough and Moishii had spent all his money on his Sultan's coat that we ran off to look for Jewelery guy. Apparently his wife is in labor and he'll need to run off any minute to go see his baby. In the meantime, we went nuts buying last minute gifts. I even scored myself a really nice amber pendant where again, he tries to rip me off. I'm not too sure what happened, but there was some negotiation, a free necklace thrown in and an popped button.

He sent his little monkey off to do work for him whilst we finalised our purchases. He comes running back all happy and smiling like Odie from Garfield. Apparently the first day at work, this guy smashed his glass counter top. Nice.


I also found a really nice hand beaded shawl with 2 peacocks on it that I wanted to buy my mum. Moishii reckons his mum would like it as well, so we both agreed that we didn't want to pay more than $30 each. We pick our scarfs and start the negotiation. The conversation went something like this:

Me: How much?
Him: $70 each. Very nice!
Me: $60 for 2
Him: No no!! Too cheap! Scarf expensive!!
Me: $60
Him: I do you special, $100!
Me: $60 *starts walking away*
Him: $90!! Come back! Come back!!
Me: $60
Him: I make no money! I do it for $80
Me: $60
Him: *Turns to Moishii* Say something to her!!!!!
Me: $60
Him: Ok ok. $70! *Starts to put the scarves in a bag*
Me: $60 *Takes $60 out and stands there*

He actually took the $60! LOL He even begged Moishii to stop me from being so ruthless. Like he would help. It was hard enough for him to stand there and no laugh!


We also went back to our Original Scarf Guy, who we found out was call Zulfu (This caused a 15 min laughing fit) because I wanted to pick up some hats as souvenirs for my workmates. After ripping us off yesterday, he went and just grabbed the hats I wanted and shoved it into my bag free of charge. They only cost him $2 each anyway....besides, we printed out a photo of us together and gave it to him.

On our way back to the hotel, I spotted this old lady selling hand knitted woollen socks. I thought it would be nice to buy them for my grandma. Even with the old and homeless I had to bargain. Moishii says shame on me. I say I know good value when I see it!

We get back to Maestro where it was time for lunch. I mean, its only been like 2 hours. Bellboy actually joined us this time round. Mind you, he rocked up, ordered a heap of food and drinks, ate and left.

Shepards salad

Guvec with rice and salad

To entertain us after lunch, we pulled out the lovely photos we got developed that morning, and decided to leave Maestro a good present:


We had a massive argument in the shop as to how many photos we needed to print out. I said 3, Moishii wanted to use up their paper supply!!

Left in the table tray

We went back to the hotel to do our packing before heading out to dinner in a few hours. Not before leaving our mark behind:

Moishii's hand luggage.......

My final packing

We realised we had a whole heap of stuff we didn't want to take back since they were heavy and easily replaced when back in Sydney. We threw everything into a big care package which we were going to regift to Moishii's friend. Oh, we also threw in a picture of Christine.

Once that we done, we grabbed our stuff and headed towards the ferry.

View of Istanbul from the ferry

Once we got off the ferry, we practically got ran over and beaten up before we managed to get a taxi who did an illegal U-turn across 4 lanes of traffic before getting completely lost. We eventually found the restaurant, which was past an army training base. There were warning signs all over the perimeter about us being shot if we trespassed. Lucky we made it in one piece, just in time to see Seyda making a grand entrance.


The restaurant we went to was really nice. It was a huge modern Turkish restaurant overlooking Istanbul and the sea. I didn't exactly know what was going on, so I just left the order up to the 2 of them.

Russian salad

Babaganoush

Strange, but very yummy puffy bread. Its all air inside

One half of the restaurant

Adana Kebab

Shish Kebab

Lamb Kebab cooked in yoghurt

View from the restaurant

Free snacks when waiting for a cab

So the 3 of us jump into a cab, where the plan is to drop Seyda off at her apartment, when we'll go catch the ferry. So Seyda sits at the front, and me and Moishii sits in the back. As the cab pulls up outside her apartment, Seyda half climbs to the back of the cab to give Moishii a hug goodbye. Because I'm sitting directly behind her, she gets out of the cab and walks to the back door of the cab. Just as she opens the door, the cab driver starts to drive off. So here I am in a moving taxi, with an open door that Seyda is just hanging on to the handle. We started screaming for him to stop the cab before she gets dragged under. We scream at the cab driver, say our goodbyes before she closes the door and we're ok to drive off again.

2mins later, Me and Moishii has absorbed the fact that Seyda almost got dragged under the cab, and it would've been partially my fault. Then we started arguing as to whether I should slam the door shut to save myself or would I be dragged under as well in my attempts to save her. This started a massive laughing fit where we were sitting at the back of the cab, snorting into our sleeves to stop ourselves from laughing out loud. I swear we can't go anywhere without causing an incident. I CAN'T SAY GOODBYE WITHOUT ALMOST KILLING SOMEONE! haha

We jump out of the cab to realise that the last ferry of the night is going to leave in 1min. We run to get our tickets where Moishii almost punches someone in the head for being too slow before we did the 200m dash and leaped onto the ferry.

Now that we were safe and sound and had a good 30mins to get back to the hotel, we decided to amuse ourselves. We started leaving photos of Christine on the boat.

We walked back to the hotel and decided to go to Maestro one last time.

Apple tea

And just to keep ourselves amused, I went into the toilet to leave another picture of Christine behind.


We went back to the hotel and saw reception guy there. We grabbed photos and Moishii started talking to him, actually, I think Moishii was trying to keep him distracted as I started planting photos of Christine in the postcard rack.

We ended the night with more packing before we crashed into bed. Not before the couple next door started going for it again.