Adventures By Design

As has become our habit, we woke up to darkness at our usual time of 2 am, and lounged about pretending to sleep until 4:00. Soon after, our alarm sounded: the Muslim call to prayer. At around this time we decided it was decent to be awake so we turned on the lights and Ric got out his book. He’s been hoping to finish it before we leave tonight so that he can change it for a new one at our hotel. Gin eschewed her book in favor of the hotel’s free wifi. We still had no place to stay in Cairo when we arrived at 2am tomorrow. Gin searched for a while, checked her email, send a message to Ryan to see if Inca was doing okay, and found a hotel that looked nice, but didn’t have an instant online booking system. She sent a message to the hotel owner asking for a room for tonight, crossed her fingers, and proceeded to check her Facebook.

Eventually the time had reached the late hour of 8:30, so we decided to get ready and go down for breakfast. Yesterday when we showed up promptly at 8 for breakfast it wasn’t ready and the hotel manager was a little flustered trying to get everything out quickly for us. We figured we’d give him a bit more time today, and after showering we stumbled our way downstairs at about 9:30. After breakfast we booked our trip to the airport with the airport shuttle service. Our flight to Cairo left at 11:30pm, so we had hours to say goodbye to Istanbul.

Today was a day of walking. To start, we revisited some of the shops we had seen earlier at the base of the Blue Mosque (where Gin bought some cute felt clogs, and Ric got a felt ball). We continued meandering until we felt hungry, so found our way back to the restaurant with the friendly Kurdish owner. He was happy to see us again (and gave us a free appetizer!). Our bellies full, we resumed our wander, avoided a traffic snarl, and soon found ourselves surrounded by Turkish students. Apparently there was a school nearby, but more importantly, where there are schools, there inevitably are… stationary stores!

Allow us to inform you of one aspect of China that is sorely missing from the Lonely Planet guidebooks. China’s (like Korea’s) selection of pens sucks. Sure they have lots of cheap junk with random decorations attached, but if you take your styluses more seriously, this is not the country for you. And we’re not talking about some refillable carefully crafted Mont Blanc that Ray would be interested in. No, we (Ric) seek a simple, well-designed, mass produced disposable pen available in a variety of colours. Something like this If you can even find a Uni-ball in China, invariably it is black, blue, or red (aka the uninspired trinity of banality). Granted, we’ve only lived in Suzhou for a few months, and we’ll keep looking, but so far things aren’t looking promising. FYI: Japan’s pen selection is fantastic.

Our pen fix fixed and notebook needs noted, we resumed our stroll, and soon found ourselves in Istanbul’s garment district. From stores selling bolts of fabric, to T-shirts and socks by the bushel, to tailors and stitchers, and even mannequins for displays, everything you would need to start your own clothing store could be had here. It was a little surreal, and clearly we were well off the tourist circuit.

Since we have been walking so much in this general area of Istanbul, it didn’t take us long to find our bearings again and realize that we were close to the Grand Bazaar, so back we went. We browsed some more, but other than a Turkish hand drum for Ric (he didn’t get a drum, he just wanted one), didn’t really see anything that interested us.

It was now the early evening and time to think about dinner. Aiming for the general direction of our hotel, we walked for what seemed like hours (actually it was hours). Along the way, we discovered Istanbul’s leather and belt district, followed closely by its shoe and boot district, but sadly we didn’t see it’s hand drum district. Suddenly we were in front of the Blue Mosque again, and it’s attendant touristy area.

Restaurants weren’t hard to find, although choosing one proved more difficult. Outside all the restaurants are well-dressed men aggressively requesting your patronage. Often they start their spiel in whatever language they think you speak; more often than not that was Dutch for us, although we were surprised to find out it wasn’t just because of Gin’s ivory lowlander complexion. Ric too was pegged as a Dutchman, and frequently spoken to in Dutch, followed by German and French. It was fun to toy with these restaurateurs just to see what languages they would try.

After a great dinner we returned to our hotel with just a couple of hours left until our flight. Since we still had not secured a hotel for the night in Cairo, we we’re hoping to sit in the hotel’s lobby, use their free wifi, and see if the hotel Gin had emailed earlier had gotten back to us. When we walked in the manager seemed happy to see us again, and gave us the key to our old room. They hadn’t cleaned the room yet, so we were welcome to use it until we left. Sweet!

We headed up and Gin checked her email to see if the hotel in Cairo had gotten back to her yet. They had sent a lovely email, but sadly had no rooms available for the night… blast! We sent the rest of the time until our airport pick up looking for a place to stay in Cairo. Eventually we found a street that had a bunch of well-reviewed hostels on it, and decided to head there after our flight landed and try our luck. We weren’t much looking forward to roaming Cairo’s streets in the wee hours, especially since jetlag was hitting hard and all we wanted was to go to bed. Unfortunately we were kinda out of options so we wrote down a couple addresses and started hoping for the best.

Soon our ride arrived, and after a harrowing ride through Istanbul we were at the airport. The line for our flight was short, but was taking forever, and there was obviously something weird going on. Finally it was our turn at the counter and when we arrived the guy at the counter told us the flight was overbooked by 20 seats, and asked if would we be able to change to a flight tomorrow afternoon. They would put us up in a nice hotel, put us in business class tomorrow, and get us to Cairo in the afternoon tomorrow…. this was perfect!! Ric had actually commented earlier how he wished they would bump us from our flight and let us stay the night in Istanbul, now all his wishes were coming true. We quickly agreed to the new flight and headed off to catch a ride to our hotel for the night. As we walked away we realized that quite possibly we could have asked for more compensation, but we were happy anyway.

Now we’re sitting in a nice comfy room, with free internet and we’ll be able to arrive in Cairo at a reasonable hour tomorrow to look for a place to stay!
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We woke up pretty early today (to be expected since we went to bed around 4pm yesterday) and headed downstairs for breakfast. The hotel manager had told us that breakfast was anytime between 8 and 12, but when we arrived at just after 8 he was only beginning to get things ready. He seemed a bit embarrassed about the situation, but we just enjoyed some coffee while we waited for him.

Breakfast at our hotel was only marginally less delicious than what we had yesterday, and it’s included with our room. We sat around for a while enjoying cheese, olives, tomatoes, bread, and cereal with yogurt and preserved cherries, before heading out for the day.

Our plan for this day was to see the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Market, and to wander around town a bit. First we walked to the Grand Bazaar which is perhaps the oldest market in the world. Apparently it started pretty small but just kept on expanding bigger and bigger. It is eclipsed in size by many shopping malls now, but it’s still pretty Grand. There are a lot of jewelry stores inside, as well as shops selling carpets, pottery, lamps, and various othr tourist-oriented items. Though we’d like to have something from Turkey, we just didn’t find anything that really struck our fancy (and our lifestyle). After a coffee in one of the little restaurants inside we headed out for the Spice Market.

To get there we had to walk downhill through areas that didn’t seem meant for tourists. There were tonnes of clothing shops with frilly, garish dresses in the windows. We couldn’t figure out who would wear these dresses, or to what occasion but there seemed to be a huge market for them nonetheless.

At the Spice Market Gin salivated over the baklava and Turkish Delight and we enjoyed looking at the huge baskets of various spices, but again we didn’t buy anything. We had a nice lunch (complete with Gin’s cherry juice) beside the market, and then headed off to walk across the Galata bridge.

We thought the Galata bridge actually crossed from Europe to Asia (Istanbul is actually in both Europe and Asia, the dividing line is the Bosporus Strait which the city straddles) however the Galata bridge just crossed a little inlet, and to go to Asia we would have had to cross a much longer bridge. Ah well, it was still a nice walk and it was interesting to see all the fishermen along the bridge.

We crossed back over the bridge and then took a winding walk back to our hotel. When we arrived the charismatic owner, Hakan, was there and we chatted with him for a few minutes. In the course of this talk he told us that the Topkapi palace (the old sultan’s palace) was closed the next day. Visiting the palace had been our big plan for our last day in Istanbul, and we almost missed it entirely. Luckily since we talked to Hakan we had to time to rush over and see a few things.

The palace itself wasn’t that exciting, but we saw some treasures, including a 86 carat diamond, several pieces of the Prophet Mohammed’s (p.b.u.h.) beard, and Moses’ stick that he used to divide the Red Sea (supposedly). There were also lots of things that had been taken from other countries in war, like a big gold throne covered with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. If you are looking for photos of these, you’ll have to search the internet or something, because we weren’t allowed to take any. Perhaps the highlight of the trip though was getting to hear a man reciting the Koran in the hall where the religious artifacts were kept; it was very beautiful and poignant.

Later in the day we had dinner at a great restaurant where the couple at the table next to us ordered a dish that was cooked in a clay jar which came to the table still on the fire and was then broken open to serve the food inside. Pretty cool, and it made the (unbroken) plates that our food came on seem rather pedestrian.
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We arrived in Istanbul early this morning and, after paying an extortionate $60 each for a visa, got through the airport with no problems. The hotel we’re staying at (Apricot Hotel) had arranged an airport pickup for us, and though we had arrived nearly 2 hours late a man was faithfully waiting with a sign with our names on it.

At the hotel we checked into our room, and were suitably impressed by the amazing view from our window. The Blue Mosque is only 2 blocks from here, and the sight of it takes your breath away. It was still dark outside, so the whole, beautiful building was lit up and there were birds flying around the six graceful minarets. Now we were very glad we’d taken our friend’s advice on this hotel!

We took a quick nap then showered and headed out to see Istanbul. We’ve only got three days here, so we wanted to make the most of them (well, Gin did… Ric wanted to sleep a little longer). The first thing we did was to find some breakfast at a little outdoor cafe. Although it’s a bit chilly here somehow it’s not so bad for sitting outside. We had a traditional Turkish breakfast, which included bread, olives, tomatoes, cheese, yogurt, honeycomb (where have you been all my life?!), hazelnut spread (like Nutella), and a other unidentifiable yummy stuff. As our first intro to authentic Turkish food it was great!!

After breakfast we went to see the Blue Mosque (so called because of the colours of the tiles inside it). The inside was pretty cool, but not as nice as the outside. When we were leaving the mosque we somehow got nabbed by a rogue carpet salesmen who managed to get us to come to his shop for a look. Often at the beginning of trips we just aren’t on our game and get taken by touts like this. We didn’t get taken enough to actually buy a carpet though, so we just enjoyed an apple tea and a chat with the proprietor and then went on our way.

Having made our getaway, we went to the Hagia Sophia, a super old Christian church that was later converted to a mosque. The outside of this one isn’t very well-preserved or exceptional, but the inside is fabulous! We hung out for an hour or two taking photos and enjoying it before heading off for lunch.

We found a great kebab restaurant for lunch and Gin got to have some of her new favorite drink: cherry juice. We sat about for a while after our lunch, had some baklava and tea, and chatted with the owner about politics. He is Kurdish and filled us in a little on the Kurdish situation. It’s quite sad because there are somewhere between 19-37 million Kurds, mostly in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In Turkey, although there are 12 million Kurds (about 16% of the population), the Turkish government had banned Kurdish schools, publishing, and broadcasting. We wonder what happens to a culture when it’s not allowed to express itself?

Once we left the restaurant we walked back to our hotel (getting marginally lost along the way). We intended just to read for a bit and maybe take a nap, but when we woke up again it was 2am… a little late for dinner.

We woke up this morning at 8 to get ready to go on our trip. We had to finish (start) packing and get Inca’s stuff ready before bringing her over to Ryan and Maggie’s house for her vacation with Addie, the Golden Retriever. Unfortunately we didn’t really get going at 8, due to a bit of celebrating with our Aussie friends Mark/Lyndal and Nadine/Michael the evening before. Indeed, we had just finish teaching yesterday so we needed to mark the occasion somehow. Michael and Nadine had never been to a Korean restaurant before, so we took them to our favorite one, Sorabol, where the owner is in love with Gin and always gives us free stuff. Of course anytime we have Korean (or hang out with Mark and Lyndal, or both) we have to have some drinks and last night was no exception. So this morning Gin was feeling pretty rotten and didn’t really get going until 10ish.

Once we finally got everything ready we brought Inca, with her attendant baggage over to Ryan and Maggie’s. Their dog, Addie, and Inca get on really well and always have a blast playing. The humans watching them usually get a little worried by Addie’s habit of sitting on Inca, but we know that Inca’s quick enough to get out of the way before being squished. We brought some toys for Inca, along with her food and blanket, but we’re pretty sure that Addie will be all the toy she needs. We wonder when they’ll stop playing, or if it’ll continue for the entire two weeks we’ll be gone?

After dropping off Inca we had a quick lunch and then headed home to grab our bags and catch our ride to the airport. Since Suzhou is a small Chinese city (of 6 million people) it doesn’t have it’s own airport and we had to head to Shanghai. It’s meant to be a 1 ½ – 2 hour drive, so we left at 4 for our flight at 8:30. The owner of the company we hired our driver from thought we should go at 5, but we’re really glad we insisted on 4. On the way to the airport we ran into no less than 3 massive traffic jams, and we didn’t arrive until 6:45. As we got close our driver asked us which of the two terminals we needed, and of course we had no idea so we gambled on Terminal 1. As these things go we obviously chose the wrong terminal so we then had to catch a shuttle to the other one. At this point we decided that next time we were leaving for the airport 6 hours early.

Finally, after realizing that Ric had forgotten his wallet (at least it wasn’t his passport!) we managed to check in for our flight and clear security. When we tried to go through passport control though they motioned us way down to the end of the hall where we completely skipped immigration. Apparently we were going to have to get off our plane in Beijing to take care of that… groan.

Miraculously we still had a little time to kill before our flight so we grabbed a quick snack, checked out the disappointing selection at the bookstore, and ran into another teacher from our school, Jarrett, on his way to India, before finding out that our flight had been delayed and they would let us know the revised departure time ‘soon.’ We were a little worried about that, but it turned out to be only about a 10 minute delay and we were soon on our way.

The stop in Beijing was predictably miserable as we had to get off the plane, collect new boarding passes, get shuttled across the chilly tarmac, go through immigration, then back through security, and for a hike across the airport, before getting back onto the exact same plane and back to our exact same seats. Cynical thoughts of Communist Chinese efficiency came to mind.

After that we were finally on our way to Turkey, Gin was exhausted and slept for the entire flight, while Ric nearly finished his book. Next stop, Istanbul!