Istanbul Hostel

Sunday 25th May 2008 Sydney-Singapore-Dubai-Istanbul Go over to Adam's about midday, but he's not home. Arrives shortly after - been held up at Touch Football. Gives us lift to airport, and in return gets to keep the car for the next two months. Our flight leaves at 3.30pm. We're flying to Singapore with Singapore Airlines on the new A380, which is enormous, with an upstairs and downstairs, and holds over 600 passengers. Each seat has its own large, "on demand" movie screen with a big choice ...

I haven't written in awhile because I've been pretty busy, but also because it was so expensive to use the Internet in Greece. But my terrific Istanbul hostel has free Internet, and I have some time here to relax as well. From Athens I took an 8-hour ferry to Santorini, an island that 3600 years ago was a primary Minoan settlement when the volcano that it was composed of sent it into the sky. The catastrophe is one of the possible sources of the Atlantis story. It's now a broken ring of two i...

This morning was a bit of a shock. I looked out of my hotel room window there was snow as far as I could see. Very picturesque. I don't think I am going to be able to put off purchasing a coat for much longer. I reckon maybe a hat too. Moving on again today. Istanbul, here I come. I only saw three dogs and one cat during my Bursa stay. Very odd. Caught a bus with four minutes to spare from Bursa otogar. The countryside very English ... this like Lincolnshire in parts and Northumberland in oth...

I am sitting in the Istanbul hostel typing this as U2's song "one" plays in the background. (i didn't even request it!) It has made me think of mentioning to you that the children have started to realize that we are "one but not the same". As we have travelled the children are at first a bit shy with the new people we meet and then before long they whisper to us "Are they ever nice, they are just like us." We are so pleased as this is one of the lessons we hoped the children would learn in ou...

We arrived in Istanbul and got a taxi to our hostel in Saltanamet. Wow. We have arrived in a modern city and it is so nice! We really enjoyed our time in India and Egypt but... well it is nice to be able to walk without fearing for your life due to the traffic. While here we spent our first night in a 6 person dorm room. We had two very nice Auzzies as roommates. The next day we moved to an apt of our own. We have two bedrooms a bathroom and a kitchen - wow. The best part is that we can cook ...

We headed back to Istanbul, uncomfrotably, on a ¨luxury¨ coach. We managed to get a seat next to a woman who spoke English. She worked as a social worker, and we thought it might be nice to have a chat. However, one minute into our conversation she started telling us about her recent divorce, and how unhappy she was blah blah... Why is it that Social Workers always seem to have more problems than the people they are suppose to help??? Anyway, we were booked into the Istanbul Hostel, a step up...

Hello again: No internet for 4 days. Now at Istanbul Hostel. Rhodos was very interesting, especially the old town behind the walls. Our ferry to Kos was a luxury ferry and no one got sea sick. Kos was also very interesting, saw some archiological sites in Kos town, did some window shopping and ate greek food. Our hostess at Yiorgos hotel was very nice grandmother. We discovered the ferry to Bodrum was unlike the ferry to Kos. It was about the length of a Maritime fishing boat, but slightly br...

Hi Folks, Firstly let me apologise for any strange punctuation as the keyboard is totally foreign and despite changing the language to English it is still doing peculiar things.It is now Friday and we arrived in Istanbul on Monday evening and I have been ill to varying degrees all the time. It actually started on the way here when we stopped for a brunch (we had left Goreme so early that we didn't eat until 10ish and then it was left over BBQ!!~ from the night before- perhaps that's where it ...

We arrived in Istanbul to some amazing weather but absolutely miles from the city. That's what you get for flying EasyJet :-) After missing the first airport bus, we hooked up with some English chicks and shared a cab into town, ended up being cheaper and faster. We were off to a good start with this whole backpacking lark. After checking into what is possibly the noisiest hostel in Istanbul, we headed off and checked out Istanbul for a few days taking in the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, Basilica ...