Grand Ring Hotel Turkey

... – Utrecht, Holland. Nuremburg, Germany. Bratislava, Slovakia. Budapest, Hungary. Bucharest, Sibiu and Cluj, Romania. Istanbul, Turkey. Favourite country – Germany. Favourite folk – the relaxed Dutch! Favourite cycling spells – ...

...  identifies what year it's from.   Tonight it's early to bed. We have a 5:15 pick up to fly to Ephesus for the day. We'll get back here around 8PM. The hotel is providing breakfast for us at 4:45. What champs they are!      ...

... pack of the bags, with all the compressible gear tightly packed, as we're flying back to Istanbul, and a couple of weeks in Turkey, early tomorrow morning. Seems like what we came with will, indeed, return with us in pretty fat bags.     ...

... go from empty to full in a flash, especially the self-service places. Massive lines just magically appear outside those! Our hotel had a fantastic location, right near the Blue Mosque, so we spent a whole day just doing sightseeing in the area around ...

... ; Certainly different to our diary entry for our last trip, where we say we saw LOTS of water buffalo between Istanbul and Ankara.  Turkey has certainly changed in 30 years, and now has a modern economy, rather than a peasant one. Take a leg to the ...

... by us in 1977.    There is cloud over Georgia, but see the Black Sea, mountain ranges and isolated volcanoes of Turkey, but nothing identifiable. See the big lake just east of the Sea of Marmara, with some large mountains, streaked with white, ...

... hours in the market, and were seriously exhausted by the time we left to go find some dinner. Walking back towards the hotel, I realized that I couldn't ever get used to the spectacular beauty of this city, no many how many times I walk through ...

... I spend the afternoon inside the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. These are the two most fantastic and grandiose structures in Istanbul, Turkey, even the world. Quite a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Before the sun went down I made my way down ...

... information desk knew absolutely nothing...semi surprising considering it is the location of probably the biggest archeological site in all of Turkey.  There was a bus mentioned in the guidebook, but we couldn't find it and ended up taking an $80 ...

... .  I decided that someday, when I have a house of my own and money to furnish it, I’m coming back to Turkey.  I’ll buy mismatched dishes in gorgeous patterns, lamps and candle holders, sparkly embroidered linens and rugs, and goblets ...

... , playing Turkish music. And I think I paid less than AU$4 for the privelege. Eating out is cheap in Turkey. After this, another visit to the Grand Bazaar and a wander through the outdoor markets. I had heard that these are definitely worth a visit; ...

... been serving these delicious little balls for nearly 100 years. It was fantastic. From here we walked through the sprawling Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar...both were amazing and we will be visiting them again in more detail later so check back ...

... The weather was cool but clear the whole time we were there.  We just happened to have a great restaurant in our hotel.  In the Grand Bazaar, I found EXACTLY the necklace I was looking for...and it was cheap.   I ate food on the street ...

... have a look inside the Blue Mosque. If you haven’t heard of it, basically it is the most well known mosque in Turkey, it looks pretty impressive too (see my pictures). I had spent days walking past however I hadn’t yet looked inside. ...

... Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Dolmbache Palace, Istiklal Street and Taksim Square were all to be explored.  Starting with Grand Bazaar, we fixed our eyes on a ring for Shelly and Nargile (Hookah) for our home. Grand Bazaar was filled of Turkish carpets, ...

... and usually the vendors will just give in and sell it to you for the price you said. I bought a cool ring that way! Then we went back to our hotel and signed up for seeing the "whirling durvish's." Its this show where about 5 men wearing white skirt ...

August 30th - Istanbul, Turkey Sat in our room at the Almina Hotel feeling a little fraudulent. After hours of self-justification we emerged from a travel agent this morning clutching two one-way air tickets for Delhi in ten days time. So much for ...

... . I discussed some of those tensions with Calvin, whose family incidentally is all from Istanbul, arguably the most Western European of Turkey's Western European areas. "I mean what he did to bring us to where we are today was just incredible," Calvin ...

... bottle of pomegranate wine myself. There we walked some very quaint and quiet streets, and hit the first Christian church I've seen in Turkey. Not exactly still in use, but it served as the first evidence as the mixture of those two great religions that I ...

... same as me when it comes down to what we really care about, and isn't that so cool. When we approached the Greece/Turkey border it took a long time to get visas and passports sorted out and once it seemed we were through everything they still seemed to ...