26-Jan-2024
Yesterday -- Thursday 25, Day 61/66 -- was moving-on day.
Our bus to Istanbul wasn't scheduled to leave until 1335, but our hosts kindly let us stay on past the check-out time, so we were able to do a last little lap of Alexandroupoli unencumbered by our packs:
The Armenian Church, dedicated to Saint John
Our last trip to Chorio. Alexandroupoli is the only stop in which we've become regulars somewhere, and this is the place
These little doughnuts are served with honey and cinnamon. I think they're called loukoumades, and I'm guessing they're relatives of the prikle/fritule
After this pleasant little interlude, we went back to do the final bits of packing and tidying, shouldered our packs, and headed for the bus station.
This is not Alexandroupoli's finest feature, it has to be said. But there are chairs and toilets.
Our bus eventually rolled up, and we set off at 1350 (ie, 15 minutes late). It's a reasonable-sized vehicle. There are curtains; there's a tolerable amount of leg-room; and we're helped along again by the fact that it isn't full.
The tedious elements are the heat (why are these contraptions ALWAYS too hot?), and the length of the journey.
We had suspected there was something odd about the schedule. Arrival into Istanbul was projected as 1750. Given there's an hour's time difference between Greece and Turkey, this always seemed ridiculously optimistic. And it was... We had the border to deal with (for the Greek side, they just take your passports away, and bring them back to you, but for the Turkish side, everyone has to get off to present his/her documents). And a number of people decided this was an ideal opportunity to stock up on duty-free items.
Crossing the River Evros, which forms the border between Greece and Turkey
Finally, we got moving again. But then there was another 20-minute stop, so it was 1800 before we were back on the road to Istanbul, and we still had a two-hour journey in front of us...
The guy at the rest stop
This was nice. Quintessentially Turkish
Loath to mess around any further, we chartered an Uber to our hotel. (Uber here finds you a taxi, as opposed to a private driver.) The main Istanbul bus station is quite a way out, and the traffic was fairly thick, so we weren't checking in until a little after 2100 (which was only 2000 Greek time, of course, but by now it felt like 2400 personal time). We normally save our "welcome drink" voucher for later in our visit, but today we felt a restorative glass of wine was exactly what we needed, right there right then.
We've splurged a bit for the last few nights, and our Mercure room is enormous:
Not as enormous, though, as the breakfast buffet, which is truly fabulous. No-one does a breakfast buffet quite as well as the Turks...
Just some of the myriad offerings: Fried potatoes, omelette, sausage and green beans, cheese, cucumber, beetroot, red cabbage, tomato, mixed vegetable relish, olives, tapenade, and coriander...
The first call to prayer sounded at about 0645 this morning. The sun doesn't rise until 0820 or thereabouts, but we had a big moon hanging over our street this morning:
It's always interesting walking in this city. As soon as you spot the cats, you remember how representative of Istanbul they are, and your heart goes all fuzzy. They'll happily trot over to you just for a chat, and don't even seem disappointed that you're not carrying your Go-Cat box:
But there are lots of other things to draw your eye:
Tesvikiye Mosque
Come snack-time, we stopped off at Nostalji Books and Coffee. Excellent spinach borek (very light and spinach-filled -- totally confounding the prejudice I've been developing over the last few weeks that the burek in the Balkans is better...). Turkish coffee (of course). And two little chocolate-orangey things that came along of their own accord.
Our last port of call was Bomontiada. This used to be a beer factory, and is now an eclectic entertainment venue:
There are some interesting views of the reno work that's gone on inside
The area we're staying in is called Bomonti. The website mentioned above has this to say: "Although the consumption of alcohol was forbidden for the Muslim citizens of the Ottoman Empire, the Christian communities living in Istanbul were exempted from it. That’s how the Swiss Bomonti brothers were allowed by the Sultan to put their beer factory on a field in a predominantly Christian area of Istanbul at the end of the 1800s."
So we couldn't not try some... This is the wheat beer, and it's very fresh and light:
We were a bit tired today, after yesterday's major-epic. But it's nice to be back. It's always nice to be back in Istanbul.