Well it’s been about 4 months since I posted anything on here, but today I’ve finally decided to get my butt in gear and start writing again!  If you’re wondering why I haven’t written in so long (a few of you have asked), there’s a few reasons.  The primary problem is that I’ve fallen so far behind I don’t even know where to begin writing and it feels like I’ll never catch up.  Story of my life – start something, get picky about every little detail so it takes forever to complete each task, get confused halfway through about what I’ve done and what I have left to do, get frustrated with my confusion, and then give up altogether.  I start a lot of things I don’t finish.  This blog is on the verge of turning into one of those things. 

I have about 30 entries half-written, but I tend to get some kind of writers block or get distracted by something more fun to do as I’m writing and then it takes me a while to go back and finish.  If you follow this blog regularly or have been paying attention, you’ll notice there’s a 3 month gap from July-Oct when I fell very far behind and decided to jump to the present instead of working on the past.  For a brief period (mid-October to mid-November) I did a decent job of staying current, but didn’t manage to make up for much of what was missing.  Then we went home for Christmas and I stopped writing at all since we were so busy visiting family & friends, and I haven’t finished an entry since! 

So, what now?  Well, the primary reason for this blog was to keep in touch with family and friends and keep a record of our trip for our memories.  But with the stories being so outdated, it almost feels pointless to try to catch up and I’m not sure anyone cares to read about something we did last July!  And for my own memories I’ve jotted down over 100 pages of notes about each day, but it takes a bit of effort to turn those notes into blog posts worth reading.  At this point, it feels like my energy would be better spent making nice scrap book when I come home instead of writing blog posts!

Overall, I started to feel like there’s no point to continue the blog so I let my laziness take over and stopped writing for quite a while.  But today I got a comment from new reader who found my blog while searching the internet for information, and it reminded me that another big reason I started this blog was to share what we’ve learned from our travels.  We’ve learned all kinds of useful stuff like which airlines are picky about carry-on luggage, what hotels are good or bad, what attractions are worth seeing, etc. and it would be a shame to not try to share any of that with people.  So I’ve decided to start writing again, starting with finishing some of those half written entries and see where I get.  I doubt I’ll ever catch up, but it’s worth a try!

As before, I’ll keep back-dating new posts to the date they actually relate to in order to keep things in chronological order, so you won’t necessarily see new posts on the home page here.  If you’re checking the blog regularly and want to just read new posts, please refer to the “Recent Posts” bar on the right hand side of the page.  Thanks again for reading!

I think the idea of suing someone for posting a bad review about your business is as preposterous as that lawsuit oh so long ago against McDonald’s for the coffee being too hot.  Actually, that lawsuit probably had more merit than any of these will.  Why would anyone use review sites if only good things were posted???  What’s the point of having the Internet and the ability to share our thoughts and opinions if we can’t share the good and the bad?

As I mentioned in my last blog, I no longer trust the reviews on hostels.com and hostelbookers.com because they allow the proprietor to delete certain reviews.  My firsthand experience with these websites is that, after spending a good chunk of time to write a review, most of the bad reviews I’ve written got deleted after a few weeks.  So now I’ve switched to Tripadvisor where comments and reviews are moderated and once they are put up, they stay up! 

Some people argue that businesses should have the right to sue because false reviews gets posted, but out of all the reviews I’ve read, I’ve only seen one that looked like it could be fake (and it was a positive review).  In our 9 months of travel so far, anywhere we’ve stayed that’s been mind-blowingly awesome has had mostly all good reviews (you can never please everyone!).  Likewise, anywhere we’ve had a bad experience, there were a number of bad reviews, and those reviews were accurate or similar to our experience to some degree. 

Besides, on a site like Tripadvisor, the management can always write a response to the bad review, and it gets posted right under the bad review.  Personally, I always read the management response and I’ve booked at several places that had multiple bad reviews but there was management responses.  I think it shows you care enough to address the issues!  I think instead of wasting time and money on frivolous law suits about deflamation, the management at these businesses that have bad reviews should concentrate their energy on making improvements and then respond to the bad reviews to say they’ve fixed the problem!  Even if you sue me, what kind of money do you think you’re going to get out of an ordinary civilian???

After a short one hour flight from Istanbul, we arrived in Athens, Greece this evening.   At the moment, there are no budget airlines flying to Athens, so we took a flight with Aegean, a regular carrier.  Although it was a bit more expensive (€180 for two one-way tickets to Athens), I have to say it was nice not to fly with a budget airline for a change!

Unlike when we arrived in Istanbul, today we flew from Atatürk International Airport, Istanbul’s primary airport.  We had initially planned to take the tram there, but every time we rode the tram this week it’s been completely full and getting on with luggage would be difficult.  We decided it would be worth it to pay for a shuttle, but our hotel wanted a ridiculous €30 to hire a ride to the airport!  Luckily, the travel agency (Mysia) across the street had a shuttle at 12:35 pm for just 11 lira per person.  Our flight was not till 5 pm, but the extra time turned out to be necessary because the shuttle driver was late picking us up and there was heavy traffic.  I’m not sure what was scarier, the bus rides yesterday or our shuttle driver’s erratic impatient driving today… If you’re considering using a shuttle in Istanbul to get to the airport, give yourself plenty of time and prepare for a rough ride!

When we got to Atatürk Airport, we were surprised to find we had to go through security to enter the airport.  Since you have to go through another security check before you board (there’s a scanner and metal detector thingy at every gate!), they don’t worry about things like liquids at the first security check, but you still have to take out your laptop, empty your pockets, take off your coat, etc.  I understand why you’d want to check people as they go into the airport, but it’s quite a hassle to have to go through security twice! 

Unlike budget airlines, regular carriers like Aegean, Air Canada, Delta, etc. allow up to two pieces of carry-on luggage (one small and one regular size).  From our experience, as long as your carry-on looks like standard carry-on size, the check-in staff don’t hassle you to weigh or size-check it (they also allow you to check one piece of luggage weighing up to 30kg without an extra charge).  When you’re living off the contents of two 35-litre backpacks, everything is necessary and important so we never check our bags.  But, fully packed, our bags weigh about 12kg each so when we fly budget airlines we have to wear extra layers and put heavy things like laptop chargers and liquid toiletries into our pockets to be within the 10kg carry-on weight limit.  Not having to do this today was such a relief!

After a painfully slow (but hassle free) check in, we went through a customs and immigration checkpoint to exit Turkey.  There was a separate line for Turkish citizens and we noticed that all the men in that line were wrapped in towels the way we were when we finished at the Turkish baths!  They were coming from a room next to the bathroom and the signs were all in Turkish, but I’m guessing there’s a bath in there!  There were women as well, but they were wearing pale yellow long-sleeve dress-type garments, not towels.  I asked Ilyas about it when I got online later and he thinks they were going to somewhere called “Umre (Kudüs)” which is a holy place for Muslims…

When we landed in Greece we had no problems getting through customs and we found our way by metro to our hotel, the Best Western Hotel Pythagorion.  We were originally planning to stay at a hostel that was rated pretty high on hostels.com, but when I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor I found a bunch of bad stuff.  I’ve learned my lesson from our past stays – always double check reviews against Tripadvisor because the hostel can delete bad reviews off hostels.com or hostelbookers.com.  And right now, during the low season, most hotels have cut prices but many hostels haven’t so it only cost us 7 euro more per night to have a hotel room instead of sleep in a 4 bed mixed dorm.  The Best Western isn’t in a great location (20 min walk from the Acropolis & archaeology sites) but our room is big, we have a mini fridge to use, the Wi-Fi works great, and there’s a full breakfast included.  I’ll take that over a mediocre hostel any day!

Today we finished off our week in Istanbul with a visit to the Ortaköy neighborhood to try Kumpir – the biggest stuffed potato you can imagine.  The bus ride had us scared for our lives,  but it was a worthwhile trip…

The hotel staff had told us to take bus 25E from the Kabataş distrct to Ortaköy, but when we got on the bus we realized that, unlike on the tram, you have to request your stop so you have to know where you’re going!  Luckily, the person sitting across from us spoke English and helped us out.  We also discovered that bus rides in Istanbul are nerve wracking because bus drivers here don’t find it necessary to obey traffic laws – our bus continuously ran red lights and cut other traffic off!  Making matters worse, the bus was so full that people were seriously squeezed together like sardines in a can.  And the bus didn’t stop at stops for very long so people had to hop on and squeeze themselves in as the bus slowly pulled away from the stop.  I would hate to be standing by the door because it often swings open before the bus reaches the stop and stays open as the bus merges back into traffic!

The Ortaköy neighborhood wasn’t anything spectacular, but Ortaköy pier square is situated right on the Bosphorus strait near the Bosphorus Bridge, so it looks quite pretty.  Walking to the pier, we immediately found the row of kumpir restaurants Ilyas had told us about.  We walked the entire row to check out what kind of toppings they offered, but every stall seemed to have the same thing so we went back to the first one we saw when walking in.  We decided to get one potato each from stall #1 and #2 so we could compare, but ended up picking different toppings so it wasn’t really a fair comparison.  Both potatoes were delicious, but I think my potato filled with everything (olives, pickles, cous cous, corn, cheese, sausage, and some other unknown items) from stall #2 was better than Paul’s which didn’t have any veggie toppings.  If you like stuffed potatoes, you must try a kumpir in Turkey!  But be forewarned, it’s huge – we were both full after half of our potatoes.  Despite how good it tasted, I seriously could not eat more.  I ended up walking around all of Ortaköy trying to find a stray cat to feed my leftover potato to, but the stupid cats ran away from me whenever I approached them!  But having the potato in my hand as we walked around was handy because it prevented restaurant owners from soliciting us as we walked

Our week in Istanbul has flown by, especially since Paul has been so busy with work.  The food has been great, the people have been nice (even the ones who swear we must be Japanese), and it’s been a relatively inexpensive week.  We’ve had to skip some stuff (like going into Topkapi Palace and the Archaeology Museum) because of Paul’s schedule, but we’ll definitely be coming back to Istanbul/Turkey at some point to explore more!

I’m taking a break from writing about what we’ve been doing/seeing/eating today to write about a topic which has been bugging me as of late – the question of “where are you from?”  We are asked this all the time – when we go eat, when we buy something at a store, when we meet other people at the hotel/hostel/B&B – and when we reply Canada, we frequently get the response “No, originally where are you from?”  This has been bugging me because I’m really truly originally from Canada – just because I’m Chinese doesn’t mean I can’t be from Canada!!!

When we talk to people from Canada or the U.S. and we say we’re from Canada, they never say “really???” For those of us who live in North America, different ethnicities of people who identify themselves as American or Canadian is normal – both of these countries are multicultural nations with large-scale immigration from all over the world.  My experience is that when you immigrate, you identify yourself with that nationality, and most North Americans don’t question that.  My parents immigrated to Canada 30 years ago and consider themselves Canadian, and I was born in Canada so I see no reason to identify myself as anything but Canadian! 

Most European countries, however, are not that multi-cultural (England being an exception) and I find that most Europeans don’t believe I’m from Canada because I’m not Caucasian.  Some countries have been worse than others (i.e. Italy where they were like “no, no, no… You’re not from Canada… Japan? China?” but, that’s a whole other blog article when I get around to writing about Italy…)  Even when people do believe I’m from Canada, they ask where I or my parents are originally from.  This irks me because technically, unless you are of Native American descent, anyone from Canada or the U.S. originally came from somewhere else, so if you’re going to ask this type of question, don’t just ask non-Caucasian people!  Sure, some ethnicities (e.g. British and Irish) have been in North America for more generations than others, but nowadays it’s common to see first, second, or third generation Canadian/American born Asians, Indians, South Americans, etc. 

My point is, in today’s globalized world, migration is a common thing and you shouldn’t question the fact that someone is from somewhere because of their ethnicity.  If you’re trying to figure out what ethnicity someone is, you shouldn’t ask “where are you from” and expect that answer to tell you what race they are.  I get the fact that you can’t tell if I’m Chinese or  Japanese or whatever, but asking where I’m from isn’t the way to figure it out.  And if you’re ignorant enough to insist I can’t be from Canada because I’m not white, you need to hop on a plane and get out of your little bubble world…

(please note that, for obvious reasons, we couldn’t take pics inside the bath so the above image is from the Internet)

Paul has been swamped with work these last few days so our sightseeing has been limited, but today is a holiday (Remembrance Day) in Canada so we had some free time for a change.  We spent it shopping and eating on Istiklal Street, and in the evening we experienced our first Turkish bath at the Süleymaniye Hamam.   More to come on that later, but first, a look at what we’ve been doing these past couple days…

For us, Istanbul has been all about new experiences that are a bit more foreign than what we’ve encountered so far. Eating wise, we’ve tried a lot of new things.  On Monday we ate at a place called Cennet near our hotel (actual address is Binbirdirek Mh. Divanyolu Cd. No: 31/A).  Here we tried gözleme, a hand made Turkish rolled pastry like a pancake or crepe that is filled with your choice of topping (we tried spinach and meat), and manti, a Turkish dumpling filled with minced meat (I would describe it as a wonton ravioli and I loved it).   They also gave us our first taste of chocolate baklava, which was really really good but a bit too sweet for me.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of trying a Turkish coffee without reading about it first so I drank it totally wrong.  First, I didn’t realize you’re supposed to tell them when you order if you want your coffee sweetened because sugar is added while the coffee is being cooked.  I ended up dropping in a sugar cube, which doesn’t taste right at all!  Also, because Turkish coffee is made so the coffee grounds float freely in the brew (that’s why it’s so strong), you’re supposed to agitate the cup continuously as you drink to re-mix the grounds with the water.  I just sipped from the top and left the inch of “mud” at the bottom, which apparently is where all the strength is!

Today we unknowingly had a very adventurous meal – a kokoreç sandwich at Şampiyon, a restaurant Ilyas recommended.   Kokoreç is minced lamb or goat intestines which are seasoned with lemon, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper.  The seasoning takes away the intestine taste and we didn’t realize it was intestine until we came home and looked it up!  Ilyas had actually forewarned us, but we had forgotten what kind of food was at each restaurant on the list he wrote for us.  If Paul knew it was intestines, I don’t think he would have been so willing to eat it!

Sights wise, we set foot into a mosque for the first time yesterday by going back to Sultan Ahmed Mosque when prayers weren’t happening.  It astonished me to see how big it was inside.  Outside there’s a list of rules for visitation and it says women should cover their head with a scarf so I used a cashmere Burberry scarf I had bought while outlet shopping in Italy (yes, I know, it’s a ridiculous luxury item to carry around when you’re backpacking).  Because the scarf isn’t very wide it didn’t work well for wrapping around my head, but I thought it was better than nothing which is what I saw some other female tourists do.  It seems a little disrespectful to me to just ignore the rules like that.

We also went to the Egyptian Bazaar (spice market) yesterday, which was our first time in a spice market.  Apart from spices, you can find all kinds of sweets, nuts, teas, and the most amazing smelling coffee here.  I desperately wanted to buy some coffee, but it comes already ground and therefore won’t stay fresh until we get home in a month.

On our way to the bath tonight, we almost experienced our first scam – the shoe shine brush drop.  What happens is a shoeshine guy walks by you, dropping his brush as he walks.  Not knowing any better, tourists usually pick up the brush and call out to the guy.  Thankfully, another Turkish man saw us about to do so and rushed over, pushed us out of the way, and told us to keep walking, saying something like “mafia.”  We were confused, but realized he had just saved us from some kind of scam and noticed shoeshine guy go back and pick up his own brush.  Now, after talking to a friend on Facebook,   I’ve learned that what they do is offer you a free shoe shine for helping them, but then insist you give them some money when they’re done.  We probably would have just declined the free shoeshine, but it’s better that we didn’t have to deal with it at all. Lesson learned, sometimes you have to deny your instinct to help people!

And now, in order to keep this blog entry a reasonable length, I’m splitting off our Turkish bath experience into another entry.  Click on the link below to continue reading!

http://www.monkeyandrooster.com/2009/11/11/our-turkish-bath-experience/

In an effort to be more “concise” with my blogging, I’m going to try writing shorter articles and be more brief when I talk about what we’ve been doing.  In the past, I’ve summarized several days into one blog, but this is a little different.  Right now we’re starting to research and plan our next leg – Southeast Asia – and I realize how useful people’s blogs can be when looking up information.  As a result, I’m making sure that I put any relevant and useful information into my blog entries while trying to be more concise.  Here goes attempt # 1….

Yesterday, we checked into Nena Hotel, which we found through TripAdvisor.  Compared to all the hotels we’ve stayed at so far, it’s not bad, but it’s not great.  They let us check in early, but they gave us a room with two separate beds even though we asked for one big bed.  This morning they pushed the two beds together and swapped the two blankets for one big blanket, but I have a feeling the beds will not stay together as we toss and turn and then one of us will fall through the middle!  On the plus side, there is a full buffet breakfast included. 

We went to the famous Grand Bazaar last night, but didn’t stay long.  Unless you’re serious about buying stuff, you can’t stop to look at anything because the shop keepers won’t leave you alone once you show some interest!  Even just walking straight people will come up to you and be like “want a nice carpet?” or “something to drink?”  The Grand Bazaar is a really cool market place, but stiff competition and lots of identical product makes it a really hard place to shop, unless you love to negotiate prices. 

And it’s not just the vendors at the Grand Bazaar that are aggressive – if you look like a tourist you will get harassed to “come try” every restaurant you pass.  From what we’ve seen, a lot of menus look the same so competition is again really stiff.  So far we’ve tried two restaurants that Ilyas recommended – Sultanahmet Köftecisi near our hotel and Konak Kebap on Istiklal street, Istanbul’s main shopping drag.  Sultanahmet Köftecisi specializes in Turkish meatballs and a Köftecisi sandwich with a yogurt drink is a good deal at 5 lira (they’re more like a short minced meat kebabs than meatballs).  There’s actually two restaurants named Sultanahmet Köftecisi on the main street by our hotel and we tried both (one last night and one tonight).  The one next to a restaurant called Pudding Shop was, in our opinion, better.  Konak Kebap was pretty good too, but service sucked. We’ve been getting charged a 10% service fee everywhere, which Ilyas tells me (via Facebook) shouldn’t be the case, but we’re not the type to argue, so I guess we’ll keep paying it and not leave a tip instead.

This morning we tried to go to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque) but it was prayer time when we showed up so we couldn’t go in.  If you hear singing coming from speakers placed all around the area, it’s the Islamic call to prayer and the Mosque is closed to visitors during that time.  Instead, we went and took the public ferry to Harem, which is on the Asia side of Istanbul. Most people take the Bosphorous Cruise for 20 lira to see the castle ruins at Anadolu Kavağı, but this puts you there for at least 2 hours, and Paul wasn’t up for that.  Going to Harem is kind of pointless, but it only cost 1.50 lira on our Akbil and at least we can say we made it to the Asia side of Istanbul.  After this, we made the mistake of walking across the Galata Bridge on the lower pedestrian only level, which is full of restaurants trying to solicit your business.  Unless you’re looking for somewhere to eat, there’s no reason to walk across the bridge on the lower level.

So far, Istanbul kind of reminds me of Hong Kong – vibrant, crowded, hot even though it’s November, and questionable in terms of hygiene and cleanliness but food tastes good so who cares!  I could do without all the pushy sales pitches, but the people here are so nice you can’t help but smile as you say “no thanks!”

When we got back to Stuttgart after the Sindelfingen Plant tour yesterday, we did some shopping on Königstrasse, Stuttgart’s main shopping street, but by 2:30 we were bored.  We headed to the airport, thinking we could hang out and use their Wi-Fi until our flight at 10:25 pm, but the Wi-Fi at the airport was broken!  Once again, I’m not a fan of airports or flying…

Stuttgart Airport turned out to be surprisingly small and crappy (we didn’t notice when we first landed here on Tuesday).  After you go through security, there’s only one place to get cooked food and they closed at 7, just as we were about to go eat there!  There were 3 places open to buy sandwiches, but the sandwiches looked like they had been sitting out all day and weren’t appetizing at all.  We ended up eating Burger King, which Paul had to go back out of the secured area to get, and drinking an insanely overpriced €5 bottle of water from the sandwich store.  I really hate the fact that they don’t let you take bottled water through security!

Thankfully, our second Germanwings flight was much more pleasant than the first.  The check-in staff didn’t harass us to weigh or size-check our carry-on bags, so we were wearing multiple layers of clothing and carrying ludicrous amounts of stuff in our pockets for no reason.  Also, the flight attendants were very pleasant, unlike on our flight to Stuttgart where they seemed sick of their jobs.  The best part of the flight, though, was meeting the person sitting next to me, a half-Turkish half-Greek guy named Ilyas.  He struck up conversation by asking where we’re from, and for almost the entire flight we had a very pleasant chat getting to know one another.  Once again, we’ve met someone we’ll really keep in touch with after the trip!

To enter Turkey as a tourist, Canadians must to purchase a “90 Days multiple entry sticker type tourist visa” upon arrival for €45.  Our flight landed at 3 am Istanbul time so the visa booth was closed, but a security guy helped us find someone to re-open it.  Interestingly enough, we were the only people on the flight who needed to buy a visa!  By the time we got this sorted out and passed through customs and immigration, it was almost 4 am.  Since it would take another hour by shuttle bus to get to city center, it wasn’t worthwhile to pay for a hotel for the night so we found a comfortable bench in the airport and waited for the morning shuttle today.  Although the Sabiha Gökçen Airport is smaller than Stuttgart Airport, spending 6 hours here was far better than 6 hours at Stuttgart Airport.  Food and drinks are reasonably priced (a bottle of water cost 2 Turkish lira, which is about $1.40 CAD) and places were actually open at 4 am!  More importantly, the Wi-Fi actually worked, but there’s a small charge. 

At 10 am this morning, we caught the HAVAS shuttle bus to Taksim square, a major shopping, tourist and leisure district in the center of Istanbul (bus costs 12 lira per person and actually drops you off about a block from Taksim square).  Outside of the metro station, we picked up Akbil transit passes, which are small stainless steel “buttons” on a plastic holder (similar to a key fob).  You pay a refundable 6 lira deposit for the Akbil and then load whatever amount you want on it (just like London’s Oyster cards).  Contrary to what we read on the Internet, the Akbil doesn’t give you free transfers for 45 minutes, but it does reduce the transfer fare by 50% (e.g. we had to change from the funicular to the tram and instead of paying 1.50 lira per ride, the Akbil deducted 1.50 lira for the first ride and another 0.75 lira when we went through the gates to the tram). 

The last 24 hours have been excruciatingly long with far too much time spent at the airport, but I’m looking forward to exploring Istanbul!  First, though, we are taking a nap at the hotel

Also note that current blog stuff has once again fallen behind because I’ve been preoccupied with Aisa trip planning, which is making my head spin!  I had forgotten how hard it is to find info sometimes!  Accordingly, I’m adjusting my style of blogging a bit include more facts/tips.  If you are looking at this blog because you are trying to find some info about Europe travel as you plan your trip, but what you’re looking for isn’t here, I might still be able to help so feel free to contact me.

Thanks for reading!

Scarlett