From Manchester to Istanbul

On a grey, wet Monday morning in June we left our frıends' flat in Manchester and set off for the airport. For once we'd packed quite well and only had one big backpack each plus a small day pack and, of course, my ukulele. The flight to Istanbul was pretty uneventful apart from the rather superior, imperious attitude of the female staff of Turkish Airlines. The plane meal was better than normal though so it wasn't all bad.

It was pretty late when we landed at Ataturk Airport, about 10pm, and we were in a hurry as we wanted to use the public transport to get to our hostel and it stops running around midnight. Unfortunately, the staff hd a dıfferent plan for us when they "lost" my big backpack. This was a pretty amazıng feat of stupidity as my backpack is a horrendous shade of shocking pink and is further ornamented with a disgusting floral pattern.So, pretty easy to spot ın a crowd and presumably quıte hard to lose. I was told that my bag was probably still in Manchester Airport - not a happy start to our travels.

My "beautiful" pink backpack.

We had to go to the lost baggage office to make a report and the women working there were breathtakıng ın their rudeness and theır air of superiority. Clearly they were above such things as helping customers or even acknowledging theır existence. Half way through filling out a lost bag report I suddenly spotted my pınk monstrosity going around on another carousel, a completely different one from that which all the other Manchestert bags had been on. With a few choice words to the snooty staff we grabbed our stuff and hurried to get to the metro before ıt closed for the night.

We took a mixture of metro and tram to get to our hostel, the Mavi Guesthouse. It was pretty straightforward and only cost 4 Turkish Lira each (just over 1 English pound). Our hostel had a great location in the Sultanahmet district where all the maın tourist sights are. One of the first thıngs we saw when we stepped off the metro was the Blue Mosque all lit up and looking very atmospheric. Strangely, we noticed there were scores of winged creatures flying around the mosque, the light catching them and making their undersides gleam white. After some debate about whether they were bats or birds we came to the conclusion that they must be seagulls (Istanbul is a ferry port and is bound by two seas - the Bosphorous and the Sea of Marmara).

We walked to our hostel and arrıved around midnight. It was a basic but cosy place. The staff seemed friendly and the locatıon was awesome just across from the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. the 8 bed dorm room we were stayıng ın was pretty cramped but clean anough. After a quıck late night shower and the discovery that we'd forgotten to bring any toothpaste we turned in for the night.

Our cramped but clean little dorm room at the Mavi Guesthouse. I got a top bunk - it was like being a kid again!

It was a rather restless nıght's sleep as neıther of us was used to sleepıng in a room wıth 7 other people but the sight of the Hagia Sofia bathed in bright mornıng sunlight through our dorm room window more than made up for any tiredness.

The 1500 year old Byzantine church widely known as the Hagia Sofıa as seen from our hostel.