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It's time to leave the big city and start our journey down south in search of beaches.
On 12th June we made our way across town to find the Otogar which is the international bus station in Istanbul. Man, this place is huge. There are 150 bus companies that travel throughout Turkey, all touting for our business. The idea is to spend about half an hour going to different companies finding the best deal and playing them off. We went to a few companies and ended up going for what we thought was a good price and the earliest departure time. You could spend ages bartering for the best price but then have to wait 4 or more hours for that bus to leave. It's a pretty fancy bus, serves food and coffee (at no extra cost) by a waiter wearing suit pants, shirt and bow tie. It's definitely a heck of a lot fancier than Easyjet, has a lot more leg room and a whole lot cheaper!! The waiter guy seems to love his job and his bus. We were snacking on a bag of nuts and happened to drop one by mistake. The waiter guy pounced on us from out of nowhere, tutted and shook his finger and head at us. Whipped out a dustpan and brush - that was the end of our nuts. Not understanding what he said, and from his reaction we could only imagine that there was a country wide ban on eating of nuts on buses. The rest of the 6 hour bus trip was spent with us trying to sneak in a nut or two without him knowing. Much more fun than last card.
The plan was to stay in Canakkale for the night and do the Gallipoli tour the next day. In order to get to Canakkale we had to take a car ferry across the Dardanelles from Eceabat. Before the ferry set sail a Turkish man asked us where we were going. Everyone is so friendly here so we sparked up a conversation and told him our plan to stay in Canakkale and then do the Gallipoli tour the next day. He told us that we should stay in Eceabat as Gallipoli is on this side of the Dardanelles and would make more sense staying here instead of doing the ferry ride again in the morning. And of course he owned a hostel and it was a great price and he could organise the Gallipoli tour for us. Plus the hostel had a brilliant name 'The Crowded House Hotel' and they served vegemite on toast - how could we say no!! The hostel had only just opened (they were still installing air conditioning) our room just had a window no A/C for us. Eceabat is a very small, a one horse town. The biggest selling point - they have the world's famous Boomerang bar designed for Kiwi's and Aussies.
The next morning we joined a small group of 8 and went on the Gallipoli tour. We were the only two Kiwis the rest were all Aussies. So much history and sadness, it was hard to believe how close the Turkish and ANZAC trenches were. Now we are waiting for our overnight bus down to Selcuk - another 6 or so hours, wonder what mischief we can create to pass the time.....
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