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The bus arrived in Goreme around 5am and we were told that there was a tourist office that helps with finding accommodation, which we headed for as we hadn't booked anywhere to stay. The deal is you tell the man how much you want to spend and he shows you the places you can stay at, he then phones up and books a room for you and someone will then come and pick you up. We wanted to stay at Shoestring, so he phoned up and said it's ok for us to stay but it wasn't possible to be picked up,which was fine as it was only a 10min walk, so we thanked him and headed off. Well when we got there no one was up, well it was still early around 5:30am and Turkey had played footy against Germany the night before so we kind of figured people would still be sleeping off hangovers. Finally someone came out rather bleary eyed and said we would have to come back around 9:30am . We were both tired so decided to walk to another hostel that we had heard about and ended up staying there for the night. That afternoon after a few hours sleep we walked around the Open Air Museum. The next day we headed back to the Shoestring hostel where we stayed in a cave room. That morrning we joined a tour which took in the fairy chimneys, the underground city Ihlara canyon walking tour, Pigeon Valley and of course we ended the tour at the obligatory tourist trap trying to sell us jewellery.
After 3 days in Goreme we hopped on a bus and headed back to Istanbul, as our time in Turkey was coming to an end. The bus left around 8pm and was due to arrive at 8am the following morning. We booked our bus tickets through our hostel which we hadn't done before (we normally go to the bus station and walk around each company and find the cheapest price and best time), but the guy had said the bus company was really good. To start with the bus was around 20-30 mins late which we were sort of worried about as we have found that all of the buses in Turkey run on time. We got on and the seats weren't as spacious or comfy as the previous buses, Guy was feeling pretty cramped. Especially when the man in front tried to recline his seat, which squashed against Guy's knees, the man stopped as soon as he cried out in pain. Then we couldn't adjust the air conditioning vents, it was freezing and the cold air was directly hitting us and we couldn't close them. A few people complained and then a man came along with sellotape to cover up the vents!! Then loads more people complained so they turned the air conditioning off and of course after a while it was boiling hot, so they would put the very noisey air conditioning on in short bursts to cool the bus down. We could see that this was going to be a journey from hell!! The bus was packed, some families had their children sitting on their laps for the entire journey and to make matters worse inconsiderate people in front of them had their seats reclined all the way back so they had no room whatsoever. Shannene had one of these people in front of her, the seat was so far back she couldn't use her cup holder and we all know how much she's taken a liking for the 3 in 1 instant coffee on the buses so she was quite concerned about the idea of not having a coffee. She soon woke the woman up and made her put her seat up. The only good thing about the bus trip was the ice cream that they served us. We finally arrived in Istanbul at around 8:30am and then we had to make our way to Taksim Square to catch another bus to the airport. As we were walking across Taksim Square Shannene slipped on some water and fell over on her knee that had been operated on. She was in a lot of pain and couldn't walk on it. We rested for a bit and then finally made our way to the bus, Shannene limping and Guy carrying all of the bags. When we got to Istanbul airport Guy ran off and got a bag of ice for Shannene's knee which had swollen. Guess time will tell whether she had done any real damage or had just bent the muscles in the knee more than it was used to. We arrived in London for a couple of nights staying at Steve and Alli's house, just enough time to do some washing, run a few errands and for Shannene to rest her knee before we head off for our next adventure - Africa.
Big thanks to Steve and Alli for letting us stay, it was great to see you guys. Hope you enjoyed the muffins and that Steve didn't eat them all before Alli got home. Guess we'll see you guys back in NZ sometime soon.
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