We slept in late today (11:30 hrs.) as we were exhausted through lack of food and sleep. We first went to the travel agency recommended by the Tourist Board to get a price for the flight to Karachi in Pakistan. The chap told us that the price was fixed by the Government and quoted 166,000 Turkish Lira (£455). We were aghast and set off again for the Iranian Consulate.
We entered the familiar cubby hole with it’s war photographs and notices urging people to religious fervour and a helpful chap appeared in the small window beneath the slogan “There is no God but Allah”! He was the same one that we saw yesterday, but today he said that a letter from the British Consul would speed up proceedings.
So again we trudged across the bridge and up the steep narrow streets with honking traffic and men straining, bent double, under absurdly huge loads. This time we knew the way and got their quicker. We knew the score now as regards getting served anywhere – survival of the pushiest – and muscled our way to the front. We chatted to an amicable consulate official (who had just sent packing 2 Iranian draft-dodgers who were after a visa for the Bahamas!) while our letters were typed up.
Then, without knowing what to expect, but with renewed hope, we returned to the Iranian Consulate. Here we were politely received by the same official and after filling in 2 forms and supplying 3 passport photographs we were told that we could collect them tomorrow. It felt as if a huge load had been lifted from our shoulders and we settled at a pavement café to sip chai (çay or tea) and write postcards.
We set out on an abortive sight-seeing tour of the Blue Mosque (Called Sultanahmet Camii in Turkish, it is an historical mosque in Istanbul. The mosque is known as the Blue Mosque because of blue tiles surrounding the walls of interior design. The mosque was built between 1609 and 1616 years, during the rule of Ahmed I.) and the covered market, which soon tired us with it’s constant harassment.
We returned passed the Burnt Tower (where the statue fell off in the dim and distant past and killed a few people), pausing only to pick up a bottle of red wine (225 Turkish Lira). Walking along Divan Yolu from Sultanahmet to Beyazıt Square and the Grand Bazaar, you come to Çemberlitaş (‘stone with hoops’), a tall, obviously very old and dismal-looking porphyry column which was erected on May 11, 330 by Constantine the Great to celebrate the designation of Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman Empire. In 1779 a conflagration destroyed this whole neighbourhood and left the column with black scorch marks, earning it the nickname ‘Burnt Column.’ Sultan Abdülhamit I had the column restored after the fire and added the present masonry base.
George had a “hot” shower and I set off in search of a Turkish Bath that I had the address of. To no avail – I found the road but no baths were in evidence. We pored over the maps planning our future route and walked to the floating bridge. This was the fourth Galata Bridge which was built in 1912 by the German firm Hüttenwerk Oberhausen AG for 350,000 gold liras. This floating bridge was 466 m (1,529 ft) long and 25 m (82 ft) wide. It is the bridge, still familiar to many people today, that was badly damaged in a fire in 1992 and towed up the Golden Horn to make way for the current fifth bridge.
We sipped beer beneath the bridge girders, which creaked and shifted beneath the burden of the road above. The we walked on to the slummy sector of the European side, but not a soul was in evidence at 21:30 hrs. We had a quick shant (partaking of a beer) in the pub next to the hotel. When it shut at 22:30 hrs. we returned to bed. Never have I seen such a lack of night life in a major city, it is as if a curfew has been imposed from 20:00 hrs. (Perhaps it has!).
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