It was during lunch at the Galeries Lafayette Gourmet
with my Russian girlfriend last autumn that I casually mentioned
wanting to purchase a new leather coat for the coming Paris
winter. After our meal, we went next door to the mall to look at
coats. Unfortunately, most of the ones I liked had a starting
price of 3,000€.
“Gosh”, I told my friend, “I could never
hope to afford one of these”. Undaunted, she told me I could
get one inexpensively in Turkey. Turkey? Unbeknownst to me,
Turkey is as known for its leather goods as Italy. When I returned home that evening, I began
researching trips to Turkey. December was a good time to travel,
since my son, Kenny, (my favorite travel companion), would be on
break from school. Kenny and I usually travel during his breaks,
but as stated, I had never considered Turkey. Now here I was
discovering a whole new part of the world.
Knowing what accommodations we appreciate, I was able to book a tour package for two quite easily via
travelprice.fr (a division of
lastminute.com). For the next several weeks, I was very
excited about our trip, for in addition to seeing one of the
oldest civilizations in the world, I wanted to visit a Turkish
friend that I’ve met in Paris through a friend. I’d chosen to
travel with a French tour company because not knowing much about
Turkey; I felt it easier and more enjoyable to be surrounded by
others. Our package included 8 days and 7 nights and we were
guaranteed stops in the cities of Istanbul and Cappadoce,
two of the main attractions of Turkey.
On the day of our trip, our airplane took off from
Paris at 7:30pm and arrived in Istanbul at half pass
midnight. Still, we did not get to our hotel until 3am, after
hours of dealing with all the formalities of passport control.
This did not make for a good first impression of Turkey, as the
lines were long and unorganized. As American citizens, we
were charged $20 for per person and I gave the Turkish
authorities 40€ euros. The euro is currently much higher
than the dollar and I expected a refund of the difference.
Instead, I was told to return to the long passport control line
and wait again. I was very disappointed by this event as
their big smiles told me I’d been ripped-off. I felt
foolish, until I overheard a British couple with two young
children complaining about the 40£ that they had to pay for
their British visas, and the substantial refund that was not
returned (an even higher amount than mine). Feeling equally
shafted, the wife turned to her husband and said in a loud,
disappointed voice, “Well, we won’t come back here again!”
Finally, we made it to our hotel, and with only a few hours
of sleep, our tour departed the hotel at 9am. The first tour
day was devoted to beautiful and historic Istanbul. Our
first stops were the principal monuments of the city: the
Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque (the only one to possess six
minarets), the Joyau (an architectural jewel of the 17th
century), and the Holy Basilica Saint-Sophie. Famous for its
elegant cascades cupolas, the Holy Basilica Saint-Sophie was the
first structure of Byzantine design and it sits atop the first
hill of the city. It is immense, its cupola framing 107 columns
originally from Ephèse and Egypt.
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