2geonomads

Tuesday 5th June

Something of a whistle-stop visit to the amazing Grand Bazaar,the oldest shopping mall in the world ( 1453 ). Far more orderly and less confronting than expected with the vendors pushy but affable.
Collected from hotel to the Kenkapi Wharf, from where we take a ferry to Bandirma on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara.
Meet up with very friendly couple Atilla( no Hun jokes please ) and his wife Halime. Halime lives in Frankfurt and Atilla works in the travel business in Antalje on the Turkish Mediterranean .
They both make life much easier for us as we take the the ferry and later the bus from Bandirma to Canakkale. In fact, on arrival in Canakkale a friend of Halime, there to meet her kindly drives us to the bus terminal and makes sure we are safely on our way.

Canakkale is a pleasant town whose main claim to fame is as the port from which the ferries leave for the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Our evening dinner at a seafront restaurant introduces us to a problem which we had not really anticipated. I have never been one to expect all other nationalities to speak good English but nothing had prepared both of us for waiters in high profile tourist restaurants to understand not a word of English. As my Turkish consists of ” hello, goodbye,thank you and please”. ( not the basis for a deep conversation ) and my French , German and Italian were met with stunned looks we had a very difficult couple of hours.
This was to be repeated frequently over the coming days and I have at various times been called upon to moo like a cow to explain the need for milk in my coffee, do an impersonation of a CFA member to ascertain whether the food was hot( as in spicy) and have tried to replicate the Pohutu geyser to stress that I wanted SPARKLING mineral water, not still.

Gallipoli tomorrow.

Cheers

The Obese Ferret