Corfu time

And so to Corfu, or in Greek - Kerkyra.....beautiful Kerkyra.  We drove onto the car ferry at Ignoumenitsa for the hour journey to Corfu.  The island has an interesting history with Venetian and French influences and of course now a very British influence with holidaymakers.  Corfu Town is busy but the island is big enough that it's easy to find secluded and quiet bays and beaches.  We stayed first on the east coast in Dassia, then on the north west coast at Paleokastritsa.  It was an idyllic week of sun, boating, swimming, snorkeling, reading... and gyros pita.  I'm not a fan of gyros at home....but in Corfu.....delicious.  Tender slices of meat with tzatziki and salad in a small freshly made pitta bread....2 euros.  I could eat them for lunch and dinner too.  I think we did some days!

Kerkyra

My favourite view of Corfu

'The Liston' in Corfu Town, built by the French to resemble Rue de Rivoli.
It houses a shady promenade of beautiful cafes and restaurants and it
 overlooks the town's cricket oval, where there was a game being played
on the weekend we arrived.  Cricket in Greece - who'd have though?

Corfiot bride

Perhaps our favourite part of Corfu, the north coast.  We
hired a boat here for the day......

...... and explored the coves and bays.  This is Agni and the view
from our lunch table at Toula's taverna.  Our boat is not that
sleek number moored at the jetty, but the little runabout behind
it with the dark blue bimini.  And those hills in the background....
that's Albania!

Ahhhh, Toula's taverna.

Breakfast with Greek goddesses.  This is Paleokastritsa bay, dotted
with caves and grottos that we swam to.  The 13th century monestery
is on the hill.

This is the beach at Glyfada on the west coast.
Lounges and columns, don't you love it?
A very 'cool' place on a hot day.

At Paleokastritsa we stayed in one of Aris and Christina's apartments, just 20 steps from the beach (and 120 steps down from the road).  The terrace, breakfast table and outdoor shower were shaded by big, ancient pitted-trunk olive trees.  And all around the steep hillside of the bay were lemon trees, olive groves alive echoing with cicadas, and cypresses. Maybe more cypresses than in Tuscany!  Some days Christina would deliver olive oil, wine or figs and vegetables from their garden.  We are now carrying with us three and a half litres of homemade olive oil - gifts from hospitable families we have stayed with in Italy and Greece.  We'll never use it all for cooking or salads, so we've taken to using it as an after-sun all over body moisturiser! 

We snorkelled and swam in crystal clear coves, over vast fine back
swaying seagrass beds where the sunlight refracted on fish
like floating silver foil and gold leaf.

Aris's olive trees with the harvesting nets rolled up around them.

The view from the outdoor shower

Monestery of Panayia

After a week on Corfu we have arranged to meet L and PJ in Venice. They are travelling in Italy before heading off to South America and so we've booked on the 24 hour cruise from Corfu to Venice.  We're so excited to see them again - and in romantic Venice!  We were 20-year-olds when we last saw Venice.

Sunrise Corfu port.  Waiting for our boat to Venice to arrive.
That's not it.....ours is the one on the horizon!  Our Venice ferry
arrived, loaded trucks, cars and passengers and departed in the
time it took this floating city to dock.

Heavens above!

After leaving Turkey and on our way back to the Ionian Islands off Greece's western coast we visited holy Meteora in central Greece.  Our host Eric at our accommodation at Gallipoli said it was somewhere we really shouldn't miss.  He was right.

Holy Meteora! It was spectacular.  It was also 40 degrees when we arrived at Kalambaka, the town on the Thessaly Plain - at the foot of Meteora.  Fortunately the hotel room was air-conditioned and we slept well before our trek the next day.

The rock formations are an amazing marvel of nature themselves.  But there, perched on top of the rocks, are six monesteries built frm th e14th to 16th centuries.  This UNESCO world heritage sight is quite spectacular.

This is the view from our hotel room in Kalambaka across the roof
tops to the sandstone rock peaks where, to the right, you can just see the
sun setting on the Monestery of Agios Stefanos.

Agia Triada monestery - very James Bond

Rousanou monestary

Cable car access to the Great Meteoran monestery.

Mmmm..... hamam.

When you leave your clothes in the private change room of the haman it is best to also leave there any pre-conceived ideas about Turkish bath houses.  The hamam we visited was built between 1551 and 1557 by the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. It was built during the time of Suleymaniye the Magnificent, as part of the Suleymaniye Mosque.  So, at over 450 years old it's ancient.  It is also lavish.  A great domed building, and inside the rooms are marble.  The whole experience there is sublime.

We are shown to a private change room where we leave our clothes and wrap ourselves - sarong-style - in our provided checked, fringed pestamal (Turkish bath towel) and wearing our takunya, wooden platform 'slippers' we are shown to the first of the hamam's bathing rooms.

The hamam has three rooms;  the warm room, the hot room (sicaklik) and the cool room (sogukluk).  We are led first to the warm room which is designed to help bathers 'acclimatise' to the heat.  Next it's in to the hot room - the magnificent marble room under the largest dome of the building.  At the centre of this room is the massive marble slab called the 'tummy stone'.  It is here lying on the tummy stone with the room temperature ranging between 40-60 degrees C that we begin to sweat, sweat, sweat.  Around the vast room are ornate marble sinks with brass fittings and over the next 30-40 minutes we douse ourself with cool water and then return to the tummy stone for more baking.  I am surprised at how gloriously relaxing this hot room is.  The domed ceiling high above us has tiny glass windows, like stars, through which shards of sunlight stream.  It is 11.00am and we are the only bathers in the hot room.

After our time on the marble stone two polite young telleks (masseurs) arrive, introduce themselves, and we move through an archway which displays a small brass plaque "Suleymaniye the Magnificent bathed in this room".  The space has  two large marble benches and two marble sinks.  The telleks prepare the room by turning on the brass taps so that cool water is gently running.  Also in the sinks they place two beaten silver bowls.  The telleks then begin our 45 minute washing, scrubbing and massage treatment.  It is luxurious, magnificent.......

First, the scrub - pumice on the feet, and a fine loofah all over! Then a foam treatment - a mountain of tiny foam bubbles covers us from neck to toe.  The telleks apply these bubbles incredibly by running their hands down the length of a muslin cloth lifted from a large silver bowl of soapy water. Hard to believe that so much fine foam is created by this simple movement.  We are left for 10 minutes to soak and dream under the foam blanket and then the wonderful head to toe massage begins.

Each segment  of our treatment concludes with a thorough slushing and dousing with cool water from the ancient marble sink using the silver bowls.

The architecture of the room is fascinating. Apart from the impressive domes and half-light, the water from the constant dousing quickly drains from the sleek marble floor into and along tiny channels. The draining slope of the floor is so finely calculated that within seconds it has drained away and the floor is almost dry.  Every marble surface is spotlessly clean.

The telleks, Amir and the other whose name I have forgotten, massage senor and I in seemingly synchronised moves so that on completion of each segment they both step up to one of the marble sinks and douse themselves, straight over their heads, with bowls of water.  This is to keep themselves cool in the 40-60 degree air. The full body massage is heavenly and at its completion we slide off the marble benches to sit on the marble floor beside the sink.  Amir washes my hair and then the final rinse.  Unbelievable. 

We are helped into our wooden takunyas and are led back, sodden, to the warm room to be dried.  We are given a dry pestamal to wrap around ourselves and then we are draped and dried with more towels - one around our shoulders and one draped and tied around our heads, which make us look like we are about to appear as shepherds in a kindergarten nativity play!  We are then led then into the cool room where we are invited to sit comfortable lounges and enjoy cool drinks or mint tea.  We are encouraged to sit there, relaxing, for a long as we wish. 

Finally, when we think we can bear to leave this luxurious experience behind us we return to the change room and dress.  We pay our 35E each, our wrists are dabbed with rose oil, and we step back out into the glittering Istanbul sunshine. 

After our ritual bathing we feel refreshed, definitely clean, and ready to take on the next of Istanbul's delights - the Grand Bazaar.

A mysterious and beautiful city

We drove from the Gelilbou peninsula right into the centre of Istanbul - to Sultanahmet - where our hotel for the next few days was situated just 3 minutes walk from the utterly stunning Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.

Dotty, our GPS, doesn't 'do' Turkey, and so we were on our own! No GPS, no map. And so armed with just a few jotted directions from Google maps we managed to take only one wrong exit off the Otoyol 2 (which quickly had us on a trajectory to Ankara) before we stopped and asked a local.  We needed to get on the Cevreyolu (Instanbul's inner beltway) and once we had found this we were back on the motorway and senor masterfully navigated the crazy Istanbul traffic to arrive safely at the front of our hotel.  (We had been pre-warned that Turkey has dispensed with manned toll booths and that we needed to buy an automatic KGS toll card before entering a motorway.  Thankyou Eric for this valuable piece of knowledge!)

We loved our days in Istanbul - the exotic city that sits on two continents. The mosques, the Grand Bazaar, the Bosphorus, the history, the architecture, the colour, the artwork all left us intoxicated with its beauty.  The food was fabulous - mezes and the Efes beer that senor declared perhaps the best in Europe.  Big call.

We also love Istanbul for its mystery - like the restaurant we ate in one night, when after paying the bill we were asked 'would you like to see the palace?' Seems that 10 years ago, during restaurant extensions, remains of a Byzantine palace were discovered.  Right under the restaurant!

We also love the hours we spent enjoying the hospitality of the Istanbul carpet merchants. It really is an entertaining way to spend a few hours.  We visited three carpet sellers and it was delightful to see magnificent carpets laid out in front of us.  First the carpet seller asks a few questions to try and identify your 'taste' and 'style'; then he sets about unfurling an array of carpets in the hope that he will unearth just 'the one' that you cannot leave Istanbul without. The carpets are thrown open and land on the floor - a kleidoscope of colours in front of us.  To display how the pile changes the colours of the carpet, he will pick up the carpet and with a flick of his wrist he hurls it through the air so it spins 180 degrees and lands displaying the opposite pile - what was dark is now light.  Magic carpets indeed!

We bargained in the bazaars; stopped and listened to the call to prayer, mesmerised; 'smoked' the nagile; and met interesting and charming Istanbulians.

Exquisite domes of Sultanahmet Camii- the Blue Mosque

The chandeliers seem to float above the prayer space

A section of the ancient ceramic blue Iznik tiles that give the
Mosque its name. 

The exterior architecture is beautiful too. 

Istanbul is a city of colour - even restaurant tables are beautifully
tiled.  Oh, and the Turkish bread is the best anywhere!

Dolmabahce Palace on the shore of the Bosphorus -
 a 'modern' palace - home of Sultans, and the place where
Turkey's beloved Ataturk died in 1938.

The Bosphorus runs through the city - Asia on the left, Europe on the right.

Comfortable cruising - Ottoman style

Getting your goods to the bazaar in busy Istanbul....

.......head transport is popular.

Beautiful ceiling of one of the arcades of the Grand Bazaar

Sultanahmet Camii - the Blue Mosque - complete with
Turkish singer and musicians making a music video in
Sultanahmet square.  Divine.

Taksim Square and the Monument of the Republic. Apparently,
 a monument of Ataturk has been erected in every town in Turkey.

The Basilica Cistern - this enormous underground cistern was
first built between 527 and 565.

KuruKavechi Mehmet Effendi is the oldest coffee company
in Turkey and we were told that 'if it is open there is a queue' to buy coffee.
 We went there twice and found this to be the case. It was one of the busiest corners
in the city.  Coffee is still weighed using brass scales and is wrapped and sold per 250g. 
You can see the stacked packets in the window on the left.  Turkish coffee is rich,
dark and very good.  I like that it is served in a small copper pot.

White mulberries at the fruit market. Also delicious.

The carpet sellers room

Carpet viewing, always accompanied by hospitality.
 In this case, apple tea.

Like a kaleidoscope the floor in front of you changes as
each carpet is 'thrown' on display.

I loved this colourful display of antique Anatolian hats.
Which one did I buy?

These two women were washing a number of Turkish carpets
when we left our hotel one morning.  When we returned at 5pm, they
were still sitting there - guarding the drying carpets, I guess.  At night the
carpets were removed, and again the next morning hung out to finish drying.

The nargile delivered with after dinner coffee!

Blue Mosque at midnight

The following is a series of photos taken at Hagia Sophia - my favourite mosque in this city of mosques. It was once an Orthodox cathedral, then a Roman Catholic one, then a mosque, and now a

magnificent museum.

It's breathtaking

Calligraphy panel

The huge and magnificent Byzantine done

Iznik tiles

Beautiful columns

Leaning columns!

11th century mosaics

The Imperial Doors - in Byzantine times only the
Emperors were allowed to pass through these doors.
Today, you and I can too!

And finally, to Turkish food......

Istanbul icecream seller.  Dare I say it....Turkish icecream is better
than Italian gelato!  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't tasted it for myself.

We liked this restaurant so much we went there
three times.  But only once for the 'sultan's feast'!

..oh, and Haci Bekir for Turkish delight and Lokum, the Spice Bazaar.....stop me!