It was a two hour journey north from Ulcinj to the major tourist town of Budva, north up the coast on the cheap and reliable Montenegrin bus service.  As Budva is renowned for its beaches I have to admit that we didn’t do anything on the first day apart from swimming and eating on our first day, from our base at the Hippo Hostel on the edge of town.

Sveti Stefan, Montenegro

The next day we started by getting a bus on a short 20 minute journey back down the coast to the exclusive resort of Sveti Stefan.  The resort was one of the classiest in Europe during the Yugoslavian days with clients including Doris Day and Queen Elizabeth II, but seemed to be in a bit of a transition period when our Lonely Planet was published 3 years ago.  As a result we didn’t know how much we would be able to see.  The tiny island itself, connected to the mainland by a small narrow spit of land is amongst the most photographed places in the Balkans.  Unfortunately when we arrived, as dramatic as it was, it was clear that it was the island itself, rather than any specific buildings on it that, that was the hotel and access was for clients only.  To prove to you just how exclusive the whole place was, access to two of its beaches was available however it came at the price of 20 or 50 euros.  Having planned to spend our entire morning there we found that, as mere mortals, there was only enough for half an hour of photo taking before we turned round and headed back to Budva.




Budva Old Town




The sea against Budva walls



We got up in Shkoder for our last ample Albanian breakfast at the Hotel Colosseo.  Today we would be travelling from northern Albania to southern Montenegro.  We had heard that furgons departed for Montenegro occasionally, however as we had not come across any we would be taking a taxi who was willing to complete the fifty-odd kilometre journey (including a stop at the border) for 25 euros.  The journey to the border was mainly on country roads and as we were near the edge of the country we saw far more Hoxha bunkers than we had seen elsewhere.  The border crossing was fairly painless and we were soon on our way to Ulcinj where we arrived at 1pm.

Ulcinj Bay

Ulcinj was, until the end of WW1, an Albanian city before the Montenegrins invaded and as a result the population is around 70% ethnic Albanian.  The seaside town is popular with Albanians themselves as well as Europeans who would like to sample a bit of Albanian culture without taking a plunge into the country itself.  It was also an infamous pirate grotto in times gone by.  Unfortunately the taxi driver didn’t know his way around and as a result of a mix up with the driver whereby he interpreted my pronunciation of “plaza” as “plage”, he left the town and drove us several kilometres down the coast to a nearby beach.  It was here that we were dropped by our Albanian taxi driver and had to swap him for a local who knew where our hostel (Stevo’s Guesthouse) was.  This was all a bit of a waste of time and money, but we got there eventually.

Having checked in and got orientated we walked south down to the beach that we had ironically been dropped at earlier but hadn’t wanted to sit on with our rucksacks.  The walk was longer than we expected and instead of passing the two headlands that I had pictured in my head, we ended up going around seven or eight - so needless to say we were very up for a swim when we got to the beach.  The beach itself was relatively pleasant, however it was quite windy and the water was so shallow that it was a bit of a hike out to sea to get your knees wet - we felt pretty refreshed afterwards though.  The walk back didn’t seem so bad because we were out of the heat of the day.  After going out for a meal in the evening we explored Ulcinj itself.  While it is not as famous or dramatic as towns further up the coast, the pretty little beach is still popular and crowded (hence our walk down the coast) and the old town on the cliffs is very picturesque, especially at night.  We had only visited Ulcinj as a stop over on our way north from Albania, but as stop overs go it was very pleasant.

Downtown Shkoder

Visiting the town of Shkoder was very much an after thought in the great scheme of the trip.  Having visited Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia already on my travels, it was going to be a challenge to get from Albania or Macedonia, to Bosnia.  The original plan was to get back from Albania to Skopje before getting an overnight bus through Serbia to Sarajevo.  As it worked out however, we found that it is possible to get from northern Albania to southern Montenegro by taxi, meaning that I will be revisiting a lot of places I have already seen for the next week, but as I think Montenegro is one of the best places I have been, this isn’t really a hardship.  It also should mean no more overnight buses.  Shkoder is the main gateway from Albania to Montenegro as it is located by Lake Skada, a lake that is mainly Montenegrin but is named after Shkoder.  To get from Berat to Shkoder we decided to test the furgon system out by getting a furgon from Berat to Tirana and (deciding we didn’t want to waste another night in Tirana) we aimed to get a connecting furgon to Shkoder.  I think that it is proof of how good the furgon system is that the first furgon was kind enough to take us to the point where the second one left - and what was actually quite a complicated journey only took just over four hours.  By the time we got to Shkoder though, where we are staying at the Hotel Collosseo, there was only enough time for a little explore of the pretty town centre before getting some dinner.  The hotel is a four star place (though costs about 25 pounds each per night) as nowhere else was responding to the emails I sent out to make a booking.  I’m sure that we will survive - though the advertised swimming pool hasn’t actually been completed yet and having the same thing happen in Vladivostok it is getting pretty annoying.

View from the castle

The next morning we got a taxi to the Rozafa Fortress above the town.  The castle, originally built by the Illyrians but added to by Venetians and Ottomans, is named after a woman called Rozafa who is set to have been buried alive in the walls as an offering to the gods to make sure the castle would stand.  Apparently she requested to have two holes drilled above her so that she could still breastfeed her children (this whole legend is one of the oddest I have ever come across).  Shkodra stands at a real tactical spot, overlooking several major rivers and with the coast and Lake Skada nearby.  The views from the castle were really good and the castle itself was in pretty good condition.  Walking around it was an adventure in itself as it was fairly deserted and there were none of the ‘closed to the public’ areas you would find at English castles, which meant that we could explore any mysterious staircase that we felt like.  The large amount of open wells and crumbling arches meant that we didn’t get TOO adventurous.

The Ottoman Bridge, Shkoder

It must have been one of the hottest days we have had so far and by the time it had got to midday it was unbearable in the heat, so we went and sat in our room and watched some of the pretty good action films that are on Albanian TV.  When it had cooled down a bit we went back out and hailed another taxi (it turned out to be the same guy) and made our way to an old Ottoman bridge on the edge of town.  Our driver can’t have exceeded about 15mph on the way, because he didn’t want us to be uncomfortable on the potholed roads.  He drove a Mercedes and this brand of car is quite a talking point for travellers.  There are more Mercs per person in Albania than in Germany itself - according to the Independent, three out of five cars in the country are Mercedes, but as many as 80% of these are thought to be stolen from the richer European countries.  They are definitely everywhere and the amount of British number plates far exceeds the amount of British people that we have met.  Anyway, back to the bridge, when we arrived we found that as scenic as it was, the water that flows under it has either dried up in the heat or has been diverted, leaving it as a bridge over a dry and rubbish filled valley.  It has been the story of our Albanian experience really - a fair bit of potential as a tourist location, but (and it isn’t much of a surprise) in desperate need of some TLC.

The public transport system in Albania may lack timetables, but what it loses in reliability it makes up in flexibility with the furgon system.  Furgon is the Albanian word for van or minibus and is the main way that locals get around - essentially any vehicle, ranging in size from people carrier to bus, will stop and take people to the place that they are advertising in the front window.  It is essentially a massive share taxi scheme and it works extremely well, as long as you can find out where the furgons to a certain city tend to hang out.  To do this we got a taxi from the hostel to a random street corner where a lot of cars with ‘Berat’ in the window were.  It cost us 500 leke each (about three pounds) for a two hour journey and was quick and surprisingly comfortable, despite the insane driving of Albanian motorists.

View from the hotel

Rubbish at the castle

View from the castle

Berat - the city of a thousand windows

The overnight bus (hopefully our last) was probably the worst of the lot.  The battered Macedonian bus had some major faults with it, the worst of which was the fact that the engine growled loudly in the low gears.  The route from Skopje to Tirana is almost entirely through terrifying mountain passes, so it was very rare that we got out of the low gears and therefore we didn’t get much sleep.  The bus arrived in Tirana, the capital, at 4.30 am and we made our way to the hostel in the dark.  What the city is missing in street lighting it makes up in potholes but we luckily made our way to “Freddy’s Hostel” where they let us in to sleep through to midday.

Skanderbeg Square, Tirana

We had only set aside a day in Tirana and by the time that we got going this had shrunk down to half a day.  The  city is dominated by communist concrete architecture but it is interesting to see the historical parts that weren’t flattened, as well as the capital of a nation that has only just opened up to tourists.  We started at Skanderbeg Square, named after the Albanian national hero who fought the Turks.  His name means ‘Lord Alexander’ in Turkish as he named himself after Alexander the Great.  The statue of Skanderbeg was the only thing that hadn’t been removed in the square when we visited as there was major construction work taking place.  One side of the square has some rather attractive Italian style buildings which are used by the government and we had lunch at an Italian restaurant opposite.  The maps show that the city is divided in half by a river, but this is quite an overstatement as the river cannot be more than a metre in width.  On the south bank of the river is 'the pyramid’.  This was supposed to be the mausoleum of Enver Hoxha, the communist dictator, as well as a museum glorifying his life.  Now that the communists are gone it has fallen into a state of disrepair and while Lonely Planet says it is still used for conferences, it seems unlikely from the amount of graffiti and damage on the exterior.

'The Pyramid’, Tirana

The main boulevard through the city passes through Skanderbeg Square, across the river past the pyramid and then to the buildings of the communist government including the current prime minister’s residence and congress building.  Both of these are fairly ugly concrete buildings and the ugliest of all surround Mother Theresa square in the south of the city - a memorial that pales in comparison with the one in Skopje.  On our way back to the river we passed one of the most visible remainders of the communist regime - the Hoxha Bunkers.  After the relationship between Albania and the USSR, particularly after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Enver Hoxha decided to construct an enormous array of bunker pillboxes.  As many as 700,000 were built at twice the cost and using three times the concrete as the French Maginot Line.  The engineer who designed them was asked by Hoxha to prove their strength by standing in one while it was fired at by a tank and the remarkable strength of the bunkers has proved to be a huge problem in modern day Albania.  Weighing in at around 5 tonnes each and located in parks, squares, beaches, gardens and pretty much everywhere else, it would require an enormous amount of time and effort to remove them.  As a result they have just been left, though there are stories of people spending months taking them apart with sledgehammers in their gardens.  The one that we saw was opposite the prime minister’s residence and had only been partially destroyed.

The remains of a Hoxha Bunker, central Tirana

Ellie inside Ethem Bey Mosque

After seeing the bunker we headed to the Blloku district, an area where only the main players in the communist party were allowed to visit.  The opulence of the buildings and houses, particularly that of Hoxha himself, shows just who the winners were from Albanian communism.  Unfortunately the only areas of the city that weren’t flattened are those that the party deemed to be of 'national cultural importance’, so on our way back to the hotel we stopped off at the Ethem Bey Mosque.  The mosque is pretty tiny as they go, but has an amazing painted roof and as it is positioned on Skanderbeg Square, it is a pleasant break from the larger government buildings.  The last remnants of pre-communist Tirana that we were able to see were the old clocktower, an old Ottoman bridge and the pretty dilapidated remains of a roman era fortress.  The locals haven’t let their city be totally ruined by communist architecture though, if that is the feeling that comes across from reading this blog.  They have done what they can, by painting the drab grey concrete in a real array of colours so that while the architecture itself is pretty dire, the city does actually have quite a lively and vibrant feel.  It was definitely worth visiting for a day on our way to the more scenic parts of Albania.

Brightening the mood

The train left from Bitola at 12.40 for Skopje.  We decided to use the train instead of a bus as we thought it would be more comfortable, despite taking double the time and it cost half the price at 210 MKD (about 3 GBP).  Unfortunately the train wasn’t quite as comfortable as we expected as it was an ancient carriage and we ended up with a family of seven squeezing into the compartment with us - meaning that there were nine people in a space that should have fitted six.  The train was on time but when we arrived in Skopje we were too tired to do anything so went to a pizza restaurant.

Alexander the Great statue

The next day we decided to try and see everything.  The city definitely doesn’t have anything like the natural beauty of Ohrid or the culture of Bitola, but as the capital is an unavoidable place to visit.  We started late, having lunch at …McDonalds… and briefly looked around the south bank of the river Vardar which contains mainly by office buildings and shops.  It also has the main square, Plostad Makedonija, with an enormous statue of Alexander the Great in the centre. The statue is the only thing that seems to be finished in an area of about a square mile of building work.  They are obviously renovating the entire city centre which means that you can see that it will be impressive in a few years time, but at the moment it is just dusty and messy.  Having decided that the south bank wasn’t doing much for us, we moved to the north bank across the pretty Ottoman bridge.  The north bank is far more impressive as it is based around the Carsija where Skopje’s Ottoman past is based.

The Kale Fortress, Skopje

Where the south bank is very concrete based, the north bank is made up of small Ottoman style buildings which are used as shops and cafes.  On the hill above the city is the Kale, the Ottoman fortress which looks a lot like the one at Ohrid.  We wandered through the Carsija to see the Mustafa Pasa mosque which we couldn’t go inside as afternoon prayers had just started.  The plan was then to go inside the Kale fortress but when we climbed up to the top we found that it seemed to be closed.  Later, when we spoke to the owner of the hostel about the closure, we were told that it had been shut to the public for the last 2 months.  The reason, he said, was that there is currently a conflict between the Albanian and Macedonian population of the city over a church.  It was difficult to gather the details, but it seemed that  an argument had begun over whether a church should be built in the fortress compound or whether it should be classified as a museum.  The argument had escalated into full blown fights, where local Albanians and Macedonians would speak to each other on facebook and arrange to meet each other and beat each other up in the castle grounds.  The police decided it was best to shut it all down.  This was a bit of a shame, because the view over the city and surrounding mountains would have been really good.

Sveti Spas church and Gorce Delcev’s tomb

Walking back down from the castle we visited the Sveti Spas church.  This was built during Ottoman rule where the law stated that churches could never be taller than mosques.  As a result, the church was sunk into the ground so doesn’t look particularly impressive from the outside but contains an enormous carved wooden iconostasis.  It is now a museum and the entrance fee of 120 MKD also entitled us to visit a museum about Gorce Delcev, a Macedonian leader of the VMRO and national leader killed by Turks in 1903.  His tomb lies in the church’s courtyard. According to Lonely Planet this was the last major sight in the city, but on our way back on the south bank we came across a new attraction which is perhaps the most important that the city has to offer.  Though few people know it, Mother Theresa is an ethnic Albanian who was born in Skopje.  The house where she was born is long gone, but a museum and church has been built on the site of a previous church where she was baptised.  The museum is really well done and contains a few of Mother Theresa’s more recognizable possessions - her blue and white sari and her rosary beads.  A church has been built on the top level of the three storey building.  The city is full of beggar children who work in small groups and as we left the Mother Theresa memorial building a group approached us, only for them to be shooed away by the building’s security guards - which didn’t seem quite in the spirit of the place.

Mother Theresa memorial building, Skopje

The Ottoman Bridge, Skopje

That night we went out for dinner on the north bank at a traditional kebab house where a filling meal costs less than a fiver.  On our way to the restaurant we passed an enormous festival where we were able to see the legendary Spinning Dervishes - while they tend to be thought of as Turkish, the dervishes can be found all over the former Ottoman Empire and having missed them in Turkey it was fantastic to be able to see them.  The two banks of the river provided quite a contrast - on the south bank were noisy bars and clubs, dominated by young Macedonians, while the north bank was filled with Albanian families at the festival.  The next day we decided to have a day off sight seeing and went shopping in downtown Skopje, before catching the overnight bus to Tirana in Albania at 7pm.

St  Sofia Church, Ohrid

There was still one more sight that we wanted to see at Ohrid before we departed, the church of St Sofia in the town centre.  This is the largest church in Ohrid and is based on its namesake in Istanbul (though quite how I don’t understand).  It spent 500 years as a mosque when Macedonia was part of the Ottoman Empire and unfortunately its charms were lost on us when an army of shutterbugs arrived. We got a taxi to the bus station (cosing about 80p for a 10 minute journey) and then took the bus on the hour and a quarter journey to Bitola.  The journey passed through terrain straight out of the Italian job and the abandoned smashed up buses by the roadside, surrounded by crosses and flowers didn’t help me to put the film’s final scene out of my mind (nor did the fact that halfway through the journey we stopped at a chapel where everybody filled up their bottles with holy water).  With the odds seemingly against it however, we did arrive in Bitola both on time and alive.

Mosaics at Heraklea

Bitola is one of those ‘faded grandeur’ cities that I have often come across in former Yugoslavia.  At one stage it was the second biggest city in Ottoman Europe and was a centre of trade and politics - it was nicknamed the 'city of consuls’ as all the major European powers had embassies here.  The embassies remain, but the grand buildings they once occupied here now have been generally sold off, leaving diplomats with a fraction of the former space.  We were staying at the beautiful Chora Guesthouse on the edge of town, built into a traditional Ottoman house.  There isn’t loads to see in the town itself, but a kilometer out of the centre one of the ruins of the Roman city of Heraklea.  The ruins are compact and the theatre is mainly reconstructed, but the mosaics that are preserved are probably the best I have ever come across.  The entrance fee was a modest 100 MKD each, but they wanted a massive 300 MKD from anybody who wanted to take photos.  Luckily the guy on the gate was pretty relaxed and let us both in for 50 MKD as students and turned a blind eye to our cameras.  The whole atmosphere at the ruins was very relaxed and they didn’t seem to mind people walking all over the walls and other remains.

Sveti Dimitrija Church, Bitola

It was about 4pm by the time that we got back to town but this left enough time to wander around the pretty pedestrianised shopping streets and to look at the churches, mosques and old clock tower that are the main sights. We decided to go into one of the churches - the church of Sveti Dimitrija, which we were shown around by a little old lady.  She asked us if we were Catholics, which Ellie could answer fairly easily but which I had to answer with 'church of England’. She had understandably never heard of this so, deciding that the story of Henry VIII and his wives would probably cause a fair bit of shock, I settled for calling myself a Protestant. She nodded to confirm that she had heard of this religion, but then checked that I knew who Jesus and Mary were.  We lit a candle at the pretty church as the lady had given us quite an insight into the faith.

Russian Embassy, Bitola

It was now getting towards dinner time and we decided to have a meal at a restaurant in the Russian Embassy building (where the current embassy occupies the top floor).  The meal was good but we regretted asking for Turkish coffee at the end as they served it in a normal sized mug rather than the little 'shot’ that it should come in. For those of you who have never hard Turkish coffee, this is the equivalent of being served whiskey in a pint glass, so we left the restaurant with quite a buzz. On the way back we stopped at a little supermarket, which is worth mentioning as a sight in itself.  I have never seen such chaos - it wasn’t even as though they had just forgotten to tidy it in a while, it was more like the delivery man had launched the stock at them with a cannon.  It was near impossible to walk, but the kindly owner (who glided around as if it was wide-aisled Waitrose) gave us some information about the train we were planning to catch to Skopje in the morning.

Day One: Swimming and Eating

View over Lake Ohrid from the balcony

Day Three: Galata and Beyoglu

The bus journey back was somehow more comfortable and we got to Istanbul feeling relatively well rested.  The bus company gave us a free lift back to Sultanahmet where luckily the Ambassador Hotel was able to let us into our room early.  We spent the morning catching up on a bit of sleep and showering.

Galata Tower, Istanbul

In the afternoon we headed for the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn, stopping at a kebab shop for lunch on the way.  The plan was to explore the more modern Beyoglu part of town which is dominated by the Galata Tower, a Genoese watch tower from the 13th century.  The tower, which I climbed last time but decided against this time, has given its name to this part of town, as well as to Galatasary Football Club.  After getting to the base of the tower (and walking through a bit of a rain shower) we carried on north to the main shopping street in the city - Istiklal Street.  At the northern end of this street (where we did lots of browsing but not much buying) we got to Taksim Square, the heart of the modern city.  Frankly it isn’t much to look at but its worth going to as a chance to see where the locals go.

On the way back we stopped off at the Spice Bazaar, which was satisfyingly crowded. It was our last night in Istanbul, but the persistent rain put us off going out for dinner, meaning that instead we went to the hotel restaurant.  The view from here is probably one of the best in the city and the meal they provided was really excellent - I don’t know why we hadn’t eaten here before.  There was nobody else in the restaurant, so we ate it slowly while playing a game of cards.


Day Four: Basilica Cisterns and Suleymaniye Mosque

Basilica Cisterns, Istanbul

There were still four sights that I wanted to show Ellie in Istanbul - the Grand Bazaar, the Suleymaniye Mosque, the Basilica Cisterns and the Chora Chuch.  At 8 in the evening we would be getting the overnight bus to Ohrid in Macedonia, so there was a lot to pack in, so with foursight it was going to be a hectic day (har har).  We started at the Basilica Cisterns, a vast underground chamber built by the Byzantines to hold water from the aqueducts before distributing it to the Royal Palace.  Essentially just a giant tank, the Byzantines decided to make the most of it and built it with row upon row of ornate columns and a high, vaulted ceiling.  Now the water has been drained to leave a couple of feet of water in which there are some pretty hefty carp swimming about.  A wooden walkway has been built where the masses of visitors can do their best to get a non-blurred photo of the darkened cavern, while soothing pan pipe music is pumped into the chamber to add to the ambiance.

Inside Suleymaniye Mosque

After coming out of the Basilica Cisterns we headed to the Grand Bazaar.  Having already visited it in this blog I won’t go into it in much detail, except to say that it was a fair bit more busy than when I visited last.  Near to the bazaar is the Suleymaniye Mosque, lesser known to visitors to the city but a key part of the minareted skyline and the resting place of Suleyman the Magnificent.  There was a service going on when we turned up so we went to the nearby shops for Ellie to buy a pashmina and came back half an hour later.  The mosque is a lot simpler inside than its blue counterpart, but is impressive nonetheless and doesn’t seem so orientated towards tourists.  The Chora Chuch, a Byzantine chuch which was the last place I wanted to see, is right on the edge of town and with time running out we decided it would be too difficult to get to.  I guess it gives me an excuse to come back again.  We made our way back to Sultanahmet for a kebab and some sweetcorn (the latter is sold all over the city on little stands as a snack) before saying goodbye to the staff at the Ambassador, which now feels like a home away from home.  The taxi to the Otogar was pretty frantic as Istanbul has perhaps the worst road system in the world, meaning that a 20 minute journey took nearly an hour and a half, but luckily we got there in time and were on our way to Macedonia.

Day One: Goreme Open Air Museum

The overnight bus was pretty painful.  Don’t get me wrong, the company was pretty good and the bus was impressively comfortable, but coaches just aren’t designed to be slept on and neither of us got much sleep.  We arrived at the town of Nevsehir at about 7am and had to change buses to a ‘servis’ which took us to Goreme in Cappadocia where we would be staying.  The bus station at Goreme had a great system whereby you gave the information desk the phone number of your hotel and they would arrange a pick up.  We were staying at the Dream Cave Guesthouse and after the driver dropped us off and we had stored our luggage, we were invited to join in with the hearty breakfast that had been provided.

Goreme Open Air Museum

We couldn’t check in until 11, so despite our tiredness we decided to make the most of the morning and headed up to the 'Goreme Open Air Museum’.  While it doesn’t sound like much, this is one of the most recommended attractions in all of Turkey.  The site is home to lots of Byzantine monasteries carved into the rock formations.  I’m not too keyed up on the history of the area (we are doing a tour tomorrow which should fill us in a bit), but from what I have gathered it has been a hiding place for Christians over the years.  The paintings in many of the caves were fairly basic and the site was completely stuffed with package tour shutterbugs (it was one of those cases where the tourist authorities had shoved as many people in at once to make as much money as possible) but despite this there were a few real gems.  One of these, the Karanlik Kilise (Dark Church) required an extra 8 TL on top of the 15 TL entrance fee, but it was well worth the price as it put off the shutterbugs and the money was going towards the preservation of murals.  We weren’t able to get any photos of these to prevent damage, so the pictures of the insides of the monasteries are taken from the internet (I don’t know if there are any copyright issues with this, but if there are rest assured that I am not making loads of money by writing this).  The church is called the Dark Church because it doesn’t have many windows before you get the idea that it is home to some kind of cult.

Dark Church, Goreme Open Air Museum

After leaving the museum area and walking back down towards Goreme we found another little church, the Tokali Kilise.  This one was less crowded than the others at the Open Air Museum, despite it being part of the same ticket, and had some pretty impressive frescoes.  It consisted of two churches, an old and a new, which had been constructed one on top of the other.  By now it was pretty hot and our room was available, so we made our way through Goreme to our very own fairy chimney room - the fairy chimneys are the nicknames for the rock formations in these parts.  The name comes from when the first travellers arrived in the area and saw that the strange towers of rock were inhabited and were lit up by candlelight, giving the impression that the area was full of fairies.  You can see where they are coming from.

Our Fairy Chimney

For the rest of the day we took it easy to recover from the bus journey.  The town of Goreme is the central hub for travellers to Cappadocia and is the main location of fairy chimneys.  It is home to many shops and tour groups catering for the huge volume of tourists but has managed to retain a lot of its character.  After exploring the town a little bit we headed off to walk around one of the eight major valleys that converge at Goreme.  Probably the biggest issue that a traveller can have in the town is finding a good map, as trails our poorly marked and signposts in the countryside are pretty non-existant.  As Ellie and I hadn’t quite got our bearings yet, we only had a brief foray out of the town before realising that we didn’t know where we were going and didn’t fancy getting lost on our first day.  We ate out in town in the evening before bringing some drinks back to the hostel terrace, which overlooked a lot of the town.  Its definitely a pretty special place to come.


Day Two: 'The Green Tour’

View over Cappadocia

The tourist board in Cappadocia has divided the National Park (which is pretty vast) into two areas of interest, served by two tours - the red tour to the north, around Goreme and the green tour to the south.  Much of the red tour seemed to be within walking distance and it included a visit to the Goreme Open Air Museum - it seemed a waste of money to go in there twice.  We therefore decided to do the Green Tour, which left at 9.30am and cost 60TL.  It started by driving to a viewpoint south of Goreme with views down one of the valley and it was at this point that Ellie, who had been feeling ill but tried her best to come on the tour, decided that it would be sensible for her to travel back into town.  I agreed with this and we arranged for her to get a lift to the hostel, while I carried on with the tour.  The company was even kind enough to give us half of the money back.

Inside the crowded underground city

I therefore carried on the tour by myself and next reached one of 30-odd underground cities in the region, built by early Christians to escape persecution before the religion had properly taken hold.  I had heard of these cities before I came, but its difficult to appreciate the sheer scale of them until you make your way down inside them.  The largest of them are 13 storeys deep (so essentially an underground tower block), of which only a few are open to the public due to a fear of collapses.  Once again the sheer volume of tourists made it hard to imagine what the caves had been like 'back in the day’, but the tour guide told us that the cities would have been able to hold up to 10,000 people for up to two months and included churches, meeting places, animal shelters and even a crypt.  Unfortunately, as I have alluded to, the effect was spoilt slightly by the numbers of people down there and we spent a lot of time not moving as we waited for streams of people to make their way through the tunnels that were only about waist-high.  Had something (like a cave-in) sparked panic, there would have been complete carnage and I have to say that it was pretty uncomfortable down there.

Ilhara Canyon, Cappadocia

Back in fresh air again we jumped back onto the tour bus for an hour journey to a canyon on the southern edge of Cappadocia, called the Ilhara Canyon.  On the way we passed through parched fields of grass and crops, without a fairy chimney in sight.  In the distance we could see the outlines of the three volcanoes which had created the rock features, but apart from that this area of the National Park was a lot different to the images that I had seen of it.  The canyon broke the monotonous yellow fields with a gash of green and blue.  A river, the first running water I had seen in the area, runs along the bottom and the vegetation inside seemed to be a lot healthier.  It looked a lot like the kind of valley that films show people re-starting civilization in after a nuclear apocalypse and it was the perfect place for Christians to hide in during the early days of their religion.  Several churches are built into the sides of the canyon, but we skipped most of them as the tour was behind schedule.  We had lunch (provided) in the valley at a unique restaurant that had pretty much been built in the river itself, with the water running underneath the tables and chairs.

Selime Monastery complex

Our last major stop of the tour was the Selime Cathedral at the north end of the canyon, which is one of the largest religious structures in Cappadocia.  It is surrounded by smaller churches and monasteries and has amazing views back down the canyon and over the landscape to the north.  This was probably the Cappadocia that I had pictured in my head and I am pretty sure that I heard somebody say that part of one of the Star Wars movies had been filmed here (though I’m not sure which one if this is true).  I have to say that the tour guide didn’t actually fill us in much on the history and context of the area (it was more of a 'this is so and so, go take some pictures of it’ kind of tour), but you could grasp a lot of the meaning of the area just by being there.  We now made our way back to Goreme via one last viewpoint for a panorama over 'Pigeon Valley’, where the Byzantines had kept pigeons for communication and other uses, and also at an Onyx factory where the staff made a fairly tragic attempt at getting us to spend loads of money on precious stones.  It had been a pretty good day but the main use of the tour had been to get me from A to B, rather than to be particularly informative.  I got back to the hostel again at half 6 and Ellie (who was feeling far better) and I went out to get some dinner.


Day Three: Rose, Red and Pigeon Valleys

Rose Valley with Ellie, the donkey and the old man

The eight valleys that spread out from Goreme are supposedly the best places to hike in all of Cappadocia.  The only problem is that they aren’t brilliantly signposted or mapped, not to mention the fact that the tracks come and go.  Having seen the south of the national park yesterday, it made sense to explore the north of the park around Goreme and the cheapest and most rewarding way to do this was to try our hand at following the footpaths.  The first of these, the Red and Rose valleys, were actually fairly straightforward and after walking about 2km east of Goreme we came across the start of the trail (marked by a spray painted telegraph pole).  Sitting below a tree at the start of the trail was an old man with a donkey.  He was waved at us and then offered us some peaches that he had just picked.  We sat with him for a bit and he seemed very happy to be speaking to two people from England - when we left him he gave both of us a kiss on each cheek.

Old rock houses in Cavusin

Usichar Castle

We started the trail and after about 20 minutes we looked behind us to see that the old man was coming towards us on his donkey.  We waved at him and when he came over he jumped off and insisted that Ellie got on.  As I wanted to do lots of walking today and was wary of Ellie being ill the day before, we decided to take up the old man’s offer - he was very sweet and it seemed pretty cultural to do this isolated trail on a donkey.  We didn’t see any tourists as we made our way along the Rose and Red valleys, so named because of the colour of the rocks that make up their steep cliffsides.  It was quite useful to have somebody walking with us, though it wasn’t a surprise when we got to the end of the trail and he stuck out his hand asking for money.  The 20 TL that we gave him was probably a bit steep, but he had been nice enough and had showed us where we needed to go next.  We decided to have a drink at the village of Cavusin where I taught Ellie how to play draughts, before we made our way back to Goreme for lunch.


I wasn’t quite satisfied that we had seen everything that I wanted, so having spent the morning walking in the Rose and Red valleys we got a taxi to the village of Uchisar to the north of Goreme.  The village is famous for its castle, built into a huge rock formation, which is visible across all of Cappadocia.  Having been looking at it for the last two days, I decided that I wanted to climb to the top of the castle before walking back down the Pigeon Valley to Goreme, where we would get the bus back to Istanbul.  This plan started well, and after paying the 5 TL entrance fee for the castle and climbing to the top, we got perhaps the best possible view of Cappadocia.  We managed to avoid tour groups as well, so we had the outcrop to ourselves.  We hadn’t felt that we had enough money for the hot air balloon tour, so this felt like a reasonable alternative.

View from the castle

Pigeon Valley, Cappadocia

After climbing back down from the castle all that was left for us to do was to walk along the Pigeon Valley, which links Goreme and Usichar.  Unfortunately this wasn’t quite as easy as we had hoped due to the badly marked trails.  It started off well and as one of the quieter valleys we were able to walk together by ourselves.  This solitude had a negative side however and this was that the paths weren’t well worn at all.  Pretty soon after I had spoken the fatal phrase 'its impossible to get lost in a valley, its just forwards and backwards’, we were lost and faced with a sheer drop in front of us.  It turned out that the valley itself had lots of 'steps’ cut into it, as well as several valleys within a valley.  I didn’t think it would be an issue, but we were actually running the risk of missing our bus back to Istanbul so I decided to cut our losses and we made our way out of the side of the valley and back to the main road where we got a taxi back to town.  It wasn’t the ideal way to end our time in Cappadocia, but time was tight and it was the sensible thing to do.  It also gives me an excuse to come back to this very special part of the world with a bit more time on my hands in the future.

Day One: Fish at the Galata Bridge

The impressive fish menu

Istanbul is a city that is and always will be tremendously important to me.  In 2009, a combination of inset days at school coincided with my 18th birthday and I was able to spend a four day weekend here with my family.  The weekend in question corresponded with the Muslim festival of Eid, which meant that the major shopping areas, including the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar, were closed.  My plan to see the bazaars, along with the fact that Istanbul is the gateway into Europe from Asia, meant that it was going to be the switchover point between backpacking with my family and backpacking with my girlfriend.  The start of this change over was the 5 hour drive from Gallipoli, which me and my family undertook on Friday morning. The route pretty much followed the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles and it was a good way to appreciate the strategic value of Gallipoli, as well as some amazing views.  On the way we stopped for a break at the city of Tekirdag, where we had originally considered spending a night.  While it was a fairly nice seaside town, we are glad that we spent the extra day at Gallipoli, particularly as the journey was proving a lot shorter than we had anticipated.

We were staying at the Hotel Ambassador in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul.  This is where we had come last time and when we checked in at about 4pm, we found that we remembered many of the staff.  We were pretty exhausted after the journey and with this being the third time Mum and Dad have come to Istanbul there was no obligation to do any sightseeing.  We therefore took our time walking down to the bridges over the Golden Horn, where (need I say it) we had come for a meal before at a fish restaurant under the Galata Bridge.  We shared a massive Scorpion Fish between us - a great way to finish the family holiday, before slowly wandering back to the hotel to have a few drinks on its amazing terrace.


Day Two: The Bazaars and Hagia Sophia

The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

The next morning the three of us went out to visit the bazaars.  Mum and Dad hadn’t been for 20 years and my last experience of a bazaar was at Khan-El Khalili in Cairo, which was total chaos.  We were therefore all surprised to find that the Grand Bazaar was fairly quiet, hassling from shopkeepers was minimal and the clean, well ordered shops made it seem more like a reasonably classy shopping arcade rather than a chaotic bazaar. It was a far cry from what I had seen in Cairo and what my parents remembered seeing 20 years ago.  We know that it is Ramadan at the moment and therefore people aren’t out until later, but (and I know that the similarities couldn’t be more tenuous) a visit on a Saturday morning to Waitrose would be the busiest time of the entire week.  I will be coming back later in the week with Ellie and we will try and come at a different time to compare.  Our next stop was the Spice Bazaar, which is to the north of the Grand Bazaar, through a large shopping district.  The roads of the shopping district were a fair bit busier than the bazaar itself and the fact that the prices were lower might suggest that the Grand Bazaar has outpriced the locals and just become a tourist trap.  This idea was strenghtened by the fact the Spice Bazaar was a lot busier and seemed to be a lot more like the real thing than…the real thing.

The Spice Bazaar, Istanbul

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

All the while we were strolling through the shops of Istanbul, Ellie was arriving at Ataturk Airport and with a good bit of timing we all met at the Ambassador Hotel at about the same time.  There was a two hour cross-over between Ellie’s arrival and my parents’ departure and we spent this time in Sultanahmet Park in the area between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.  We waved mum and dad off and then decided we had time for one site - the Hagia Sophia before everything started to close and we would start to get hungry.  The Hagia Sophia is arguably the most famous monument in Istanbul.  It was built by the Emperor Justinian in 532 AD as the grandest cathedral in Christendom and has since survived earthquakes, invasions and even a crusade by fellow Christians.  It was converted to a mosque during the Ottoman Empire and since the secularism introduced by Ataturk has become a museum.  Last time I came, Istanbul was gearing itself up to be European Capital of Culture 2010 and as a result much of the city was covered in scaffolding (story of my travels…), so it was impressive to see the inside of the dome free of construction work.  We finished with a walk down to the bridges over the Golden Horn where I had eaten dinner last night, before heading back to have a meal at the restaurant where I had my last meal as a 17 year old last time I came.

Inside Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Day Three: The Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace

The Blue Mosque interior

The plan for today was to start with the Blue Mosque, the blue and Muslim reflection of the Hagia Sophia on the other side of Sultanahmet Park.  The mosque is actually called the ‘Sultan Ahmed Mosque’ (Sultan Ahmed/Sultanahmet) but has got its nickname due to the heavily blue dominated interior.  It was built on the site of the old Byzantine Emperor’s Palace and was completed in 1616.  As one of the most famous (and accessible) mosques in the world, the strain from tourists is quite heavy and as result worshippers are given their own entrance and sections inside.  It is a really stunning building from the outside and with the Hagia Sophia gives Istanbul one of the most easily recognizable and dramatic skylines in the world.  The interior is equally impressive, though it is very difficult to quite capture just how blue it is in photos.

Gates of Topkapi Palace

The next place that I wanted to show Ellie was the Grand Bazaar, which I had only seen for the first time yesterday. When we arrived however it turned out to be closed - it turns out that it is closed on Sunday which I probably should have worked out.  The bazaar district is quite pleasant anyway though and we had our lunch close to Istanbul University while deciding what the alternate itinerary would be.  Looking at the 'to-see’ list we decided on the Topkapi Palace, back in the Sultanhmet area of the old town.  This palace was home to the Ottoman Sultans for 400 years of the empire and as such was once arguably the most important buildings in the world.  While the Sultans are long gone, the building remains along with a lot of Ottoman treasures and artefacts.  It cost us 20 TL to get in and would have cost us an extra 15 TL if we had gone to the Harem as well (where the Sultan actually used to live - we didn’t go in last time or this time).  The grounds and palace building are enough to dedicate an afternoon to and the treasury in particular, home to the famous Topkapi Dagger as well as hundreds of other priceless items, is enough to wow you (and make you realise why the Ottomans ended up bankrupt…).  The views over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn are really good too, so the entrance fee is worth it just to get these unique photos back over the city.  The last room we went in was the Privy Chamber, tucked away slightly in one of the courtyards.  Contained in the chamber, as tucked away as it may be, are some of the most amazing religious objects you are ever likely to come across. In the dim light (used to protect the artefacts) the Prophet Muhammad’s cloak and sword, the Staff of Moses and the turban of Joseph.  The Sultans themselves were only allowed into the chamber on one day of the year (the 15th day of Ramadan) to see the objects so it is understandable that staff ask tourists (and Muslim pilgrims) to keep quiet as they walk round.

Inside Topkapi Palace

After finishing at the palace we grabbed our first Turkish coffee of the trip and then headed back to the hotel. At 7 we got picked up and taken to Istanbul Otogar (bus station) where we started our 12 hour journey, costing 60 TL each way, to Cappdocia.  We would be returning to Istanbul later in the week but we had taken a chunk out of the long list of sites in the city.