Day 5 - Sugar Friday, the end of Ramadan and the weather-sunny & warm. Everybody has come to the town centre to pray at Aya Sofia (now a mosque after being a museum since the 1920s), then to eat all they can handle and to listen to their President Erdogan when he reopens the Blue Mosque today after being closed for years of renovations. The crowd was so big that 1000s couldn’t fit into the Aya Sofia. We picked this day to do our city tour!! We managed to spend...

Day 4 -Gallipoli - holy ground for Anzacs and for Turks. Found things had changed since the last visit in 2005 - now a super- 4 lane autobahn down the middle of the peninsula, with tunnels under the hills, and a fabulous huge suspension bridge over the Dardanelles near Gelibolu - all courtesy of Erdogan currently facing an election. Seems that all the Turks we’ve met are not happy with their current President - especially his restrictive Islamic regime. Arrive...

Day 3 - cool, misty morning with sun breaking through, perfect weather for a tramp - but first its over the Dards to Eceabat and a quick whip round Cape Helles. We stopped first at the new Observation platform on the hill called Archi Baba - to take a good look at the entire southern peninsula. This was the high ground that the British never managed to capture after 3 major battles. Lot of Kiwi boys got killed down here during the 2nd Battle of Krithia. You could...

Day 2- Arrived 5.50am, Istanbul Airport after 28hours nonstop on the go. I was here 18years ago and I didn’t recognise anything at all. The airport to hotel transfer was seamless and we picked up some Turkish cash (lira = 12L to NZ$1.00) had shower, breakfast and a snooze. The Turkish breakfast was a winner. Everyone tired but still polite.