Today is our last day in Istanbul as I fly back tomorrow lunch time so I thought I would share a few things I have learnt about Turkey.
First of all is the driving, why the hell there are markings on the road I am not too sure as nobody looks at them. I cringe every time I get in a car and there are normally no seatbelts!! I know for a fact I could never drive there.
The next is the timings, if someone tells you 5 minutes, be prepared to wait for over an hour. If someone tells you that your taxi is on it’s way, what they mean is that the taxi driver is just about to have lunch the other side of Istanbul and will then drive all the way across the city to come and collect you about 2 hours later.
I have also learnt that taxi drivers and bus drivers get lost quite often (the leisure centre man) which they then try to charge you for later.
I also found haggling at the grande bazaar rather odd, and struggled a bit, I think I was lucky I had someone to bounce off and who was much more forceful than me lol.
Turkey hasn’t been that bad, and actually we have found some very helpful people, but saying that if I was coming here again, it most definitely would not be on a business trip where I needed to be at places on time as this rarely happened!
Chloe Brown 