WHITE KNUCKLE TAXI RIDE

Pretty sure I have a dose of tourist fatigue, goes nicely with the dose of the cold/man flu which I also have at the moment. I've seen and photographed so many monuments, churches, temples and mosques in the last 2 weeks that I'm pretty much done with it. My photo count is dropping daily. So I'm not going to post too many more of those sort of pics on here as it will just mean endless posts of the same. If anybody wants to keep tab and see new pics then just click here.

Istanbul sweets

turkish delights, I may have had a few (lots)

Kebap

Right now I'm in Istanbul and as I said I have the man flu. Caught it from my brother Justin who's had it for the past week. It sucks, ruins the holiday when you're sick. Last night in a vain attempt to celebrate NYE despite the fever I dropped a couple of anti cold/flu pills. Bah Wow...bad move, dropped me like a rock. I couldn't lift my head and I was asleep by 10pm. I felt pretty bad for Justin but he understood as he's been through it. So he wandered the streets of Istanbul whilst I slept. Woke up pretty damn quickly at midnight when the fireworks exploded above my room. I tried to get onto my hotel balcony to watch them but the stupid door fell off its hinge and straight onto me. This is a double glazed glass door mind you so bloody heavy. I managed to push it back up off of me and by then I'd given up on seeing any fireworks. It just wasn't my night.

Istanbul streets

Istanbul Hotel

Istanbul Hotel 01

We left Luxor by train last Tuesday night, thought it would be fun to do an old school train ride. The compartments were pretty cool but the ride wasn't. We had first class tickets and so that carriage was at the rear of the train away from the engine. Fine except whenever the engine tapped its' brakes the effect would ripple down the train growing into an almighty wallop at our end, it almost threw you off of your bed and easily woke you up. This of course happened almost every hour for reasons known only to the driver. Thank god a train ahead had a problem at around 1am and we had to park up for 3 hours. 3 blissful hours of sleep. oh and check out the dinner they served us as we rolled out of Luxor. The waiters looked stunned when we refused breakfast the next morning, err what were you expecting us to do?! That was nasty!

Luxor Train Station

Train compartment

Train compartment 01

Train food

yum

Train food 1

When we finally arrived in Cairo we had to grab a taxi ride to the airport for the flight to Istanbul. We scored an old dude out the front of the station, he threw the bags on the roof, no straps just a rack (she'll be fine) and took off. And I mean took off, white knuckle taxi ride all the way. Justin sat in the front and pretty much had a look of terror all the way. Two lanes? Pffft there's room for at least five, check his wide eyes in the mirror ....

white knuckle taxi ride

white knuckle taxi ride 01





Comments

Stella said…
"Man Flu" - love it Stu!

I just came from Tiff's blog, seeing absolute high tea yumminess. Your Turkish delights and skewered meaty goodness spurred on my hunger, but that dried up disheveled piece of whatever you ate on the train (beef??) just stopped my food hankering. So...thanks.

Happy New Year! Hope you get better soon.
stu said…
yep, beef and yep, a perfect appetite suppressant ;)
stu said…
oh and manflu is a real thing ya know ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EElqrgk4N0
Anonymous said…
Do you want me to come over there and look after you, I feel it is my duty as a mother. Seriously Happy New Year to you both and we hope you get over the flu soon. Enjoy what comes next and take care of each other.
stu said…
It'd be great if you just wrote Justin a stern email telling him off for giving me his stupid cold ;)