To kind of round of this blog, I'm planning on a Turkey wrap up and an annotated selection of my favourite photos.

Work on Monday, yay.

It doesn't appear that passenger flights have been affected. Fingers crossed.

View west from Canakkale promenade over the Dardanelles to the Gallipoli Peninsula.

After the choppy trip across the Dardanelles and average lunch we set off on our tour in a small bus. The guide was a Turk who spoke excellent English and had even developed somewhat of an Australian accent. Along the way to the intended landing spot of ANZAC forces, our guide explained some of the background about the campaign and what the history of the area means to Turkish people. I kind of always thought it was a weird Aus/NZ thing, this interest in Gallipoli, but I was surprised to learn that Turks treasure this area just as much as we do, for a number of reasons:

1. It was a launching pad the career of the ubiquitous Mustafa Kumal Attaturk - an officer in 1915, Attaturk made many of the important decisions that helped the Turks resist the allied forces.

2. 1915 was a time at which Turkey was forging its nation state, and success at Gallipoli was an important factor in this.

3. It's great for tourism.

These important factors are reflected in the way the peninsula has been organised and managed (mostly), and in the way that every Turkish secondary student must visit the area as part of his/her curriculum.

Therefore, many hundreds of thousands of people visit this area every year, not just at ANZAC day (25/4) but also at another important date for Turks, the 18th March 1915, when their navy sank 3 allied naval ships in the Battle of Cannakale.

This inevitably led to the Gallipoli landings on the part of the allies as it was seen that the guns on either side of the Dardanelles would need to be silenced if Istanbul could be captured and Turkey taken out of the war, access granted to The Black Sea, and assistance given to the Russians. Anyway, enough of the history lesson.

We arrived at the intended landing spot, pictured below:

You can see the large open beach there and the slope off the left is fairly gentle. However the point of land you can see poking out had some Turkish guns on it which would have made the landings somewhat of a bloodbath. This small bay is just south of the actual landing spot, what we now called ANZAC Cove.

We drove the short distance north to ANZAC Cover along a very tight, mostly broken road. This is the road that caused some problems for the Australian government earlier this year. It turns out that the road always existed, it just needed to be widened to cater for the massive amount of people that frequent this area on ANZAC day. Fair enough, however the workers cut into the cliffs off the bay and dumped the sand on the beach... the ANZAC landing beach, making it somewhat smaller than it should be. Apparently many of the guides in the area came and protested the actions of the workman to have it stopped, but not before a few truckloads of sand had been dumped. You can see the road on the right hand side of this shot:

From this point we were also able to walk along a small track to the Australian Memorial just next to ANZAC Cove:

The memorial is very well kept, but small, much too small for the ANZAC Day service. The service is now held on the other side of ANZAC Cove at another Australian memorial. From this memorial you can see the cliffs the troops had to conquer on the first day of the campaign. The striking feature in the center of the shot is called 'The Sphinx':

The photo's don't capture it of course, but these beaches are very moving to look at and study.

After some 5 hours we ended up at the small town of Eceabat, which sits right on the Dardenelles; the throughfare to Istanbul, and the Black Sea. It's not much of a town to look at and seems to be focused around the buses and cars waiting to cross the Dardenelles on a car ferry to Cannakale (pronounced Chanakali). Unfortunately for us there was a very, very long queue of buses and cars waiting for said ferry, in order to make the crossing.

We waited outside the bus for a while and eventually one of the bus company people (who spoke no english, and was frankly in dire need of some customer service lessons) motioned to us that the chances of getting on the next ferry were slim, and we may as well proceed on foot and jump on the ferry as people, rather than as part of a bus. You understand that this communication took some time as we used a combination of sign language, facial expressions and hand waving in order to eventually, get too the point. So we unloaded our bags from the bus and ran the gauntlet of tauts selling food and crappy Anzac WW1 souvenirs, towards the ticket box.

With tickets in hand we jumped on and made the short trip across the famous Dardenelles, with russian and turkish tankers slipping by us on the way to the Aegian Sea and beyond.

Upon landing at Cannakale we found a small party town where Turks go to sun themselves and have picnics and, it seems, watch soccer matches. The town was buzzing as we pulled into port, hundreds of locals and tourists strutting along a sea shore boulevard with tens of cafes and restaurants facing the impressive view back too Eceabat and an exceptional sunset.

We found our hotel - The Akol Hotel - 4 star, but dirt cheap in this part of the world, and checked in.

It was late in the day, but we wanted to secure some tours for our purpose in this little corner of Turkey, namely Troy and of course the Gallipoli Battlefields. Taking Lonely Planet's word for it we located 'ANZAC House Hostel', which amongst other things, offers exceptional guided tours of these two sites. After a week of having protracted hand gesture driven conversations with people who dont speak English, it was kind of nice to walk into this hostel and be greeted by the guy at the desk who spoke excellent english, was a Turk, but perhaps said 'No worries' a few too many times.

I had images of this town being basically a terrible collection of 'Aussie' hotels and drunken backpackers, but I was pleasantly surprised. The 'Australianness' wasn't too overdone and really just seemed to be trying to provide a helpful service to Aus/NZ travellers who are trying to get to the famous battle sites. So we booked into two tours, one to Troy tommorow, and another the following day to Gallipoli.

Next on the agenda was dinner. We found a restaurant that looked a little too empty, which worried us until the waiter pointed out that this was one of the few places without a TV. All the other bars and restaurants in the town were packed with Turks glued to some vastly important soccer game. Whilst chatting over dinner we were frequently drowned out by screams of delight or pain as a goal was scored or missed. Eventually, the good guys won and the streets and boulevard turned into chaos. A massive group, perhaps 400 fans roamed the town screaming anthems and chanting team songs - it was quite a sight. We grabbed a seat at a bar after dinner to watch the madness unfold and it became clear that this celebration wouldn't end early.

As I sit here in my hotel room, overlooking the Darndenelles and main street, I have hundreds of people and cars, all screaming and blowing their horns simultaneously, down below.

Congratulations guys! I so wish I could have been there to follow the action from closer to home, but alas, such is life. There is no one I know more destined and deserved of being new parents than Jon and Sue. George will undoubtedly have a wonderful and fulfilling life with such caring, loving and fun parents as yourselves.

We purchased our tickets and jumped on the next available ferry out there. It was packed, mainly with tourists, but not the usual mix of Americans and French. These groups were Iranian, Japanese, Syrian and a few others. We sat next to this large group of Iranian girls who seemed to be having a great time, babbling away in Farsi. They were all very well dressed and seemed fairly sophisticated, and ,for want of a better word, western. It was certainly not the image of Iranian people we see on CNN or whatever. These girls were clearly out to party a bit as they had no head scarves on and would break into song every now and again. It was quite a fun trip.

There are 4 islands in the group but we chose to head for the biggest one as we only had a day to explore. The largest island is Büyükada which is the kind of place Istanbuller's go to get away from the heat in the summer months.

Büyükada has seen better days, it's rackety unsealed roads are full of huge old weatherboard Ottoman houses, mostly in a state of disrepair. There's not a hell of a lot to see here other than the a fantastic view from the highest of its two peaks. Most tourists were securing a horse drawn buggy to get to the top of the first peak and then either walk or get a donkey to the higher peak. Feeling energetic Cazz and I decided that it would be a nice walk.

After a decent walk to the first peek we were greeted by some sort of French/Turkish school's friendship music festival thingy. The loud speakers were blasting what sounded like Eurovision Finalists, think synthesised versions of Axel F and such from the Beverly Hills Cop sound track. Teams of teenagers were milling about causing trouble amongst the horses and carts. We tentatively set off for the second peak after seeing the incredibly steep ascent that awaited us.

Once we got to the top, a little weary, we were met with a spectacular view of Istanbul and the urban sprawl around it, as well as a much earned cold beer. Also up there was a small 6th century monastery which was still in use.

We made the decent soon after and caught the next ferry back to Istanbul, very tired and ready for bed.

A quiet day in Istanbul tommorow before we head off for Cannakale on Sunday.

It was damned busy, bus loads of tourists everywhere. First up was the Harem, which much to my surprise (dissapointment?), wasn't a place of endless orgies, but rather a private place for the Sultan, his 4 wives and up to 300 concubines(!) could exist in privacy. This was a fairly rushed tour so you couldn't really stay too long in there. After that we grabbed some lunch then toured the rest of the palace. As I mentioned, its a much more authentic Turkish Palace, none of the trappings of exclusive French and Italian furnishings here; more like what you'd expect from, well, something Turkish.

As an added bonus I've cropped and reduced three images from my growing collection to show here:

This is the view from our hotel in Istanbul, the Blue Mosque:

Topkapi Palace, Istanbul:

Gap of Dunloe:

Newgrange, north of Dublin:

The mosque is HUGE; you can sit there on the balcony sipping a beer and staring at it for hours. On our first night here we were sitting on the balcony chatting and the call to prayer blasted out from the loud speakers perched on the spires of the mosque. It gave us such a fright we spent the next 10 minutes pissing ourselves laughing. After the initial shock of the these loud speakers crying "Allahu Akbar" across the city it actually becomes quite poignant on a still night as you can hear all the other mosques in the area, slightly out of sync, blasting their own neighbours.

Today we caught a ferry over to the other side of the city and visited the Dollmabahce Palace - which is where the Sultans of Turkey perched themselves to impress western leaders about how powerful and "western" they are. The tour guide took great pride in explaining where all the bits and peices in the palace were from: Italy, Paris, London etc. It dawned on me half way through that there wasn't alot of the contents of this place actually from Turkey. Besides that the palace was fairly impressive; think Palace in any other part of europe, then completely over do the inside with the most ornate stuff you can find - paintings, furniture, carpets, light fittings, cornices etc etc.

The tour group we were with were pretty horrible to be honest. The most annoying being a group of Arabs from Syria who were pooncing around in their designer clothes, too much gold and mobile phones taped to their ears. We were basically just extra's on their tour through the palace as they pushed their way to the front of any group of people to photograph everything on their new minature digital cameras. We left the palace an hour later, thoroughly annoyed.

We then made our way up too a bus company's ticket office nearby in order to buy tickets to our next destination, Cannakale, which typically serves as a retreat for people visiting Gallipoli and Troy. We leave here on Sunday morning for our 6 hour (oh joy) bus ride down south.

Walking around Istanbul can be patience testing. Every man and his dog are selling everything from carpets, shoe shines, souvenirs, even the opportunity to be weighed. We've become pretty good at just marching through them and avoiding the half english conversations that ensue. One of their tricks is to engage you in conversation about where you're from. I've been asked if I was from: England, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland even Lismore New South Wales, I think he had a cousin there.

I'll convert some choice ones tonight and put them on. I dont think i'll get the time to do a bulk photo posting though. I'll also do a turkey post detailing the last few days.

Heathrow is a zoo, in fact Dublin Airport is a zoo as well. I arrived at Dublin Airport at 5am (!) and it was absolutely packed. Heathrow, as you'd probably expect mid sunday morning, is chaos.

Other than that, not much to report; I'm very tired and sick of looking in duty free stores. I'll be glad to have some downtime in Istanbul I think.

I managed to stagger back up to my room and resist the urge to fall asleep again. I jumped in the car and headed towards Blarney. Blarney Castle is situated in the town of Blarney, about 30km's north west of Cork. At the top of the castle is something called the Blarney Stone, kissing it apparently gives you 'the gift of the gab'. I arrived at Blarney, parked and headed on foot towards the castle. The place was packed with middle aged/old aged American tourists; all dressed in those cream coloured weather proof pants and jackets. This was tourist hell in my book. The tour coaches were arriving by the minute brining lots of US dollars into the horrible massive souvenier store strategially placed near the entrance of the castle 'park'.

I paid 9 euro (yikes) to get into the grounds of the castle. At the entrance there is a sign stating the desire of the park authorities for visitors to take care of the place and ensure it remains 'authentic', clearly the electric flood lights and security camera's clamped on the side of the castle don't fall under this rule. I climbed to the top and was greeted with a fairly impressive view of Blarney and the surrounding landscape. A staff member was assisting people kiss the stone at the top, as it requires you too lie on your back and extend yourself over a 50 foot drop. The thought of kissing a peice of rock that has been slobbered on by thousands, nee millions of tourists, made me want too bring back up my breakfast. I politely declined the staff member's offer to let me kiss the stone; he seemed to be having more fun 'assisting' young women kiss it anyway.

I made my way to the bottom and headed out of town. At this time, the rain had started again.

My next stop was Cobh (pron Cove). Cobh used to be called Queenstown and was:

1. The last port the Titanic stopped at on it on its way to the bottom of the Atlantic.
2. The Lusitania was sunk just off the coast by a German submarine - assisting the US in getting into WW1.
3. A principal port for the millions of convicts and emigrants to leave Ireland in the 19th century.

So Cobh has seem some important history. To exhibit these events there's a 'Heritage Center' that is itself a reconstruction of the original port building with a walk through explanation of all these events. There was lots of mention of convicts and migrants headed for Australia leaving from this port which was good to see.

After the exhibit I had a quick drive around Cobh. It's a beautiful little town with lots of little multi-coloured buildings facing the coast. By this stage it was 3pm, so I headed into central Cork once again to check my mail and have a last look around.

Tommorow I head for Kilkenny - the last town in my tour of Ireland.

I checked out of the hotel and headed towards Kenmare - the first town you hit in the ring going the opposite direction that I used yesterday. By the time I got there, the weather was much worse, getting out of the car involved getting drenched immediately. What were once awesome views from the road became just mist and fog. There was not much I could do so I headed towards Cork instead.

A couple of hours later I arrived in Cork. Cork is a very old city, slightly larger than Killarney, and more 'city like'. I made the mistake of going straight into the center of Cork city. Irish cities, with the exception of Dublin, have this annoying feature they call a city loop. No, its not a train route, but a road that traces through the center of town, one way. The entrance to the loop is also typically the only place where you can make the decision to enter it or exit it. So if you miss this split second decision you are sentenced to another 20 minute loop of the city center. It's 20 minutes because the traffic in small, old Irish towns is really really horrible. I'm sure they're all just lost tourists like me who missed the last chance to leave the loop. Eventually I found a place to park the car and explore the center of town on foot. The rain had not subsided at all, in fact it was probably heavier. I found an internet place to check my mail and catch up on some Australian news. After that I grabbed a coffee to warm me up and headed back to the car. I now needed to find my B&B. I had already booked a place that Lonely Planet had recommended, in addition to being comfy it went on and on about the awesome breakfast you get. Sounds good.

Navigating Cork is hellish. Most of the streets are fast moving, thin and one way. A nano-second's hesitation earns you a chorus of anxious beeping from the cars behind you. I love Lonely Planet, but the map of Cork they provided was inadequate to navigate with any degree of confidence. The best you can do is grab a street name from the map, then try and drive the car in the vague direction of that street; use that street as a base of knowledge, then use the map to navigate to the next landmark etc, until you arrive at the street of your destination. By a stroke of luck I managed to find the B&B and was welcomed in and invited to Scones and Tea. I gracefully declined, I just wanted to flop in my room for an hour or so.

In the evening I thought I'd walk into town and have dinner. It was raining a bit outside, but I didnt think it was too bad. I didnt get 200m down the road before I was compleatly soaked. So I turned back, got changed, then jumped in the car and parked in town. Lonely Planet recommended a steak pub/restaurant in Cork called Clancy's. Amazingly I found it without too much trouble. The steak was damned good, and washed down with a Guinness made it all the better. But to be honest, I hate dining in restaurants solo; I feel like such as loser.