The end of our stay in Bucharest was defined by certain inaccuracies in the travel guide I had bought. Nice local cheap restaurant near Placa Revolutionii turned out to be the building of the Bucharest Hilton – not known for cheap prices or local flavour. Another restaurant seemed to be at the totally different square. At least we found a terrace restaurant with good food, nice service and some added drama by the local baccalaureate students in their nines. The local beer was good and weather was warm. Another thing lacking from the travel guide was the working hours of the local metro. Plus there was no mention that every ticket was a return (2 journey) one. Shame on you Thomas Cook!
The next morning we just got a taxi to the station and found out that we had misunderstood the taxi driver on arrival. Lucky man got a huge tip... At the station bought some food to our train journey and got rid of the remaining lei. Then our small train carrying cars to Thessaloniki and Istanbul left Bucharesti. Another city worth another visit in the future.
The 20 or so hour train journey to Istanbul showed us three totally different landscapes. The southern Romania was flat where as the chalk hills in northern Bulgaria were steep. When we woke up in Turkey it was undulating farming landscape with a lot of poppies along the field boundaries.
The train itself was basic. The sleeper car was Romanian but there was no personal hygiene kit or free bottle of water in the cupboard. The safety net required artistic invention to be placed about correctly and there were signs of heavy use everywhere. The cleanliness of the toilet went downhill from the start and its lock worked when it wanted. In addition every border had two sets of passport controllers coming in. Embarrassingly, we missed the passport stamps and visa for Phil at the Turkish border when we thought that one set of Turkish controllers was enough. We were woken up at 5 am in Edirne to face the lack of stamps in an additional passport control. The poor police at the station was as astonished as us when he was in his turn woken up. There was a moment of panic at the dark station platform but I got my stamp and Phil paid his visa.
The train arrived to Istanbul almost two hours late. That did not really matter since we could see the suburbs of Istanbul where huge areas were under development and cute new estates with local style semidetached houses dotted the slopes of mild ridges. There was an ATM at the station and the walk to our hotel was a short and pleasant one. Luckily, we were able to get our room almost at the spot. We just sampled the tasty breakfast buffet of the Sirkeci Konak hotel after which we were shown our room upstairs. The room is not the largest but we have a view to the gardens of Topkapi. What a nice place to have a nap after a long and eventful night!
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