After all the stress of trying to figure out what I was going to do, it turns out that I only had one option, and that was to fly to Istanbul. Well, at least that’s what the travel agent told me. I mentioned that I was going to get all my travel plans taken care of earlier while I was in Beirut, but it didn’t turn out that way. By the time that I got to a place where I could use the internet I couldn’t make reservations anywhere, so I was forced to go to a travel agent. They told me that there weren’t any ferries to Turkey from Cyprus, and they said that I would not get a visa at the Syrian border, so the only thing left for me was to fly to Istanbul. I love Istanbul so it may not have been what I wanted to do, I really wasn’t disappointed that I would go there. The timings of my schedule was kind of crappy though. I left Beirut at 340 in the morning, and my bus to Antalya, Turkey didn’t leave until 830 at night. Like I mentioned I love Istanbul and I thought I’d use the time to do a little sightseeing. Boy was I wrong. First the bus station was about an hour from the center of the city, then they wouldn’t store my bags for me, and there wasn’t anyway I was going to walk around with about 60lbs of backpacks on in 92 degree temperature. So I ended up hanging out in the bus station for about 13 hours. The time went really fast, and the people working there seemed to almost enjoy the fact that I was stuck. After my third nap, I was just sitting in a chair staring up into the distance when a guard came up to me with an espresso and an English newspaper. I looked at him and around the lobby and all the people working there were smiling like they felt my pain. :)

I think I’ve mentioned this before in another blog, but the people in Turkey are really nice to me. I’ve been told that they can be mean, but I really can’t say that I’ve had one experience of a mean person. I think Turkey is probably my favorite country, after the US of course. To give you an example of how nice people are, I arrive in the airport at Istanbul and needed to get to the bus station. I didn’t want to get a taxi, so I start kind of wandering around looking for someone to help me, when I talk to a bus driver. He points me to a bus stop I go over and talk to the driver there and along with a passenger they decide that they know where I want to go, and that was the correct bus. The passenger “takes me under his wing” so to speak and gets off the bus at the same time, gets in a taxi with me and drops me off at the bus station before he travels home. Most places that I’ve been anyone helping me like that, would have asked for money, but this guy was genuinely a nice guy. Though I have to admit I kept thinking that he was up to something, but that’s more of me being paranoid than anything else. I really do love Turkey.

I finally got on my bus to Antalya that night to cheer of one of the porters there. No lie, as all the passengers were lined up to get onto the bus, he tapped me on the shoulder, I turned and he raised his hand and said with a big smile, “Your bus! Your bus!” The trip was one of those great rides that I think planes used to be, it was comfortable, quiet, and not crowded, really probably the best transit time I’ve had.