Gallipoli

Where we stayed – Crowded House Hotel


I had been looking forward to this part of our trip for some time, so I was pretty excited to arrive in Eceabat. Eceabat is a sleepy little village which is on the Gallipoli Peninsula side of the Dardanelles, so it has the best access to all sights I’d been longing to see.

Beach Cemetery

We choose to stay at the Crowded House Hotel and I’m so glad we did. Ziya (the co-ower) is just superb. Dallas had been complaining of having a sore ear for a couple of days, so we asked Ziya if there was a doctor in the village we could possibly see. Not only did Ziya take us to the nearby medical centre (which was free by the way), he also came with us to see the doctor to translate for us, and then took us to the pharmacy to get the necessary antibiotics. He then helped us arrange our tour of Gallipoli and our next bus tickets. All of this happened within 30 minutes of us arriving at his hotel… His hospitality and efficiency was just AWESOME!

Pretty self-explanatory really.... ANZAC Cove

The next day we along with 6 Aussies joined ‘Bill’ a local guide on a tour of the Gallipoli battlefields. I learnt more about the Gallipoli campaign in the 5 hours we spent with Bill than all my years at school. He was so informative and it was great to also get a Turkish point of view on the war. It was a pretty emotional day, but one that I will never forget.

The legendary John Simpons grave

Ari Burnu

Chunuk Bair - the main New Zealand memorial

ANZAC Cove

Poem by Ataturk

Lone Pine - The main Australian memorial

Chunuk Bair - the main New Zealand memorial

Beautiful Istanbul

Where we stayed - Penninsula Hotel

We love Istanbul! The sights are mindblowingly beautiful, the food is fantastic and the people are UBER friendly, especially to our kids. I know a lot of people think that travelling around the world with two young children would be a nightmare, but so far in Turkey it is going like a dream. The kids can’t walk 20 metres down the road without someone saying “Hello baby”, or patting their head or cheek or giving them a Hi-5, they literally are the centre of attention wherever we go.
 

Little Miss in front of the Blue Mosque

 

Checking out the ceiling in Aya Sofya

 

Mosaic in Aya Sofya

You’d expect to hear the word ‘marhaba' when being greeted by a Turk, but that was not the case when we met our first Turkish waiter in the pub we dined in, on our first night in Istanbul. He asked where we were from and when I told him we (the kids and I) were from NZ, he cracked up laughing and said to Dallas, “So, you’re a kiwi boy? Chur bro…. Kia cuzzie!” OMG, I laughed so hard I very nearly spat out my beer… Somehow I think this man has come across A LOT of kiwis in his time… He and another workmate also kept the kids entertained whilst Alain and I enjoyed the free peach flavoured nargileh (waterpipe) he gave us to smoke…

 

Courtyard at the Blue Mosque

 

Blue Mosque

 

Spice market

 

Beautiful mosaic candle holders

 

Fresh sardine sammies
 

Down on the waterfront in Eminönü you can buy a fresh sardine sammies straight from the boat. They are devine... The boats rock backwards and forwards so vigorously that at times it looks like the cooks will fall from the boat, or at least they'll drop your lunch in the water.

 

Check out the angle of their boat

 

Doner kebab anyone?

 

France has dogs everywhere... Turkey has cats. This was one of two kittens which lived outside our hotel. Dallas named this kitten Garfield.

Visiting old friends and realitives

We spent a fair bit of our time in France visiting Alain's long lost friends and realitives. I finally got to meet his uncle Yannick (who Alain hadn't seen in 15 years) as well as his cousins Eddy and Steve and also couple of his old school friends.

It was nice catching up with everyone even if it was only for an evening or so...

Mia and Nadette (Alain's aunty)

Alain, Steve and Yannick

Ghislaine, Sophie, Steve, Yannick, Alain, Dallas and Mia

Alain and Christophe

Alain and Harold

Alain and Ollivier

Happy 11th Birthday Gabin

It was Alain's oldest nephew's 11th birthday on the 19th July. We had a nice big family get together, where we ate lots of yummy food and drank wayyyyyy too much lovely wine. Gabin's birthday also happened to fall on Fathers Day, as well as the First day of Summer and it was also the nationwide music festival day too. It was a busy day in France!!

Later that evening after a few bevy's we had a table tennis championship going on, I'm not too sure who won, but Alain will tell he did though... (he lies though)

Cousins - Gabin, Baptiste, Dallas, Mia and Simon

Baptiste - aka: The nice one

Boy boy

Simon

Fredo

Mamoux

Papoux
Spiderman

Alain molesting the Champagne

Tonton Patrick

Tonton Patrick teaching Gabin how to open Champagne

Piggy Alain

Fun with food

Happy boy, happy Dad... Waste of strawberry tart though!

The Sabatier family

The Labet family

Family resemblance?

Table tennis championship - France vs France

Paradis du Pecheur

Fish face

First catch of the day

The first fish Dallas has ever caught

Checking out his first ever trout

One father. One son. One fish.... Perfect

In the tiny wee village that Celine lives in, there is a rather neat little fishing farm you can go to to fish for trout. You can catch as many fish as you like and then you just pay for what you've caught by the kilo before you leave.

Dallas is always going on about wanting to go fishing (I think he gets it from his Uncle Brendan), so of course we had to take him and Mia. We took them several times in fact and each time they caught at least one trout each, much to their delight (and the delight of our stomachs too).