ISTANBUL
boatING on the BosphorouS
 
Few places are quite so "foreign," fascinating and
exotic as Istanbul.
It sits on two continents, where East meets West and the waters of the Black Sea flow down the
Bosphorous to mingle
with the Sea of Marmara.
To explore the river I went
down to the Galata Bridge where amid the bustle of people from
the buses and the ferries fresh fish is cooked on the quayside.
Strolling vendors sold chai (hot tea in small glasses) and
there was a hubbub of different music from the loudspeakers on
the nearby stalls.
From the stern of a ferry we gazed at the magnificent
Mosque of Suliman the as the city fell away behind
us. We zigzagged across the river, collecting
passengers from Asia and Europe. It was all very pleasant,
but as we passed some great fortified walls that led down to
castles on either side, I was reminded that visitors had not
always been welcome. We stopped off at Chora, to visit the
Kariye Camii, now a museum in a mosque, but once the former
Christian Church of St Saviour. In 1511 after the fall of Constantinople,
the frescos and golden mosaics had been plastered over. Now they
have been lovingly cleaned and restored. There
is so much to attack your senses in Istanbul. It is a dream of a
place and when you awake in the morning, it is to the call
of the Muezzin drifting over the misty city. You hear it
five times a day; before sunrise, noon, afternoon and after
sunset. It is part of the Koran, or holy book. "In the
name of God and Prophet, the call is to the mosque"
When you do awake what images will run though your mind?
Will it be the narrow streets, where strange spices and fish are
artistically laid out for sale,
the bustle of the Grand Bazaar's four thousand
shops, or the splendor of the jewels at the Topikapi Palace,
or perhaps it may be the tour that ended up
at the
Kervansaray Night Club where you were
distracted by
the gyrations of not one,
but three belly dancers
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www.searchturkey.com/istanbul/Tourism/touristbureau.html
THE
STATEN ISLAND FERRY
TAKE NEW YORK'S
BEST BARGAIN
- THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY
“New York, New York
It’s
a wonderful town, the Bowery is up and the Battery is
down....”
New
York’s best bargain?
Well it still has to be the Staten Island Ferry.
It is free and you glide through one of
the world’s busiest cargo ports, not to mention the
greatest skyline.
Join
the 70,000 passengers who use the boats daily and you get a
perfect view of the Statue of Liberty.
Take a car and it costs only $3. Not that every tourist would
think of driving through Manhattan. It looks
frenetic but I tried it once and was surprised how easy it
was. Perhaps I had been put off by earlier taxi rides
 On
previous visits we’d bumped over broken streets in the
battered yellow taxis.
These
seemed gleaming and sleek from a distance because they usually
flashed by too quickly for us to realise just how thrashed
and dented they were.
Newer cabs are now on the streets with improvements like air
conditioning available in the back seat, on the couple we tried
it wasn’t working, but the ride certainly took our mind off
it.
The cabby who picked us up was from Morocco and didn't know the
way to one of the city's largest hotels, however it was
fun getting there, well nearly there!
A wit once told me that difference between taxi drivers in
Frankfurt and in
New York was that Frankfurt
they speak English!
In
Manhattan as you peer down from the hotel, people
below look like ants. The worker ants move in
a purposeful flow into the skyscrapers, the tourist ants scurry
in all directions.
Take comfortable shoes and join them, and when you need a rest
grab a
coffee, take a window seat at a cafe and
‘people watch. '
There
is much to enjoyed and a lot of it is free.
It is easy to get swallowed up in it, absorbed, but when
you want to reflect on the wonder of it all, go down to Battery
Park, (South Ferry Subway station,) take that Staten
Island Ferry ride and enjoy the majestic view.
The 5 mile, 25 minute boat ride is one of this planets greatest
voyages.
LINKS:
New
York City Department of Transportation - Staten Island
Ferry ...
also http://www.siferry.com/
FERRY
'CROSS THE MERSEY
Much
of the Beatles music takes on extra meaning as you visit the
locations.
Listen
to the Beatles and the chances are that you will be thinking of
Liverpool. It inspired so much of their music.
"Ferry
’cross the Mersey."
I
boarded the ‘ferry ’across the Mersey.’
It is the oldest ferry service in Europe and eight
hundred years ago you would have been rowed across by monks.
It turned out to be more of a cruise than a journey and I supped
a drink of hot chocolate as I stood out on deck of the Woodrush.
In the bracing air we listened to a commentary that traced the
history of the waterfront.
We looked out on the view, which for many immigrants
to America, would have been their last sight of the ‘old
world.’
There
was something solid and dependable about the Great Liver
Building and the others along the waterfront.
Nearby was the Albert Dock, with a ‘heritage centre’
that contains
a number of attractions including The
Beatles Story and the excellent Merseyside
Maritime Museum. In
there you find an exhibition
that makes
you chillingly aware of what
those involved
‘The Battle of
The Atlantic’ went
through.
On other floors of the building the history of
smuggling is revealed and you learn of our ancestors part in the transatlantic
slave trade. Much
of the commerce of Western Europe benefited from the products of
the slave labour which brought both coffee and cheap cotton.
Happily times have changed and it is the music of the Beatles
that has focused attention on
Liverpool.
In Matthew Street outside the original Cavern
Club, a statue of John Lennon stands next to a ‘Wall of Fame’
(made of bricks from the club that
bear the names of all the artists who appeared there.)
We went on a coach tour and
all ended up singing :
“Penny
Lane- in the pouring rain - or under blue suburban skies” ….
As it happened when we drove down
Penny Lane, it
was ‘pouring rain’ and
throughout the journey we kept wiping the steamed up
windows to peer our at the very ordinary houses where the
lads who touched us all with their
music grew up.
If
you look around Liverpool you find that that
bits of it look rather familiar.
Much of the city has appeared on film and TV.
There are buildings and streets that can double up as Moscow,
Dublin, St Petersburg or New York, in fact almost any
city.
There is a great range of architecture and even the town hall
has appeared in the guise of the British Embassy in
Moscow.
The William Brown Museum
featured in The Hunt For Red October with
Sean Connory. It was dressed for the occasion with several tons
of artificial snow. Even
Sink the Bismarck
was filmed along the docks.
If you get the chance, have a meal in The Britannia Delphi
Hotel.
It is an imposing place and has
a rather splendid function room that
is a duplicate of one of the great lounges on the ill
fated liner the ‘Titanic.’
It is reassuring to
be able to imagine the luxury of that maiden voyage secure in
the knowledge that there is no chance of the hotel being hit by
an iceberg.
http://www.merseyferries.co.
QUEBEC,
WINTER FERRY ON THE ST LAWRENCE
The ferry journey across the
St Lawrence between Quebec and Lévis can be quite pleasant in
summer but to be really impressed make it in winter and if
you can do it in February during the Winter Carnival time.
That's when the car ferries have to smash a a path on the ice
floes and dislodge mini icebergs the size of cars. As a foot
passenger it makes a great sightseeing bargain and you get an
excellent view of the city's fortifications. What you will
find hard to believe is that one of the highlights of the winter
festival is a canoe race across the St Lawrence. Some extremely
fit competitors wearing wetsuits and spiked boots paddle and
push hefty boats over the freezing waters.
There is a strong historic link. The
Indians once made log boats by burning a tree out, but with the
arrival of the settlers tools were used to make boats sturdy
enough to cope with the fast flowing, icy river. This was in the
days before the icebreakers arrived, days when a third of the
population of Lévis, across the water from Québec, earned their
living as canoe operators.
Eventually steamboats took over the trade but as late as the
1940's the 'canoes' were still in use around the islands. It was
a dangerous a job and in the Carnival one of the most exciting
events is the Canoe Race with teams of five rowing over the St
Lawrence and dragging their boats across on the ice floes.
To get a better understanding of just what they were tackling,
the night before the event we took the car ferry across to
Lévis. On the metal deck, we felt the vibrations rise through our
feet and we looked out from the bows as the ship forced its way
through the ice. We were surrounded by a roaring and thunderous
noise.
The ice was not smooth and we thudded through great lumps
of the stuff. I was somewhat in awe of
the canoeists and what they were about to attempt.
It was
impressive, so too was the journey back in the moonlight towards
the lights of the old city and the Quebec's skyline which was
dominated by Chateau Fortenac.
Links:
Ferry Quebec - Lévis
 VANCOUVER'S GRANVILLE ISLAND
FERRY
Granville Island Ferry,
Vancouver,
British Columbia
The
Aquabus ferries to Granville Island look more like the kind of
boat you would see in a small child’s bath, but they serve the
purpose perfectly. Taking
pedestrians and cyclists across False Creek in Vancouver is not
a tough assignment, unless you count the navigating around the
countless sailboats and cruisers moving in and out of marinas in
the Creek.
On a sunny Saturday, the whole world seems to be in transit, far
too many of them trying to get to Granville Island.
The intelligent few eschew the phantom parking spaces on
the island and arrive under their own steam.
Once
on Granville Island, the locals follow predictable routines,
starting with a meeting of friends at the Blue Parrot for a
cappuccino while planning the itinerary.
The kids have already been dropped off at Kids’ Market
Adventure Zone, or left with an unsuspecting grandmother at the
Water Park.
This
is as close to European food shopping as it gets in Vancouver
– moving from shop to shop picking up everything for a gourmet
dinner or to take on the ferry.
The
prettiest produce and freshest fish, more than one great butcher
and loads of delicatessen style stalls, with cheeses, fresh
pastas, cured meats and sausages. There are permanent stalls that have been there since the
beginning along with the temporary vendors who are allowed one
day each weekend – an arcane formula determines who gets to
show their wares in the middle of the wide aisles separating the
permanent stalls.
Granville
Island has been home to a public market for more than
twenty years. It’s
a market and a whole lot more.
The transition from derelict industrial zone to trendy
place with a million events going on wasn’t without its
challenges, but the evolution of the place is what keeps us
coming back.
Aside
from being a place to buy groceries, Granville Island is home to
several theatres (and a world-class Fringe Festival every
September), an Art school, a score or two of artisans, crafting
everything from guitars to wooden boats to ceramics to blown
glass to tapestries to wood block prints to jewelry. And let’s not forget the beer!
http://www.aquabus.bc.ca/home.html
Infoline:
(604) 689-5858
 Fax:
(604) 689-5838
http://www.granville-island.net
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