On Friday we decided to take a ferry ride to the Prince Islands. A group of Islands about 20kM from Istanbul CBD. But first we had to take a tram ride to the terminal. Fortunately we were already familiar with buying tram Jeton (tokens) at 4 Turkish Lira each (AUD2), a 6 year old street hawker had shown us for 1TL commission. We then had to get the correct notes to buy the ferry Jeton from its vendering machine (Jetonmatik - what else?)
The ferry ride was nearly 2hours stopping at the first 3 Prince Islands before we reached Buyukada. A bargain for 5TL each, compared to the always crowded trams.
There are no cars on Buyukada, just a few
electric scooters and tricycles. The big thing for tourists, of which there are many mostly from Istanbul on day trips, is to hire a horse and cart! At the Phaeton Station (third photo) people line up like at a taxi rank. The ponies are a different breed to those we usually see in Oz, with a light body and high rump. You can also smell them at some distance!
The alternative to horse and cart is to hire a bike, but accidents do happen!
In the end we walked around, took a few photographs, had another beautiful fish meal with a view over the sea, an ice cream and caught the ferry back to the CBD.
so what mode of transport did you end up hiring? Did you end up taking the ponies on?
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