A day of brilliant experiences and an em

A day of experiences! On the bus to Old Town for our Turkish coffee making class which was held in a 1500 year old building used by wholesalers back in the day.
It was so good! Only 4 of us and our teacher explained the history of Turkish coffee as well as demonstrating how it’s made before we got to make our own. We used a cezve (traditional pot with long handle) and away we went! We were pretty good at making it to be honest. And it was delicious. You either have it with sugar or without sugar and accompanied by Turkish delight - I did both 😂😂
Fun fact: the coffee made in a bed of sand is actually Ethiopian.
Also, Greek, Egyptian, Turkish coffee - same, same!
Our plan is to make it at home - time will tell.
The lady then used our coffee remnants to “fortune read”. There was a whole of vague stuff BUT - look at Jim’s cup!! She asked if his daughter was pregnant - you can clearly see a pregnant lady in the coffee cup, but it’s obviously Duda, not Hayley (as far as we know). How amazing is that!!
Next we wandered around which is so enjoyable here with so much to see and take in.
As a little snack we tried Kokorec which is stuffed lamb intestines on a roll. It was kinda like a spicy haggis and surprisingly yum.
Now for the emotional roller coaster.
I have used my Wise card to withdraw cash in Egypt, China, everywhere without an issue ; until now. The ATM swallowed my card. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️
The most amazing group of young men called the bank for us; waited on hold and tried to get the situation sorted but just came up against one brick wall after another. They then put the address of the nearest branch into my phone and, eternally grateful for their assistance, off we trudged.
Having the security guard translate for us ( because my phone chose this moment to lose all service, thereby eliminating any chance of accessing google translate - breath Di, breath……), we were told that they couldn’t get our card back for some reason that was lost in translation. Fortunately though, we had our other debit card. This is a little frustrating as it has OS transaction fees whereas the Wise doesn’t. But, it’s only a little inconvenience.
Lesson learned we used the ATM directly attached to the bank this time but for some reason it wouldn’t work. The staff tried to help to no avail.
As we were in the banking district we had options. We tried 3 other ATM’s and none of them would give us money.
We asked another security guard to help us (using Google translate on Jim’s phone which we had to activate as mine has decided not to work at all😡…….big breaths Di🧘🧘). And it still wouldn’t work. That is when the security guard noticed that Jim’s card had expired in September!!
Big breaths Di - huge breaths!!!
So what are we going to do for cash now? One card swallowed and the other expired.
Cash advance on the Credit Card!! Oops - Jim (he reckons we) forgot to let them know we were overseas 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️
We called ANZ but their stupid system had us in a phone loop and we got nowhere other than to receive a message from Optus that we just spent over $100 on international calls…..
It was really, REALLY hard to keep my cool but I did.
We walked 1hr back to the hotel (because we had no working cards or cash) to try and sort things out. We also had to cancel our Turkish bath.
Well now the emotional roller coaster took a sudden and abruptly pleasant turn……I found that I had brought my other debit card AND my other travel card which I had hidden in a safe place in my bag in the hotel!!! And neither card had expired!!!! Woohoooo!!! I didn’t even think I brought them because I saw no use as Jim had brought all his, and he is usually the finally sensible one.
What a legend I am.
I am soooo happy and so, so proud of us both because neither of us lost our cool or blamed each other (it was Jim’s fault though).
And……I wish the fortune telling coffee beans had’ve warned us not to use an ATM 🙄
Anyhow, in celebration wrapped in relief we rebooked our Turkish bath.
OMG.
We were delirious as we walked home after nearly 3 hours of absolute bliss.
Sauna followed by hamam (bit weird at first but ended up loving it) where they literally through bowls full of water all over us as we lay on warm marble beds, then washed us with foam and scrubbed us with coffee beans and then something else.
We then rested with a coffee bean face mask before succumbing to the beat massage of our entire lives.
This was a magnificent way to finish a topsy turvey day.
We will certainly sleep extremely well tonight xxRead more