Week 5

I thought it would be helpful to check out other blogs about 'middle-aged gap years' to see what the competition is up to and all that. I now realise why AI tried to pigeonhole me as a travel blog. It turns out pretty much all the other blogs of a similar sentiment are written by couples reaching retirement and going on their travels. No-one seems to to take a year out to stay at home. Strange.

But for those who picked this up wanting some travel action, week 5 has delivered! My eldest son and I flew to Istanbul to watch Spurs play Galatasaray in the Europa League. We have been Spurs season ticket holders for a couple of seasons but this was the first time we'd successfully applied for away tickets. It may be news to some but Spurs away games are usually massively oversubscribed and allocated on a loyalty points basis. I was, therefore, surprised when I received notification that we'd been successful in our application. The excitement dissipated somewhat when I later found out every Spurs season ticket holder who applied for a ticket was successful. What was I missing....?

Perhaps it was Galatasaray's reputation as being one of the most hostile stadiums in Europe. Or perhaps it was being required to board a bus to be escorted by police convoy at 4.30pm for a journey which would normally take c. 45 minutes for a game that started at 8.45pm local time. Or that it was expected to take over an hour to queue into the stadium through multiple checkpoints. Or that we would be at the very top of the stadium behind perspex glass. Or that we'd be held in the stadium up to 90 minutes after the game before catching the bus convoy back. Or that no alcohol was permitted to be drunk in the stadium or in public. Or possibly the fear of violence against fans of a club with historic Jewish connections as was subsequently seen at Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Whatever the reason it was our first opportunity to experience the atmosphere of a Spurs away game and Istanbul is a lot more exciting than a cold, rainy night in Stoke.

We flew out on Tuesday, arriving around midnight, ahead of the game on Thursday. This gave us a day to explore the sights in our local area - Sultanahmet. We'd been advised to avoid Taksim Square because that's where Galatasaray fans would congregate. My eldest was absolutely delighted when I suggested we go on a walkabout.

First we found a restaurant thanks to its excellent reviews on Trip Advisor. In hindsight, it turns out that a lot of those reviews were most likely paid for. A tip for those travelling to Istanbul, if the restaurant has someone posted outside whose sole purpose is to cajole, persuade or drag you inside, then it's probably worth steering clear. Albeit in Sultanahmet, so many restaurants had these restaurant-bouncers.

After paying for the meal including a tip as well as 'tax' - which is something I later found out is added onto the bills of gullible tourists, we ventured over to the Hagia Sophia mosque. As we're not muslim or Turkish citizens, we weren't allowed on the ground floor but the first floor was still excellent. I tested my wife by pinging a photo of a mosaic with a 'Guess who?'. Unfortunately a Christian mosaic in a mosque didn't throw her off but she is RE lead at her school.

We followed up the visit to the mosque with the associated museum which technically is 5 minutes down the road but turned out to be c. 15-20 minutes once I'd wandered around lost for a while. My eldest said it was probably one of the best museums he'd ever been to. Now that is not necessarily a particularly high bar given the majority of museums we've dragged him round have been generally classified as 'so boring...'. The success of this museum was connected to the fact that for the first 30 minutes the history of Hagia Sophia is projected on to the walls of various rooms whilst listening to a recording that described the numerous times it was variously burned, sacked, rebuilt, collapsed, burned and sacked again since originally being built as a Christian church by the Roman Emperor, Justinian. Unfortunately my recording reset itself to the start just as we moved from the Crusades to the Ottomans so I feel I missed out on a rather critical step in the history of the mosque.

After the museum, I tried to tempt my son into visiting the 1600 year old Theodosius Cistern and the Grand Bazaar but ultimately conceded that we'd had enough history/culture for our visit.

Other than the game itself, which disappointingly resulted in a Spurs defeat 3-2, other notable events included:

Observing a fairly surreal photo shoot of an Asian lady dressed as a Turkish princess in a sparsely occupied Ottoman-cuisine restaurant on Thursday lunchtime.

Eating goose pie for the first time (it tasted a lot like duck which came as a surprise but perhaps shouldn't have been).

The couple in the hotel room next to ours watching noisy television until around 1am whilst singing noisily and then having noisy sex. All fairly awkward given I was sharing a twin room with my son.

Sitting just in front of the mum of a Spurs player on the flight back. She pointed out her maternal relationship as we ran through each player's performance (generally not great) and just as we were getting on to her son. For some reason I had expected the parents of Spurs players to get a more plush form of transport than Wizz Air into Luton Airport. She was very friendly though and we said nice things about her son.

Finding a really good dessert place called Hafiz Mustafa 1864 which served a delightful heart attack on a plate in the form of a large slice of baklava-style desert with clotted cream. From an internet search it turns out they've just opened their first store in Knightsbridge, so I may need to find my way over to it at some point.