Classic Oriënt Express 2009: Day 10

I recently found my old travel diary again and started reading it.  Seems that I made 2 very nice trips in the past, which I think may be very interesting for my blog.  Thus I decided to copy what I wrote about these train journeys through Europe on my blog.

This is the tenth day of my Oriënt Express Journey.

This morning was the last time I would wake up in Istanbul.  After breakfast and check-out, I left my luggage in a locker at the station.  The railway museum at Sirkeci station was open today, so I decided to pay it a visit and see the collection.  Many items referred to the Oriënt Express history, but there were also other "daily railway" items, such as detonators, destination indicators, uniforms, hats, bells, clocks, warning signs, ...  It was worth my time!

I left the station and took the fast tram to the city walls.  A nice park surrounded them, so I had a very enjoyable walk there, especially because the weather was fairly good today.  As soon as my batteries were charged during this walk, I boarded a tram back to the city centre, to visit the Dolmabahçe-palace.  I walked around it, took another boat-bus to the Asian side, as I absolutely wanted to send my postcards from Asia.  It also gave me the chance to look at the beautiful white Dolmabahçe-palace from the water.

On the boat I took the time to write and stamp my postcards, I quickly found a postbox near to the boat-bus-pier (on the Asian side of course) and returned back to Europe by boat, enjoying the sunset in Istanbul.  To finish my last day in Istanbul, I went into the Yeni Cami mosque for a quick visit and then continued to Sirkeci-station, where I arrived just in time to see the night train to Thessaloniki depart and board my luxurious sleeper car from the Romanian railways to Ruse (in Bulgaria).

Without exaggerating, this really is the best sleeper car up until now, a wide bed, a real duvet (not a plain blanket), a double cup holder, air-conditioning, ... really worth the money!