Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

This little guy was just chilling in a window like, "Hey. I'm a doggy."
Sean, this is your souvenir from Turkey.

Tuesday, 4.14.2009

Day one, officially. The guy we stayed with drove us back to Taksim. We got breakfast at a place called Simit Sarayi. Simit is like... bagel-shaped bread with sesame seeds on it. [I'm going to suggest that from here on, if you don't know what something is, wiki it.] It was good. Wandered around some. We had all our stuff with us because we were catching a bus that night.

Here's the thing. Turks are huge on hospitality. So rather than dragging our bags all around Istanbul all day, we left them with Ahmet's mother's cousin (?), who had a store near where we were. It was the most ridiculous thing ever, but in a good way. I like Turkey. =D

We walked down a massive hill, crossed the Bosphorous. (People fish on the bridge. There were just buckets of fish chilling there.) Looked at a mosque and wandered around the courtyard of it. On our way out, Carolyn says,"This might be dangerous." Uhh? "You might get pooped on."

Oh.

Walked through the Egyptian Spice Market. The guys there speak a lot of languages. I was crazy jealous. One day I'll speak that many languages too.


Went to the Basilica Cistern. Very cool place. Very dark and wet, too. But I discovered that the night mode on my camera works and I like the pictures I took. =P


There were massive fish there too. I want to know how they got in. From there we went to the Ayasofya and promptly turned around because of the massive line. Wandered a bit, decided to hit the Grand Bazaar. It was a crazy, crazy place. Lots of scarves and clothes and evil eyes and such.

"Wait, I need to get a picture of this!"
"You're such a tourist."

Inside the Bazaar

Went to lunch. Everywhere we went people looked at Carolyn and were like, "You speak Turkish? o__O" This restaurant was no different. It was amusing even though I had no idea what was going on. I got some kind of pizza thing whose name escapes me at the moment. Sad face. It was pretty good though.

Moving on. We wandered through the Hippodrome and saw a big obelisk. Went to the Blue Mosque. Went to the Ayasofya. Carolyn had already been like three times, so I wandered around by myself... and she fell asleep. Epic. I'm not going to post any pictures here because I have a lot of them and it would just take forever. Click the link at the end of the post to go to my Photobucket and check them out.

Back on the train, back to Taksim. Got our bags. Went to McDonald's. Oh yeah. Got fries and ice cream. Healthy? No. Turkish? No. Delicious? Yes. From there we went to the bus station and waited for our bus to Antalya. Our 13-hour bus ride. 12, really, because the busses make half hour stops every few hours, so the bus wasn't actually going for 13. But still. I just have to say that these buses absolutely PWN Greyhound. They give you snacks and drinks. It was sweeeet. And they play movies. Not that I had any idea what was going on in this particular movie, but there was still a movie. I pretty much passed out once we got our snacks. Woke up when it stopped. Got food. Gözleme is pretty sweet. It's like a crêpe, but there's cheese inside it. Like goat cheese? Yeah. Different, but good. You can also get it with potatoes or something else inside.

Got back on the bus and passed out again. Magically arrived in Antalya when we woke up. Sleep is awesome.

Slideshow!