Day six

5-16-2010

8:29 pm Istanbul, Turkey

Today is our one year anniversary!

Well, we made it to Istanbul this morning with out any major upsets. Our flight was great, really short. It was just long enough to get up in the air, bring breakfast, collect trash, and then land! Now that’s the kind of flights I like!

It took a little more figuring to come through the airport than it did in Greece when we first arrived. We had to go buy 90 day visas for $20 each, and then go and get our “in” stamp…My passport now has a Greece in and out, and a Turkish visa and in stamp! That’s so exciting!

Thankfully Eli had done a little research yesterday about riding the metro and/or light rail to get us from the airport to our hotel in Sultanhemmet, or we would have been in bad shape. We got some Turkish Lira from the ATM, (you get a better deal than Euro) and a nice lady who worked for the metro helped us get our tokens for the light rail line, and explained how we needed to go to one stop, and then transfer to a different line to get to where we wanted to go.

Eli said I looked like a deer in the headlights the entire train ride over…which I’m sure is true. We had planned to mail a bunch of stuff home from Greece, but we missed the post office yesterday (it closed at 2pm) and we had to check a bag of goodies on the plane…. I was all nervous it would get stolen or stuff would break, but so far it looks like everything is in tact…. I suppose I should actually open it up and look though; I only just glanced when we got the bag back.

Eli had to carry two bags, and the strap broke on mine so I had to carry it like a brief case, not over my shoulder…oh well, it happens. Once again, of all the potential problems we could be having on this trip, any that we have had, have been very very minor.

We had remembered to grab a map at the airport from the tourist information desk this time, so we stopped in the park next to our train stop in Sultanhemmet and took a gander at the map. After that, we found our hotel pretty easily and it was close so we didn’t have to lug our bags all that far. Our hotel reception clerk, named Ramazan was very nice and friendly. He sat us down in the little reception foyer, which had really nice Turkish style furniture, brought us some tea and explained some tourist things to us kind of formally. It was pretty dang cool!

Then he brought us up to our room. Actually he had another guy bring us up to our room on the lift (elevator). He called the other guy “John Travolta” because that’s who he looked like, straight out of Saturday Night Fever, we had a little chuckle about that. When we got into our room, and it was just the two of us, we kind of had a little freak out session because our room is sooo cool! We have a view of the sea of Mamar, just a few blocks away. The weather is beautiful, about 68 to 70, but with a nice sea breeze. Directly across the street from us is an old Mosque, which we’ve already heard the call to prayer from twice, which makes me really glad I packed a few pairs of earplugs! It’s beautiful though.

We went for a walk to get acclimated to the area a bit, down to the water and down the pier to the fish restaurants. It’s pretty impressive…there are SO many young people! So many young kids, but almost everyone we’ve seen so far, I’m sure has been under 35. Which really strikes me as odd in a city of 15 million people. It’s dirtier looking than Athens, but also there are just more people plane and simple. The people definitely look more alike than people in Athens did. At the same time, there is this vast diversity in the Turkish people too. Some women wear head scarves, some don’t. Some wear skirts, some wear pants…. they are all beautiful! The men all seem to wear nice pants or jeans, and nice button up shirts…just like the stereotype I suppose, which was kind of funny to me, but still interesting.

We came back to the hotel and took a nap in the afternoon. It’s so nice with the window open, and the sea breeze wafting in. It’s cool to see all the ships out in the water from our room.

After naps, we went down to the reception and got a recommendation for a fish dinner restaurant. We walked down to is, instead of taking advantage of their free pick up and bring back taxi service (it was only about a ten minute walk down the hill.)

Way way over priced. We didn’t really get the fish dinner we wanted, and decided that’s the last time we’ll be doing that. Right across the corner from the restaurant was a little “quick food” shop that was super cheap and Eli kept watching people come out with mouth watering looking food.

We left dinner and went for another walk through a neighborhood. At one point, we were walking down the street (which are all cobble stone, with brick sidewalks) and there was not really anyone around. Up ahead of us, three young guys were on the other side of the street, coming towards us. Two of them were beating up on one of them and yelling at him, and he was wailing. Eli didn’t really notice, or realize what was going on, and I said “baby baby, let’s go this way!” and pulled him towards an intersecting street. He looked up and realized what was going on, and quickly came with me down the hill, speeding up saying quietly “lets go fast”, and so we did. We realized they were not coming behind us and relaxed a bit.

It appeared to me, they had been three friends, and the one getting a beating had done or said something really stupid and was getting smacked around by his buddies for it. Perhaps that just what I want to believe, I don’t know.

It was really kind of strange.

We wound our way around to the Blue Mosque, and stopped for a few pictures in the gardens in front of it. Then down another street that was like a little bazaar, and back to the hotel. What a great way to start out this part of the trip in Turkey! Right now, Eli is watching the Turkish version of survivor, and has a running commentary going, since he can’t understand them. Also, he just went a little bit ago and bought himself a bottle of Raki, which is like Turkish ouzo. I tried a little bit of it, and it’s way too potent for me. He seems to be enjoying it though!

That’s all for now.