so for as much as i adore traveling, i always seem to forget that the actual process is not a fun time. this trip goes at the top of the list - each travel day was a solid 12 hrs at least of transit and WAITING to be displaced to a city that's about a 4 hr flight from lyon. groan on soo many levels. thurs 1st may i left valence on the tgv that runs directly to lyon st exupery airport, waited 4 hours til my flight to munich left, then waited 5 hours in munich plus a 30-min delay before actually leaving for istanbul. so i arrive, buy my visa (the guy saw the american passport, was all "$20", done and done, no muss no fuss. it should always be like that. ahem, russia), go through passport control, and see that sara's flight from london was delayed 2h15. aka she was due to arrive at 12:40. and it was only like 11pm. ouch. we'd arranged via the hotel to have a cab pick us up since it was so late; i walked into the arrivals terminal there was a kid holding a sign for "sarah bularszick" (her name is soo not spelled that way). i had to explain to him, then to his friend that while im not sara, i was the other half of the arriving party, sara was coming in late, so could they figure out how to wait for us? the friend (who was awesome) tried to convince me to just go ahead to the hostel, but i was like no way man, i wanna meet my friend! i havent seen her in ages! so we waited, chatted, and he teased me mercilessly when it took sara an hour to actually make it through passport control and all that. he was all "i dont think shes coming! it was all a joke!" not funny! but finally she came, it was happiness, we arrived at the hotel around 1:30am and stayed up til 4 catching up...and slept in to 10am. :)
basically our hostel was in a superb location. we were in sultanahmet, the "old" part of the city, aka 30 seconds from the blue mosque, topkapi palace, the hagia sophia...this also meant, however, that we were in tourist central. i mean, the street we were staying on looked like it could have been right out of a beach town in the states or something. 2 little markets, tourist offices, hostels, restaurants, cheers bar...aie. but it was ok, i mean the whole city had a very euro/tourist-friendly vibe, actually.
The Blue Mosque(Sultanhamet Camii), note it's 6 minarets; built in 1609-1616
The Hippodrome
The Hagia Spohia (Ayasofya), first a basilica in the 500s, then like saul to paul on hte road to damascus, it became a mosque in the 1450s when constantinople was conquered by the turks (-> istanbul yo), and it's currently a museum, thanks to President Ataturk. and rather run down.
view from the New Mosque (Yeni Camii) towards Beyoglu, the genoese Galata Tower, and Taksim
Interior of the Yeni Camii
The New Mosque (Yeni Camii), constructed between 1597 and 1663, looks over the Golden Horn and the Galata Bridge. It was my favorite of the 3 mosques I visited.
Parks surrounding the Topkapi Palace; strolled through here randomly on my last day, with Paul from CA, my adopted friend, since Sara had to leave early Monday morning and I didn;t leave til Tuesday.
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