Istanbul not Constantinople

Europe
January 8th 2012

Published: January 8th 2012

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mikiandaaron

Ice-cream time...

Princes' Islands, these ice-creams were to die for!

After our big week of supras it was time to say a temporary goodbye to our host family and catch a plane to Istanbul with fellow teachers Julia and Alex. Our plan for this trip has been ever changing for a couple of weeks, we have decided to basically just go with the flow and see where each place takes us. We know that we will spend three days in Istanbul and that we will be flying back to Tbilisi from Bucharest.

We arrived in Istanbul on Wednesday and took a taxi ride from the airport to our hostel which took over two hours; this was longer than our flight. When we arrived at our hostel we didn’t really know what to expect. I am reluctant to talk about accommodation so I will just say that there were 24 beds squashed into a basement with each room of four beds having curtains for walls in an area of about four meters squared (I have posted some photos below). It was a great way for the four of us to bond...

We squashed as much as we could into the three days we were in Istanbul seeing many of the

The Blue Mosque

major sites, eating the food and getting lost on more then 5...6 or 7 occasions but who really counts such exciting events. As you know Istanbul is split into an Asian side and a Europe, when returning to our suburb by ferry after a day spent on the Princes’ Islands we managed to end up in another continent... If that isn’t lost I don’t know what is! We had fun finding our way home and used at least three different types of public transport in the process, refusing to take a taxi from Asia to Europe which would be preposterous!

I will spare you the history lesson and just list a few places we went to and you can check out the photos below. They included the Blue Mosque, Grand Bizarre, the spice markets, a cruise of the Bosphorus, Hagia Sofia, a day trip to the Princes’ Islands, Maidens Tower and the Basilica Cistern.

As I write this we are on the night bus to Thessaloniki, Greece where we plan to spend three nights. We don’t really know much about the place but I’m sure we will find something to do.

Our plan after that is unknown;