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Published: December 17th 2008
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Hello all!
So this is my first post from a different country in a loooooooong time...yay traveling! As you can see, I'm currently in Turkey, Istanbul to be exact, for our week long Eid break. Actually, we leave to go back to Cairo today, so sadly our break is almost over. Its been amazing!! Istanbul is a really cool city, and strangely similar to Cairo in weird ways. Our trip started on Friday, when we got to the airport at around 2 am. Actually, I guess I should say the adventures started Thursday, when we all (Steph, Holly and I) got notices that our flight was canceled. We had no idea which flight, or what we were supposed to do, but it turns out it was our return flight (the one today) and we just got put on a later one, so it worked out just fine. Moments of panic, but in the end all was well. Anyway, we got here at like 2 am, and had arranged for a shuttle from our hostel so that we didn't have to deal with cabs/metro/foreign language ect. Turns out the "shuttle" was a dude in a small car who was probably just
Hagia Sophia
or Aya Sophia, whichever you prefer. We didn't go in right away, but when we did it was SO impressive!! Talk about huge building!! a friend of the hostel owner. No worries, it was fine and only slightly sketchy 😊.
Our first real day was Saturday, during which we wandered around taking lots of pictures. Our hostel was in the kind of historic section of Istanbul, the part where the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque ect are, so we saw a lot of the more ancient sites on Saturday...at least, from the outside. Since we had gotten in so late (or early, depending on how you looked at it) we didn't want to do much, so we ended up wandering around the Grand Bazaar. In all honesty, after experiencing the sheer craziness that is Khan al Khalili in Cairo, it seemed a bit tame. There were the usual comments though, the funniest one being the guy who said that he would be our Charlie. Yup, in those words exactly. The best part was that he was genuinely confused that we didn't get the reference right away...it was hilarious! We didn't do any shopping because we decided we would come back on Thursday (yesterday) and see how much money we had left.
This seems to be a good point to interject and
Holly
Next to the Bosphorus which was GORGEOUS! stress how completely unprepared we were for this trip. Absolutely no planning was put in by any of us (seriously a miracle that we managed to get a flight AND a place to stay before we arrived!) so we did not think through that because of Eid (the holiday) things would close. Don't worry, we did everything we wanted to, just not in the way we originally thought we would. For example, the Grand Bazaar was closed (yup, closed, so strange!) all week, including yesterday, when we were originally planning on going back, so we went this morning before leaving for the airport. We met these two guys, an uncle and his son from England, last night, and they came with us, which was cool. They're both really nice and it was cool to have a new set of people to interact with (not that I don't love my friends, but newcomers shake up the conversation a bit 😊). We actually had a really interesting conversation with the uncle, AJ, about religion (he's Muslim, so it was a bit of a stereotypical Muslim-Christian conversation, but he actually talked about things I haven't talked to a Muslim with before, so it
was totally interesting!) and I got to chit-chat with the nephew about rugby (yay rugby!) before we realized we were going to be late for our flight, ran to catch a cab, and made it to the airport just in time. And when we got here, it turns out our flight was delayed. Seriously, story of our trip!
Anyway, to make a long story short, we wandered A TON, got a bit lost, and had a plethora of awkward interactions with local males. Seriously, I know have an unlimited stock of random, awkward stories...just what everyone needs in their life!!
Okay, its time for me to get going. Ugh, I am not looking forward to going back for finals! I honestly have no clue how I'm going to get everything done over the next few days...oh well, it all works out in the end! I hope everyone is having a happy, safe start to the holiday season, and I hope to keep hearing from all of you! 😊
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Bethany
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I'm sure the kitty was just sleepy or something. I need to interact with a kitty soon or else I will go CRAZY. Consider yourself lucky to have gotten to interact with one, even if it was dumb. :) P.S.- When you meet my sister's cat when you drive through, you will truly understand what a dumb cat is...