For today we planned something completely different. We wanted to see the Asian part of Istanbul and we had read in our guidebook about a neighbourhood of Istanbul called Kadiköy on the other side of the Bosphorus with a nice little pedestrian-only city centre. So instead of mosques, sites and museums we planned for sitting at cafés drinking apple tea and reading books all day. Directly after breakfast we therefore walked down to the harbour and found a ferry that for the ridiculous price of 2TL (less than 1 €) not only took us to Kadiköy but at the same time provided a beautyful half hour cruise on the Bosphorus. Once we came to Kadiköy we quickly started to implement our plan, but had to give up after less than one hour. Even though the café ... read more

After nine hours of traveling we finally got to our hotel in Istanbul. We are staying at a hostel called "Second home", and the owners are making an effort to ensure the guest are comfortable even though the room is really small and toilets and showers are in the corridor. But we didn't come here to stay at the room, so that's ok. When we got here we were starving, after breakfast we only had had apples, so our first goal was to find a restaurant to get something to eat. Fact 3. The addresses on the turkish street are quite confusing, especially without a proper map. This meant we didn't find the restaurant we had planned to go to, so we ended up taking the hostelowners suggestion and went to his friends restaurant. The food ... read more

Three days to go until our plane to takes off. We will be departing at 8.30 in the morning on June 21st and flying to Istanbul via Riga. Preparations are almost finished now: purchased a minilaptop we will use for writing this blog + all other necessary travel gear. Clothes are washed and piled ready to be packed. Today we saw in the newspaper that temperature in coastal Turkey was +40 C, but luckily somewhat cooler in Istanbul. Even though, can't complain about the heath since here is Helsinki we have grey, cold and rainy weather - kind of like autumn storm or so today. Ok, next time writing, we will most likely have left Finland!... read more