Blogs from Sultanahmet, Istanbul, Marmara, Turkey, Middle East - page 9

It is only 5:20pm Turkish time and I am so ready for bed - unfortunately, I am forgoing a nap so that I can go to bed early as opposed to being up late writing about the day. If I stop making sense and I notice it - I will stop and leave it for later. We will see. Ok, where to begin? Mom and I got up at a decent hour today so that we could fit in a bunch of things before our afternoon tour. We knew that we wanted to go to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar, so that was our main goal, but we decided to fit as much else as we could. We decided to tack on two mosques and a visit to a candy store that my fantastic Turkish doorman from ... read more

It is 10pm Turkish time and I am exhausted! Mom and I arrived in Istanbul today around 2pm in the afternoon after 13 hours of traveling! I have to admit that I was thoroughly impressed with myself for actually getting a decent amount of sleep (4 hours or so?) on our red-eye from Washington Dulles to Frankfort. (I owe it to the potent combo of unlimited red wine and melatonin.) Anyway, after loading up on caffeine on our second shorter flight from Frankfort to Istanbul, Mom and I were ready to make the most out of what we had left of the day. We met up with the rest of the gang (Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Keith, Aunt Dalia, Aunt Karen and Uncle Jeff) outside of the Hagia Sophia which is just three tram stops (aka very ... read more

Plan was to spend the holiday in New York- but we ended up spending it partly in Dubai and then in Turkey. An airline employee (who avails discounted tickets) would well understand the reason without further explanation- so I’ll leave this insider’s joke to that! Our first stop was in Istanbul. We took the Metro service from airport to our hotel in Sultan Ahmet. We had spent 4 Lira each and had to change train once whereas we might have to pay over 100 liras had we taken a taxi from airport. We had booked our stay at Star Holiday Hotel- which was 2 minutes walk from the Sultan Ahmet metro stop, 3 minutes walk from Hagia Sophia, 7-8 minutes’ walk from the Blue Mosque and less than 10 minutes walk from Topkapi Palace and 15 ... 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

Last day in Istanbul today. Went to Topkapi Palace, which was the absolutely massive home of the Ottoman Sultans. It's actually the largest palace in the world! I went through the famous Harem, where the Sultan lived with his concubines and eunuchs. Then basically just wandered around. Mostly it's just a very beautiful place in a very beautiful setting... it sits on top of a mountain that looks out over the Bosphorus. It was hotter today and I had a long lunch before wandering around Istanbul. My goal was the Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificient, and on the way I went through the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. What a smell! They had every imaginable spice, nut, fruit, you name it, right out on the street. It was fun to just walk around and see what people were ... read more