Blogs from Turkey, Middle East - page 29

We fly today from Seattle to Heathrow and then on to Istanbul, arriving tomorrow afternoon. We are staying in a beautiful apartment near the Goleta Tower. The recent acts of terrorism have taken a bit of the excitement away from this trip, but Istanbul awaits, with its history spanning so much of modern times, and its unique position straddling Europe and Asia. The original plan was to take a cruise ship (a first for us...) from Istanbul to Venice, but the cruise company cancelled the Istanbul portion, so we are flying from Istanbul to Athens to pick up the ship and continue through the Greek Isles, to Croatia, and then to Venice. We next travel in Italy and Sicily for 3 weeks....and then to Connecticut to celebrate my mom's 85th birthday... We leave behind our beautiful ... read more

(*old but very first blog post on my travels) My eyes light up in both excitement and curiosity, as I stand before the mighty grand bazaar, famous for its insane craziness. I enter a dream state where my senses are running wild, so many different smells and things to see, what on Earth does my brain register first? Then, Bang!, as I am brought abruptly back into reality as I am pushed and shoved by a few stray Turkish locals. As I quickly come to realize the crazy world that I just stepped my tired feet into, one particular Turkish man manages to catch my attention, "Such a beautiful lady, I wish to marry you" as I myself am coming to terms of my potential marriage proposal, another Turkish man speaks up "Oh he is lying ... read more

Because my flight took off at 11:00 pm Boston time, took 9 hours over a 7-hour time change, and Marie and I couldn't find each other in the airport (and to use airport wi-fi you had to have a functioning phone number, which really seems like poor planning for an international hub), we didn't actually get to our AirBnb until about 5:00 Istanbul time. We finally did get there and met our host, who let us in to a very cute space -- nothing I'd want to live in, but plenty for a weekend. Things we learned along the way include: the drivers are crazy, do notjaywalk or you will get run over, and the drivers are insane. Istanbul, if you don't know, is a city built on hills. Perhaps not as much as Rome, but ... read more

Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881Al llegar al aeropuerto nos enteramos que nuestro vuelo, de las 9am, venía retrasado. Nos mandaron a otro mostrador con la ilusión de volar por Emirates, pero... nos enviaron igual por Turkish a las 10:50. Cuando estábamos por llegar a Estambul dimos vueltas en el aire por una hora y media. Y cuando aterrizamos vimos que está todo nevado, por eso los retrasos. El vuelo originalmente iba a salir a las 1, y terminó scheduleado a las 5:30, hicimos el check in pasando por 3 "retenes" en 5mts. Abordamos el avión a las 5:15, y todo parecía que iba bien, pero... estuvimos estacionados 3 horas en el avión y luego tardó otra hora en hacer taxing y por fin despegar.... read more

We arrived in the morning to Istanbul after a brief 1 1/2hr flight from Athens. We easily took the train from the airport into the main tourist area of Sultanahmet where we walked to Hotel Basileus ($45). The hotel was lovely and the staff incredibly helpful and friendly, and the surrounding neighborhood was a beautiful 17th century style seaport that looked more like New Bedford, Massachusetts than Turkey. We already wished we had more time to spend in this city that has the perfect blend of East meets West. We wandered the serpentine medieval streets of this former Ottoman and Byzantine capital and viewed the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque from the hippodrome sandwiched in between them, where there now is a large Egyptian obelisk and Greek column which we recognized as pilfered from Egypt ... read more