The Otherwordliness of İstanbul

After travelling all day to İstanbul in a bus with no air conditioning, we finally arrived to the lively metropolis. Everything is more in this city: more people, more aggressive sales people, more expensive hotels and food. During our time in Istanbul, we will be staying at the Coşkun Pension. Our room here is our most expensive room and our worst room of the entire trip, plus it doesn't include breakfast. The bathroom is questionable with it's glass walls. We walked around the Sultanhamet area, which is home to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. We saw part of a light show on the Blue Mosque.

Yesterday, we visited the Hagia Sophia, which is pretty mind blowing. The craftmanship and detail in design is incredible and puts current architecture to shame. Unfortunately, we could not see the dome in its entirety due to work being done on a nearby wall.

We also visited the Blue Mosque and we were given scarves to cover our shoulders because apparently our shirts did not cover our neck and collarbone enough to their liking. The Blue Mosque is very impressive and very luxurious with its carpeting. The mosaics are gorgeous!

We took a break and went for dondurma (ice cream) at Mado's. I had chocolate, banana, black mullberry, and a mix of vanilla/chocolate. Nina had black mulberry and raspberry.

We also went to the tomb of Sultanhamet, then headed to the Grand Bazaar. WOW!!!! It's a maze and at times we felt like we were going in circles. We were overwhelmed and didn't stay for very long as the pushiness of the salesmen became too much.

We took the tram to the Galata Bridge and went to the original Turkish Delight store. How many Canadian stores can say "Established in 1777"? We bought some Turkish delight. :) Afterwards we walked across the Galata Bridge and watched people fishing off the side and we went to Beyoğlu, which is the nightlife district. We went to the Galata Tower, which provides a great panoramic view of the city. We went to Vera's and people watched while drinking Efes beer with Eduardo. Last night, Turkey was anticipating a win from their football team in the Euro 2008, however, Portugal won the game much to the dismay of many Turks.

Nina's Travel Tip: