Enough babbling, on to my adventures in Istanbul!
I planned to go on this trip before spring break even happened, so I've been looking forward to this for a while. I went with 5 other American girls including my roommate, another girl from the Boston area, and 3 other Eau Claire girls. We took a bus leaving on Thursday night at 10 p.m. It's about a 10 hour bus ride! But hey, the tickets were really cheap!! Our total cost roundtrip was about the price of a one-way on the trains. So needless to say, we were all pretty OK with the super long bus ride.
Got into Istanbul around 8 a.m. Friday morning. First things first, we need to find our hotel. All we had was the name of the hotel. We asked a tourist stand where it was and he told us to walk down the road we were on for about 10 minutes and it was on the right. Seems easy enough. Well, we starting walking. And kept walking. To make a REALLY LONG story short, we couldn't find it. We ended up using the internet at a different hotel and mapping it all out. Yeah, it was definitely not "on the right". It was down a super large hill and way up in a different direction.
But we found it! We stroll in about 10:00 and the guy at the front desk is really nice to us. Our room isn't ready yet, but they were still serving breakfast and he let us eat the breakfast and leave our bags at the counter until our room was ready. The breakfast wasn't great but it was free, every morning. So we filled up on as much free food as possible each day! I love being a college student sometimes... Dana also stole a large amount of tea bags from this place which I found to be hilarious and very suitable at the same time.
That first day we decided to walk around by the tourist stuff. It was really nice outside. Hot, actually. I was wearing long sleeves the whole trip for multiple purposes: 1. Avoid sunburn (which I did successfully) 2. Respect an Islamic culture and 3. Avoid attracting any more attention to myself than what my super pale skin already does. The first thing we did was go into a little Mosque that was near our hotel. They had some scarves for us to cover our heads when we first got in. It was a pretty neat experience for me. The whole culture in fact, was a pretty great experience for me. Growing up in Minnesota, I very rarely get to experience culture like this and at this scale. They did a call to prayer every day 5 times a day right on time. It was a little weird at first. Since at one point we were right by one of the largest mosques that do the call and it was really loud.
*In a mosque near our hotel
We spent some time at the palace. It was really pretty and had a fantastic view of the city! Later that night we saw whirling dervishes! It was so cool. I have a video of it that I'll try to post later. But anyways, we got into where the dance would happen and I got to sit on some pillows on the floor right in front. Then, there was about 30 minutes of music. It was really hard to stay awake at this point because I had been walking all day without any sleep the night before. They turned down the lights and starting this really soothing music... I think I may have fallen asleep a little bit, but so did many other people. After about 30 minutes, 3 men came out in their traditional dress and started to spin. The whirling dervish is a form of worship that is outlawed actually, but they do it for tourists nowadays because it's so popular. When it was over, one of the girls I was with didn't like it. "All they did was twirl around." "Yup, that's pretty much all they do." At any rate, it was amazing just to listen to the music and watch them come out in their outfits. Long white robes that when they spun so close to me on the floor, I actually got cold from the breeze!!
*View from the palace
The next day we saw the Cistern, the old underground water system for Istanbul. It looked pretty cool, but I couldn't tell you much about it. They had some columns that had Medusa's heads carved into the bottom and I still don't understand why. But it looked pretty cool and old, so I guess that's good.
*Underground water system. Columns holding it up
*Medusa Head
Then we went to the Blue Mosque. This is one of the biggest tourist attractions today. It was really neat. I learned that it is called the blue mosque because of the inside! Blue stain glass windows and tiles decorate the inside. It was rather magnificent. I actually feel bad going in there because it is still a mosque for worship for people who live there. They have a "fenced off" area for people to worship and on the other side is a massive amount of tourists walking around and taking photos. It feels disrespectful, but I guess they must be used to it at this point.
We sat on the floor along the wall and there were these 2 Turkish women who walked by us and started saying something and they pinched my cheeks and were petting Sara's blonde hair. They seemed rather amused at the site of us. It was funny and kind of cute. I don't think they've ever seen blondes and red heads up close before or something. We decided that it was cute when the old women did it, but probably not as cute had it been men trying to touch our faces!
Next up, the grand bizarre. I bought 2 scarves for myself. I don't really know why, actually. But I felt like I had to buy something since I was visiting a place where my currency is actually doing better AND everything is super cheap there already. I paid 15 Turkish Lira for 2 scarves, so maybe $5 per scarf US, maybe a little less. Yay for traveling to countries that aren't destroying the dollar!
This is where I should put in the little bit about intense verbal harrassement! These people have quite a different view on how to get someone into their store. We were called "Charlies Angels" once, which I thought was pretty funny. We also got "Spice Girls" MULTIPLE times. Didn't get that one, there was only 3 of us (we split into 3 groups to make our shopping easier). On the streets we got a lot of "Is there a beauty contest in town?" And just your average, hooting, whistling, "Pretty girls!", "I want to sleep with you", etc. on the streets. I would think it was mostly directed at the 2 blonde girls but I was probably pretty noticeable as well. It wasn't scary or anything, just incredibly annoying after a while.
The last day we walked to Asia. We crossed the bridge to the part of Istanbul that is technically in Asia minor, so that Megan could say that she's been to Asia! LOL thats not really why we did it, but it was fun. We just walked around and looked in some shops. We eventually had a really long lunch on a rooftop terrace that looked out over the sea! It was beautiful. Another tribute to the cheapness of this country for 6 people to eat, drink, AND have a hookah (I had to, it was Istanbul) the total bill came to 72 Lira... $46.
*Eau Claire girls in Asia!
I wish I could have written a better blog about this trip because it was honestly my favorite thing I've done so far here! But I gotta catch the bus in a few minutes and don't have time to elaborate. I'll just save the good stories for when I get home to the US!
And in other news, Marc is coming to visit me May 25th to June 4th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I have to plan more adventures, and for cheap! This should be interesting...
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