Last stop

I somehow managed to finagle a stop in Istanbul. (Well, it wasn’t very difficult. The cheapest flight from Tunisia to the US went through Istanbul with an 8 hour layover, and at first I thought, “Sleeping in the airport is going to suck” but then I asked if I could fly out a day later instead.) So I had something like 35 hours to see Isatanbul (though unfortunately some of that had to be spent sleeping).

Highlights include:

My hostel. Not only was it clean and only 5 euros a night, there were kitties! The stray cats in Istanbul are much friendlier (and also cleaner, it seemed) than in Morocco, and the hostel had adopted a few. It was also friendly, and I met a group of German and Spanish students who go to school in France (so they all speak French) who I hung out with both nights I was there. And my French was totally solid. I understood them perfectly and very rarely had to search for my words.

Making friends. In addition to the students from the hostel, I met two cousins who ran a scarf shop. I had stopped there in the morning as I was wandering because they had scarves for 2 lira ($1.50) I was going to buy a scarf that was 5 lira, but realized I only had 3.50, but they let me get two cheaper ones. Later in the day, however (after finding an ATM), I came back, and they were so excited to see me, they told me to come inside, offered me tea, and though neither of them spoke English, the girl was clever enough to think of using google translate.

Just wandering around. Though I paid some attention to the map to make sure I made it to Hagga Sophia and the Blue Mosque, I spent most of my day just wandering, looking around for whatever was in sight (or sticking up above the buildings) that looked interesting, and walking towards it. Istanbul has so many mosques, old houses and palaces, and even ruins that I could just walk around and see so many cool things.

As soon as I left my hostel in the morning and started walking into town (I was across a bridge from the main tourist center) I found myself stopping every thirty seconds to take a picture.

The entire side of the bridge was filled with men fishing over the rail.

From the bridge, I saw a big mosque up on a hill and decided to go there, and as I walked up the hill, I walked up this street, full of toy stores with giant boxes outside filled with toys. It was kind of bizarre.

The Blue Mosque was beautiful. The inside was so ornately painted.

I thought the Hagia Sophia looked kind of funny, but it was MASSIVE.

This was perhaps my favorite. It was the one up on the hill, and it was simple, but bright and peaceful inside.