Fun in the Big City

Since tomorrow Chris and I have to catch the ferry at 7:00AM, luggage in tow, I thought I'd better update our blog now since I won't be doing it tomorrow. And just when our sleeping schedule was getting back on track. (We slept the night through last night for the first time! Sad the things I get excited about these days when I'm sleep deprived...)

Chris and I had a fun day today, as well as yesterday. I know he already posted comments about the Mosaic museum, so I'll skip that. After coming back for a quick nap that turned into a lengthy nap, we got up and got ready to go over the Galata Bridge to the New Town side of Istanbul. We have been staying in Old Town, which is where most of the ancient historical sites are located, and also where most of the tourists are located. New Town is the modern section of Turkey, and also the more heavily populated. (These are both on the European side; the Asian side of Istanbul is mostly residential, with most people commuting across the bridge to New Town to work.) Before leaving the Sultanahmet area where we've been staying, we stopped at a little cafe for a döner sandwich. Yes, I'm going to wax on about how wonderful it was-skip to the next paragraph if you don't feel like reading about it or if you are hungry at all. Made completely of lamb (they have a chicken one too, but chicken döner is cheating) , they slice it off the spit in much thinner slices than restaurants in GR. You can get it wrapped in a fresh pita, or put into a sliced baguette, and topped with lettuce and fresh tomato. YUM! I could so live on them. Fish sandwiches for lunch, döner for dinner. I'd be set!

We headed to Taksim Square, a popular location that would be similar to Times Square in NYC, to meet with a couple contacts we had made before coming here. Umm, if I had known how INSANE that place was going to be, I may have suggested an alternative meeting spot. I'm still not sure how we managed to meet up, since all I could see everywhere were heads. The pictures you see of NYC sidewalks clogged with people? Now picture them all talking Turkish, and that's basically what the Square was like. We ended up having a blast though. Apparently the love of shoes, shopping, and wine is pretty universal with women, because I made friends quickly with the girls we were meeting. We went for some Turkish coffee (I still can't get over how good that stuff is!) and desserts. I lied- I'm going to talk about food again. I had a couple very good things. First was a pistachio roll, which was basically pistachios held together with honey inside of shredded wheat, also soaked in honey. They were then sliced so you could see the green pistachios inside. Very good, but also very rich. Chris had to finish the last half. I also ordered some delicious thing that I don't remember the name of. It was a hard chocolate cylinder filled with brownie w/ chocolate chunks, another layer of something else, and topped with cherries, with cherry sherbet on the side. Pretty sinful.

To work off all that sweet food, we decided to take a walk. The best shoe and clothing stores were pointed out to me, and after navigating various side streets and alleys (alleys that my whole hometown could fit in to!) that were completely filled with people, we ended up at a fun little bar where we rested our feet for a bit. Such a small bar and w/ no empty tables we ended up being seated by the waiter at a table with 3 other people. Kind of weird, I am not used to that. They just talked amongst themselves, we talked to each other, and it was like 2 separate tables except that we were sitting thigh to thigh with them. It was also getting pretty late by then and we decided to head home.

Between yesterday and Friday we've managed to try out most of Istanbul's public transportation. A little confusing at times, but we managed, and it was much cheaper than taxis!

Ok, just realized this is getting REALLY long. So I'll summarize today quickly. We went to the Blue Mosque, very cool but because we're visitors they have you stand behind a wooden railing, so we couldn't really get up close and personal with the blue tiles and other cool things they have there. But yeah, huge and awesome. I had another döner sandwich today b/c I am obsessed, and then had Turkish ice cream, which is not like any ice cream I've ever had. Almost elastic-y, I think Chris has a video where you can see someone in the background with it. Expensive too, but good for a warm day! Other than that, just getting re-packed and ready for our early morning tomorrow. Cross your fingers for us that our traveling goes as well as the traveling over here. Because I'm so ready to NOT haul around 160 lbs of luggage!

Hope you all are doing well. Keep commenting, it makes our day to hear from you all!