Apologies about getting so far behind...
Day 235 - Thursday, Sept. 13
My ferry from Rhodes arrived in Marmaris late Wednesday evening. Marmaris is not a super-popular travel destination, so I had more or less decided that when I arrived I would get on a bus to somewhere else along the west coast of Turkey, making my way north to Istanbul. I had already booked a flight out of Istanbul for the following Wednesday, so that gave me a week in Turkey, and I wanted to be in Istanbul for the weekend. After mulling over my options for a little while, I decided to just take an overnight bus to Istanbul and spend 6 days there, at least in part because any other destination would involve me arriving in the middle of the night and then trying to figure out accommodation, which I think I've had my fill of at this point. So I opted for a 12-hour bus to Istanbul that actually arrived during business hours
Luckily the long-distance buses are quite nice, but I still didn't exactly get a good night's sleep. So when I arrived around midday, I opted to sleep for a while before going out and exploring a bit. Turkey, like Greece, has an abundance of stray cats, but I found the Turkish ones to be much friendlier in general.
They seem to be a big fan of rooftop terraces in Istanbul, which I'm a personal fan of myself. A view of
the Blue Mosque from the rooftop where I got a late lunch
And a photo from the rooftop at the Big Apple hostel where I was staying:
Day 236 - Friday Sept. 14
With six days to see the sights, I was pretty leisurely about seeing stuff. Friday I checked out the Blue Mosque, which is a really impressive giant 400+-year-old mosque.
The line was pretty long at the
Hagia Sophia, so I decided to leave that for another day.
That evening, I wandered around a bit, and took more photos:
This is one of my favorite photos that I've taken all trip:
Day 237 - Saturday, Sept. 15
Saturday morning I checked out the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar:
and then walked over to the Taksim area of Istanbul, which is more or less a ton of retail shops, restaurants and bars lining a long walking street, which is the primary nightlife area, though it was pretty jam packed in the middle of the afternoon as well.
And then of course, I made my way back to the hotel so that I could watch college football on one of the communal computer for about 7 hours, and I probably would've stayed there even longer if hunger didn't eventually outweigh my desire to watch games.
Day 238 - Sunday, Sept. 16
Sunday I decided to check out part of the city that was a little less touristy, so I headed to the "new city" area and explored around there for a while. Didn't take many pictures. Here's one of the giant Turkish flag that flies in Taksim Square:
A bit of an aside: I told myself back in June or July when I finished reading the
Game of Thrones series that I wasn't going to start reading anymore books until I got caught up with the blog. Well as of Istanbul, I was pretty much caught up with blog, so I started looking for new reading material. I ended up downloading
The Fault in Our Stars which was at the top of GoodReads' list of best books of 2012, and I got kind of sucked into that Sunday night, and read for quite a while. I would definitely recommend the book; it's a bit Nicholas-Sparksy and probably more of a book for teenagers, but I thought it was quite good.
Day 239 - Monday, Sept. 17
I started reading again at the cafe I went to for lunch on Monday, and before I knew it, it was late afternoon and I hadn't done anything all day except eat lunch and read. A photo from lunch, which is pretty typical setup when I ate alone, with the ipad and keyboard out. It's also a very typical Turkish kebab plate, and one of the better ones I had.
Another aside: one of my biggest regrets so far is not taking more pictures of all the different food I've eaten. Experiencing all sorts of new cuisine has been one of the greatest parts of the adventure and I have way too few photos documenting it all.
With quite a few tourist type things left to do before I left on Wednesday, I finally put the book away and went and checked out the
Topkapi Palace - home of Ottoman Sultans for about 400 years. It was packed with tourists which detracted a bit, but still pretty cool.
Monday night I met up with a friend, Mark Buggy, who's been living in Istanbul for the past year or so, and we checked out the nightlife in Taksim, complete with Turkish gypsy music and raki, the local Turkish spirit. Many thanks to Mark for showing me around a bit.
Day 240 - Tuesday, Sept 18
Despite five previous days in Istanbul, somehow I had managed to put off many of the top tourist attractions that I wanted to see until my last full day there. And of course, I forgot my camera at the hostel, so I'll have to borrow from my buddy Google for a few of these.
I checked out the
Basilica Cistern
I did a cruise of the Bosphorous, the river that separates Europe from Asia and separates the two primary sides of Istanbul. And I finally made it inside the Hagia Sophia.
When I was walking around Tuesday night, I came across a sign (in Turkish) for a haircut for 5 Turkish Lira, which is less than $3. Since my previous Russian-military haircut hadn't really gotten any better after growing out, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity. I also really needed a shave, and I had seen lots of folks getting shaves at Istanbul barbers as well. So I figured this was a chance to finally get shaved with a straight razor, à la Mike McDermott in
Rounders
It turns out there's a good reason everyone uses Mach-3's and the like instead of a straight razor when shaving at home. They kind of suck at shaving. My face was all cut up after he was done, and some of the cuts could probably be fairly characterized as gashes. I kind of looked like I'd gotten in a fight with one of the stray cats, using only my neck to attack. After the shave, the guy asked me if I wanted wax on my cheeks and ears. And I was like, "wtf? wax?... umm, no thanks." Then he persisted and mentioned to the other guy who spoke better English to explain the merits of this waxing. Well, I figured the haircut was so cheap, why not, when in
Rome Istanbul. After the wax had been applied and the guy washed my hair and started to cut it, I noticed a sign in the mirror, posted on the wall, in English that said "price list" and indicated "wax" was 15 Lira (3x the cost of the haircut, ~8 USD) and hair "treatment" and skin "treatment" that were like 60 Lira (over 10x the cost of the haircut, ~35 USD). It appeared this was their method for ripping off unsuspecting tourists. I started to get worried that they were going to charge me an exorbitant amount, and that somehow a shampoo and cut was "hair treatment" as opposed to just a a haircut. The cut wasn't much better than the last, still way too short -- I really have to stop letting non-English speaking people cut my hair. At the end, I asked how much, fearing the worst, and somehow I felt relieved that my $3 haircut had turned into a $14 cut, shave and wax. You just can't go anywhere without someone trying to rip you off.
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