Istanbul Full on

We took the Ulusoy bus from near the university to Istanbul. The bus is a nice way to travel. It took about 5 hours, and that included a half-hour stop. One of the depots in Istanbul is right near a metro/tram station. From there, we took the tram right into the Old city, to the stop nearest our hotel, the Ipek Palas hotel. It was a smaller hotel, but reasonably priced and clean. They also had a buffet breakfast, and wireless internet included. An additional bonus, it is located a short walk from just about everything in the old city. The view from the top floor breakfast buffet was inspiring, however, because I was always thinking of food, I forgot to take some pictures. You can see the harbor, and even Hagia Sofia from there. Our first evening, we pretty much just settled into the hotel and got something to eat at one of the many street side restaurants.

There are guys outside the restaurants whose sole job is to get you to come and eat at their place. It is almost intimidating if you aren't keen on the hard sell. But you can sure get used to it in a hurry, saying "no" doesn't become hard after about 4 times.

The next morning, we took in the breakfast buffet, and the view. It was a typical turkish breakfast of tomatoes, white (feta) cheese, other cheese, olives, cucumber, bread, coffee, cay (tea), and some fruit drinks. There was more, but I forget what they were, and I didn't eat them. There was a cake that reminded me very much of my mother's cinnamon loaf, but instead it had chocolate layers. Tina started to feel not so good, but we went out to take in some sights. So we headed off in the direction of what we thought was the Blue Mosque. We ended up having lunch in a plaza outside the old bazar, or spice bazar, or something like that. We paid the rich tourist rate (55 ytl). In contrast, a better, larger meal we had that night was 54, including gratuity. After lunch, we took a trip through the commercial shopping district. There were a lot of people. I mean, an enormous number of people. I have never seen so many people in one place, and it didn't seem to end.

After the mob, Tina wasn't feeling very well, so we went back to the hotel. She was resting, and I was taking refuge from the crowd. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon in our room, mostly because Tina was feeling ill. Eventually, Tina was feeling well enough to go have some dinner. We went and had dinner at the nice restaurant that was under the hotel. After that, we took off again in the direction we thought was towards the Blue Mosque. We went through the commercial district again, only this time it was near deserted, and being cleaned up from the day. It was almost shocking walking the empty streets, knowing that just a couple hours ago, there were thousands crowding the streets. Well, eventually, we reached the University of Istanbul.


This is when we decided to check the map and see where we were. We had gone in the exact opposite direction that we thought we had. The good news was that we only had to take the tram a couple of stops and we were there. Once we got some water, we started with a stroll around the courtyard of Sultanahmet Camii (the Blue Mosque).





After that we mosied over to Hagia Sofia.


Then we headed back to the hotel and prepared to move on to Germany. We had breakfast at the hotel buffet again, however, the day before the public relations guy from the hotel had asked us how the hotel could improve things such as the breakfast. One of the things that Tina had said was the addition of sejuk (a spicy turkish sausage) and eggs. Well, for our last breakfast, they made us some sejuk and eggs.

After checking out, we took the tram to the metro, and then the metro to the airport. After something to drink, waiting in line and then some more waiting we were on our way to Germany. Tina actually helped a woman who was travelling with a little girl on to the bus at Frankfurt Airport. By a little coincidence, she was going to Toronto.