So I left the hostel shortly after leaving the last blog entry. It was bright and sunny, and the weather promised to be warm. I felt confident that not taking my new sweatshirt with me was a wise decision. Without any sense of getting lost, I headed out for Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. I kind of felt like I knew exactly where it was and there wasn’t any problem finding it. On the way I stopped for a pasta dish that I think is something like a breakfast meal. It was good, and I wish I lived somewhere where things like that were common, just walking along and decide to go into a local shop, 2 minutes later you’re walking out with a nice meal. Going through the drive through at McDonalds seems so impersonal… that’s the best word I can come up with… impersonal.

So I get to the park between the two mosques. I’m taking pics and to be honest I don’t really know where to go to get inside, so I start following some of the people who are walking on the side of sofia. That’s when I guy sees that I’m kind of not sure where to go, and of course he comes up to talk to me… all the normal alarms go off and I try to ditch him. I figure that he’s going to try to get me to hire him as a guide, even though he said that he wasn’t a guide. It turns out that he lived in Dubai for about 10 years. He knew all the places that I usually go, and none of the places he mentioned were prompted by me, so he was for real. Anyway, he’s talking to me as I’m walking, and he tells me some history of the mosques, and tells me some other places that I should see. I was still uneasy, but he was talking history, and I love history. So he ends up asking if I’d take a look at his shop, a carpet store. Okay, I finally figure out what’s going on, but at that point it was too late. I go into the shop and then I get passed off to “his cousin” the owner of the shop. Who snaps his fingers and a guy just standing there starts unrolling carpets in front of me. It was so funny, I knew I wasn’t go to buy anything, but then he starts telling me the history of the rugs, country by country, knot by knot. Did you know that Turkish carpets utilize the double knot technique, which by the way lasts longer than the other methods because they as they get older, the knots get tighter… single knot rugs lose the threads. For a half an hour he’s giving me the very thorough history of rugs, and the benefits of Turkish rugs. No lie, it was very interesting. If I had more time, and I didn’t feel like I was expected to purchase, I would have stayed longer.

So it was on to the Mosques. The Hagia Sofia is absolutely awesome. It’s huge, and everything as impressive as I had hoped. The amount of history that has transpired since it was built just radiates through the building. After that I moved on to the… Topkapi Palace. Pretty much the home of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a good time. It didn’t really have interesting architecture and it was just a museum. Not that I was bored, it’s just after the Sofia, not much could compare. I stayed there for about 2 hours though and I did see some remarkable stuff.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I’m heading up the hill to the palace and a guy and a girl stop me, the guy says that I look like someone he knows in Florida. The guy had no accent, and he was with a girl so he was legit… yeah right. I talk to him for a couple of minutes and he says that he’s a rug buyer, and wanted to know if I was thinking about buying a rug. If I had any questions he could probably help me make a good decision. Oh my god… he was so smooth, I was buying his story until he mentioned helping me, and then I politely excused myself. It was so funny. Rugs must be a big business to be that sly as to use a team to get people interested in buying.

So I’m done at the palace and am heading to the Blue Mosque. It’s probably just as beautiful as Hagia Sofia, but it doesn’t quite hold the same meaning for me. I take that back, it is more beautiful, but still second. The weather has gotten cold. When I say cold, I mean that it feels like it’s going to snow type of cold. My best guess is that it’s about 35 degrees and I didn’t bring my sweatshirt. I’m the smart one. :)

Back to my story, I’m walking down the hill, and guess what? A guy pulls up beside me as I’m walking and starts talking. This time I wise to the lines. He starts just like the first guy this morning, and I tell him that I already went to the rug store. He asks if I’m the art history professor that Ashen had met… I say yes. So I think he’s going to realize that this is a lost cause, but no. I even tell him that I’m tired, and I’m not going to go anywhere except back to the hostel. This guy was an amateur, he was doing the history thing, and that is interesting to me, but he doesn’t get the fact that I live in a Muslim country, and keeps telling me things that I already know. By this time I’m freezing, but I do like the company, so I let him ramble along. He tells me that I need a cup of tea and his shop is only a little ways away… geez, don’t they get it. I was starting to get a little bit annoyed by now, not really at him, but just because I wanted to leave. I finally broke free and headed back to the hostel on the way I grabbed a kebab and wandered the grand bazaar for the second time. Then it started to rain… and it’s been raining ever since. At least it’s not snow.

So I started to get a routine it would seem. I get up, take a shower, grab my computer and head to the lobby of the hostel to do my regular internet “thing.” I feel a little better about heading out this morning compared to yesterday though, and after one more cup of coffee I’ll be on my way to visit the Hagia Sofia or is that Sophia… and other sights. The Hagia is one of the  “must see” things in my life so I’m looking forward to it. After that I’ll probably do the true exploring… kind of make myself get a little bit lost in back streets and alleys. I don’t want to get totally lost, but lost enough that I see things that I probably would never see if I just stayed safe. I kind of did that in Venice and except for not being able to get “unlost” it was fun.

I finally checked the exchange rate of the Lira against the dollar, and it turns out that it’s about 2 to 1. That was a huge surprise because I was told that it was 1:1, that makes everything half as expensive. The sweatshirt I bought yesterday was $15, not bad.

I’m starting to like the hostel I’m in, it’s definitely a young persons hostel, The best way to describe it, is it’s a place to hang out. The beds aren’t comfortable, there’s really no lights to speak of (literally you can’t see the keyboard of the computer), 60s and turkish music plays 24/7 in the lobby. I just heard the Doors, and there are Anarchist posters placed all around the lobby. I wonder what they think of me. They probably figure I’m some conservative guy… little do they know. :)

Wed 11/03/09 13:27

I did a bunch of walking today and I’m pretty tired. I wrote in an earlier post that I wasn’t that impressed with the city. Tonight that changed. One of the guys at the hostel and I were talking earlier. We were talking about the amount of police there are here. They are everywhere, I’m not kidding, everywhere. There are like three on ever corner, and they’re not like security, these guys are packing assault rifles, and other weapons. I even saw a couple of places where there were military guys in camo walking a wall overlooking the main street. Way too much security for me, but anyway, I digress. The guy in the hostel was telling me about this street close by that he had a run in with a cop, what caught my attention was what he said about the street, packed with people and lots of shops. So that’s where I went tonight.

As I wandered along, stopping now and again trying some of the local food, it struck me. I love it here. It happened just like that too, like a brick hitting me over the head. I think one of the things that did it for me was walking by a bookstore that had books going up to the ceiling, a two storey ceiling. It seemed right out of the old world. Sure they have their barnes and Nobel type stores, but I’ve never seen a “real” bookstore. I can just imagine going in and asking for some rare book and the guy has to climb a ladder to pick it from the shelf. And by the way, in this imagination, he knows exactly where it is among the thousands of other books. Maybe he even blows the dust off it.

So for a couple of hours or so I just wandered this street, back and forth. There are some street vendors that sell, what appears to be walnuts dipped in chocolate. They looked really good and after about the twentieth vendor I walked past I finally decided to try some. Turns out they aren’t walnuts, they aren’t dipped in chocolate, and they taste like crap. Oh well, at least now I can walk by the carts they sell these little tidbits of crap and not wonder what they taste like. Btw, I don’t know what they were, I think a nut of some sort.

One other thing that I feel obligated to mention is that Turkish women are really beautiful. I know, I know, I say that about every nationality. Every place I go has beautiful women, but the women here are without a doubt some of the most beautiful, not quite as pretty as Russian women but not far behind. How sexist is that?

It’s only 8:30 right now, but I’m beat. I’m planning on getting a good nights sleep and heading to see the Hagia Sofia tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Wed 11/03/09 08:09

So most of the day I just wandered around, walked to as far as I felt there were things to see, turned around and walked back and then went in the opposite direction until I got tired, then went back to the hostel. When I was on my way back I checked my gps and it said that I walked 15 miles, and there was probably something like five more to get back. That’s beside the point, needless to say I walked a lot.

The day was okay, I wasn’t too impressed with the city, but very impressed with the buildings. They were phenomenal. The mosques are just beautiful, that’s about the only word for it. When I say that I wasn’t that impressed with the city, it was where I went. I didn’t get into the heart of where people live, I just walked to some of the tourist places like the grand bazaar and to the river front. I’ve got some great pics of some of the places that I went.

I never get tired of being spotted as a tourist. I know I should, but it always makes me laugh when I hear someone call out, “hello” when I’m near to get my attention. That happened a lot too. I even think someone said something in Russian, thinking that I was Russian. It’s just one of those things that makes me smile. Anyway, I used to think I was a pretty good negotiator when it came to buying in markets, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Today I went to buy something warm to wear, and I saw a Nike sweatshirt. All good, I wanted and was going to buy it. He told me that it was 35, and I said 25, he went to 32 and I said 30… he said okay. I knew that I had screwed up. I should have started at 20. :) As he put it in the bag, I asked how low he would have gone, and he said 20. I groaned and he laughed. It was fun though and he walked me outside asked my name and introduced himself, shook my hand and I headed out.

Heading over to the other side of the river… er, maybe it’s a bay I don’t know for sure, but there is a bridge that it seems to be the spot to fish from. There were maybe hundreds of fishermen all casting off the bridge. I didn’t see anyone catch anything, but they sure were into it.

Wed 11/03/09 01:04

It’s about 8 in the morning here and I’ve been kind of procrastinating getting started exploring this morning. Not that I don’t want to explore, but mostly because I’m tired. It’s two hours earlier here than in Dubai which should mean that last night I would have fell asleep early, two hours earlier than I normally would have. It also means that I would have been up moving two hours earlier, but neither seems to be the case. I couldn’t sleep last night and then woke up at what would be my normal time… but so tired that I don’t feel like doing anything. That will change in about 10 minutes though when I’m out the door. I’m on my second cup of coffee, so I’m hoping that just forcing myself out the door will start the momentum that I’m looking for.

A nice note though, after the state of the hostel I’m in, I was all prepared to take a cold shower this morning. I was pleasantly surprised when hot water came out. I was seriously starting to take a deep breath and shove my head under the freezing water that was coming out, when I felt a little bit of heat and in no time it was hot. Ahhh,,, the little things make everything good. :)

I know, right now I’m just rambling because I’m trying not to take the first few steps out the door. I’m thinking a third cup of coffee may be in order. :) No, what sounds good is a video game. Just kidding, I’m on my way now. Cheers.

Tue 10/03/09 16:12

So I showed up at 10 Istanbul time. It’s dark out so I haven’t really gotten a sense of what the city looks like. I did go by some beautiful mosques, and some really fantastic looking forts. Other than that though I haven’t seen too much. I can’t wait to actually go out exploring tomorrow morning. One of the first things I’m going to do is find somewhere to buy a jacket. It’s cold here. I mean, what’s up with that? When I say cold, it’s like 7 degrees celsius which means it’s the coldest weather I’ve been in since early 2007.

The flight here was pretty good, it wasn’t full and I flew with Emirates, which is, in my opinion the best airline there is. It has the best service, best food, and for the most part the best people. I mentioned in the earlier post about how empty the airport was, and it made for kind of a strange flight. They opened the gate early, allowed us to board early, it was almost like no rules applied. Kind of nice. :) When I arrived in Istanbul I almost was dreading the process of getting my visa. I remember what it was like going to Thailand, or rather what some people had to go through. It was a long, painfully slow process of filling out forms and waiting in huge lines. So I was really dreading the whole process. When I got to the visa area in the airport tonight though the whole thing lasted about minutes, and about 4.5 of those were waiting in line. The actual process of getting a visa was look at my passport, place a sticker on a page, and take $20, literally 30 seconds. Very nice:)

Wish I had some photos to post, but not until tomorrow I guess.