Istanbul Day 5

I realize I'm about two weeks late finishing this entry, but here it is:

The palace we visited

On Sunday, we decided to go over to the Asian side of Istanbul. We walked down to the ferries and got onto one right away. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the other side, which seemed super fast after the previous day's boat ride. When we got off the ferry, a couple of us were really hungry so we stopped to get some food before setting out for the day. Thank goodness we did, too, because it was a long day before we ate again. We started exploring before we really knew what there was to do on that side of Istanbul. It's not a touristy side at all, and we didn't really see any tourists while we were over there. We walked for a while until we found a palace. We were only allowed to explore it on an official tour and we didn't want to wait for the English tour, so we decided to tag on to the tour that was given in Turkish. The tour guide was confused why we were on the tour since we didn't understand a word he was saying, but it was fine. We took a bus back from the palace to the ferry. It was one of the craziest bus rides I've ever been on. I didn't feel like I was going to die or anything, but it was really fast and swerving around corners. Definitely eventful.

The group on the ferry

Once we got back to the European side of Istanbul, we ate lunch at another kebab place. We decided that we wanted to go to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. Eduardo and Teava mentioned that they had gone the day before and saw a bunch of pet food stuff, so when we were pointed towards what we thought was the bazaar and saw pet food, we thought we had found it. We kept walking through and only saw pet food, pigeons, leeches, dogs, roosters, fish…but no spices! We were debating whether or not we had actually found it, but decided to leave since we couldn't bring puppies back to Russia, no matter how cute they were. Right after we got out of the "pet food bazaar" (the only name that really fits it), we immediately saw the spice bazaar. It was similar to the big market place, but it had spices (hence the name), which were really fun to go through and smell.

We left the bazaar and walked to a pretty park, where we stayed until we had to go back to the hostel. It was nice to just sit and take it all in. We headed back to the airport, ate some dinner, and went to wait in the line at the airport. It took soooo long! By the time we got through, we were literally sprinting through the airport. We didn't want to miss our flight. But, when we finally got to our gate, our flight was delayed. They didn't say how long it was going to be delayed, but everyone was getting antsy because we knew we were already getting back late and delays would only make us more sleepy the next day in class. Finally, we got on the plane and made it into Moscow safely. Eduardo's host parents were nice enough to pick a few of us up (him, me, and Jean).

Istanbul was probably my favorite place I've ever visited. Everyone should go if they get the chance. It's amazing!