On Wednesday after class, I hurried home and started to get packed. I hadn't packed the night before because I was being super lazy, so I had to figure out how to get everything for Istanbul into one school-sized backpack. I managed to fit it all (minus a towel) and I walked over to Yugo-Zapadnaya (my metro stop) to meet everyone and get on the shuttle bus to the airport. Getting through the airport wasn't much of a problem, but Jean got delayed getting through immigration because they printed her visa in a strange way. It was valid and everything, but they immigration people were confused. So, it took a while for her to get through, but it didn't take any "fees" or anything. While we were waiting for our flight, we played cards in the waiting area. We boarded on time, but the flight took forever!!! We took off about 30 or 40 minutes after we were supposed to and the flight itself took forever to get there. After we arrived in Istanbul, the first thing I noticed was how much friendlier everyone was. People smiled and didn't look like you just killed their puppies like they often do in Moscow. After everyone got their bags, we bought sim cards so we could make local calls and we got out some Turkish Lira to spend. We had an airport pickup scheduled and there was a man waiting for us when we got in.
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| Erin and Grace dancing to pass the time at the airport |
After checking in at the hostel, we were hungry so we decided to go exploring for food. Everyone was calling at us, trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. Our first walk down the street was unsuccessful because everyone was a little overwhelmed with the yelling men. Once we got to the end of the street, we decided to turn back and pick one. One man approached us and we took a chance and came in to get some food. The place we chose was called Topdeck Cafe and Phillipe (the owner) was super cool and really nice. He talked to us for a long time about how much he liked the US and all sorts of other things. We had a great time there, but eventually we had to go to sleep. Lilly, Erin, Jean, and I all shared a 4-person room and everyone else stayed in the 6-person room.
On Thursday, we woke up and had breakfast (hard boiled eggs, bread, tomatoes, and apples) upstairs in the hostel before leaving to go see Hagia Sophia with the Kollmans (our professors). It turned out to be super close to our hostel - only a 5 minute walk. The building was one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen in my life. It was huge and gorgeous. There was a place in it where you could make wishes by turning your thumb around in a hole in the wall, which we all did. So we'll see if that comes true…
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| Making a wish |
After Hagia Sophia, we got some corn on the cob from a street vendor. It was possibly the worst corn I've ever had. I didn't want to have corn again for a while. I also tried a chestnut. I wasn't a fan, but maybe it was because the man making them was the same man making the corn. We got real food after that (kebabs) from a place down the street and went over to the Blue Mosque afterwards. All of us girls wore scarves on our heads (I had bought a pretty new one a couple hours earlier) and we were supposed to wear long skirts, but they didn't stop us when we were wearing pants. I don't know if it was because they just wanted our legs not to show and the pants achieved the same purpose, or if it was because they didn't have enough wrap skirts at the front to cover all the women wearing pants, but it all worked out. We took off our shoes, but the other barefoot people I saw were wearing plastic covers on their feet and I didn't have anything. Oops!
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| Inside of the mosque |
The group split up after visiting the mosque, and some of us went to the Grand Bazaar while others went to the Basilica Cistern. The Bazaar was a very interesting experience. I don't want to give away what I bought (they are mostly presents for people), but the people selling them were very forward. They loved using pickup lines to get us to stop. It was a very interesting strategy. We decided they must all learn the lines from a certain place, because they all had the same ones. Mostly they called us "angels" or "Spice Girls" (I'm not sure where that one came from). The pickup line I heard the most was "You dropped something!…..my heart." Jean said the real line says "jaw" instead of "heart", which would make a lot more sense. The second-most heard pickup line was "You must be from paradise" or "Are you from China?" (again, not sure about that one). It was a little overwhelming, but there was a bunch of really cool things at the bazaar.
When we came back from the bazaar, we all met up to go to dinner. We decided to walk over to a bridge that had a bunch of restaurants underneath it. First, we got lost, so we missed the sunset we had wanted to watch. Then, we ended up walking waayyyy farther than we had to in order to get there. Once we got to the bridge, we had a hard time choosing where to eat. We haggled for a good price for dinner and chose a place that was okay.
After dinner, we went to Topdeck Cafe again and hung out with Phillipe again. We hung out there for a long time and some of the group left, but a few of us stayed to hang out longer. One of the bartenders let me mix behind the bar and we met a lot of really cool people. We learned some games from some British people visiting, and we met some other college kids from California. We had a great time, and I have about a million pictures from that night.
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