Day 9 & 10: Istanbul

So, on Friday I arrived in Istanbul around 6:00pm. I booked the hostel that morning and I honestly just picked it at random and based on the price. When I got here, it ended up being across the street from the Hagia Sophia, a historic mosque, and there is a bar on the third floor of the hostel. The hostel is called Cheers.

I spent Friday night making friends with fellow travelers at the bars.

Saturday, I got up early and had breakfast with a friend I made from Spain. We got together with someone from France, Germany, and the UK and started our adventure throughout Istanbul. I will be honest, I am not impressed with the city. The mosques are huge and beautiful, but you can only see so many mosques before they start to all look the same. There we visited a large palace, that was beautiful and contained a lot of history. We also visited the Grand Bazaar. Here, I was also disappointed. I pictured an old market with a lot of locals and Turkish related items for sale. Each store sold the same things: spices, leather jackets, jewelry, and Turkish delights. There were tvs and intercoms that filled the place, making it feel like a mall. The city itself, from what I have seen, is not as beautiful as I expected. Distastefully color buildings with neon signs all over (not as bad as Amsterdam). I was planning to make my trip here last about 5-7 days , I am now ready to leave on Monday. Tonight we all had dinner right on the Golden Horn at a restaurant called Fish Point. It was really good, and we spent over 4 hours eating there. Being able to speak about certain issues with people from all over the world is very rare and awesome, you can see why it took us over 4 hours to leave.

Tomorrow we are going to visit the Blue Mosque, which is right down the road, and then try to squeeze a good Turkish Bath in. Unless if something comes up, I think I may be trying to go to either Israel or Egypt on Monday. Only time will tell.