Back to Istanbul
We are now back in Istanbul, and we are not staying at The Apricot, but at a place called the Side Hostel (pronounced see-duh), referred to me by a co-worker.
I am crushed that we are not at the Apricot, but we originally thought this place was cheaper (it’s actually the same cost) but they have a little nicer rooms and the view from the roof is better. It honestly makes me feel guilty that Mehmet was so good to us and now we are not staying there. In my heart, I know the Side is physically better, but his help was fantastic. We’ll see.
(Note: on the last night of our time in Turkey, Mehmet told the story to his boss of how our first hotel lost electricity and that’s why we came to the Apricot. He then said it served us right for not coming there off the bat. ha.)
You probably want to know what happened with Egypt. Right now, the plans are a No-Go. We knew from the beginning that the chances were tiny that the planets would align and it would happen, and it would have made us the most hardcore backpackers ever, to just jaunt over to Egypt with no plans. Ha. Unfortunately the airfares were very, very high and flights were full, so that stopped us from going. So now we still aren’t sure what we’ll do with almost a full week in Istanbul. Poor us! ha ha. What a problem to have.
Anyway…
This morning we took the hour bus to Izmir and flew to Istanbul. As we waited for the bus to take us to the train station in Selçuk, we were able to watch people preparing for the Saturday market.
The guy in the truck was actually having a heateed argument with a guy in the car behind him. His wife had an interesting outfit.
When we arrived in Istanbul we spent a lot of time looking into the Egypt tickets and finally we got a cab here to the Side hotel. I napped for a little while then we finally went to the Grand Bazaar. We have not bought a THING since we’ve been here because we were saving all our purchases til the end. I hate, hate, hate bargaining and I’m horrible at it. We got to the bazaar and it is so overwhelming. I don’t even want anything. The touts are really not that bad, either. I just don’t feel like doing the whole song-and-dance of bargaining. At that point I was feeling grumpy because this always happens to me when I travel – I have these plans to buy everyone great presents and I end up getting nothing. Oh well, we’ll see. We bought nothing except a little variety of Turkish delight, which neither Jim or I like that much. They taste ok after one bite, then they are so sweet they make my tongue hurt.
Later we ran into a Canadian girl who told us about an Indian restaurant in Sultanahmet, which we were very excited about. There really is only Turkish food in Istanbul!! So we ate there that night, at a place called Dubb, and it was so good!!
That night we planned to go back to Beyoglu, where all the good restaurants and clubs are to go to Babylon, a place that (guess who) Mehmet recommended. We took the tram and when we got off, we could hear music and see some crazy lights going on the sky. So instead of taking the funicular onwards to Taksim, we walked along the water and came to a big outdoor concert that was going on. I don’t know the name of the guy who was singing/dancing/whatever, but he was obviously very popular as a lot of the young people there were singing along. He was on a boat or something, and a video of him was projected on a cool huge white ball. There were green laser lights all in the air. It was all in celebration of the Turkish Independence day, which is tomorrow. People everywhere were waving little Turkish flags and some were dancing in circles. The music was pretty bad pop but it was fun to be there — one of my favorite things about traveling is just stumbling upon random stuff like that. We stayed for a while and later saw some government guy or something getting out of a car with security around.
We walked to Istiklal Caddesi and it was packed with people. Jim told me he definitely was not feeling well. He had had a scratchy throat for a few days and now it hit him and we ended up just taking a cab back to the room. It is unusual for Jim to be sick and not to just suck it up so he must have been feeling crappy.
A view of the city from a rooftop.
Tags: Turkey 2006
Kelly
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