well, Here I am finally writting about Istambul and our exotic travel !
Our journey began early in the train station. We went to thessaloniki to catch another train (night train with double rooms) to be arriving in the morning in Istambul.
The funniest thing was crossing the border between Greece and Turkey. Ok, maybe not so funny because we were very sleepy, tired and had to wait a couple of hours.
We had to go off the train with our pyjamas to buy our visas, in the middle of who-knows-where.
I had to pay only 10 euros for the express-nocturnal-visa.
Welcome to Turkey
Our first thing was.... eating !
I only drank a turkish coffee - equal to Greek coffee (Although someone I know says not :P)
and first experience to bargain. The kind waiter (and charming) served us with some discount..and someone else from this place even took a picture (hmm, I have to check that !).
We after took our way to the touristic office and some other monuments. The firsts on the list were, undoubtedly, Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque.. etc.
Hagia Sofia impress, but that external view of all the - now - museum, cannot be seen.. maybe by an helicopter ?
Inside it´s huge, wide, high, and the atmosphere is coloured by an washed and exotic golden.
We also visited the Blue Mosque, and many other impressive mosques during our trip ! They are very mystical inside...All floor covered by carpets, little lights falling from the highs.. We had to take out our shoes and we, ladies, put the veil around our head. That´s funny...
Among visitng places and eating Baklava (turkish sweet shelter by a syrop/honey that makes it looks sticky and if you see that everyday becomes disgusting ) we found a talented bargainer inside our team, nicknamed "Baklava Team" afterhoods :D
Yes I have to admit for the confession of my caloric sins, I had eaten lots of Baklava and pastry (very cheap for its good quality), drank a lot of tea (delicious apple tea) and of corse, some kinds of pita stuff !
I ´m sorry that I hadn´t gone there for Erasmus ! Because everything is cheap and well cooked. Ok, maybe its better like that.. because Im going to get some greek pounds (I already noticed some, but fuck it I prefer to eat and be happy:D).
Ah, I have to say that we cooked baklava when we arrived home :P IT was not the same of corse, but the taste was good : honey and nuts together...huummmmm.....
OH yeah, I visited the Grand Bazar. That´s a place where 2000 shops are standing for bargain lovers. I don´t like too much to bargain - I dont have much patience and the necessary boldness! But at least I tried.. I bought tea, spices and trousers.. I love the spices, by the way.
The turkish artcrafy reminds me the hippie stuff sold in ocidental countries. The colours are like that, at least. I appreciated the lights/chandeliers.. they look part of a garden hidden somewhere in Fantasy.. Very cute stuff.
They served always the tea in tulip glasses, if u go to IStambul you will see tulips everywhere.
They normally serve a glass of tea for free to welcome you, when you go in bar.
We watched a very odd dance, in spite of our fatique..
The dervish dance !
It looks like a kind of ritual, where after some previous music, the guys with a white dress and spinning around during something like one hour. Are you able ? 1 minute like that and I would feel tottaly stoned. That´s stunting, indeed.
After the show, we took a sit downstairs and ate..baklava with tea !!! We were surrounded by turkish musicians and animated the place with good music and invited my friend to dance, cheering up everyone! :) :)
The decoration was very very nice, their style and the waiters were dressed with their traditional costumes. They putted a had on us, different to girls (with a veil) to boys.
I stepped on Asia!
We had the fantastic opportunity to travel by boat and go the other side of Istambul, The asian side of Turkey. We walked until a castle there with an amazing view (we could see the Black sea behind our bodies), with of corse a turkish huge flag aiming.
On the way there was some picturesque artcraft, with a kind of pinochio hmm pinochios
To end our trip, of corse we had to eat! We paid few amount of money and ate Calamares with other kind of fish and salad, close to the water side.
Taksim
Is the place where shops, restaurants, clubs, all kind of ocidental and turkish genre are together. An alomost pedestrian street, since there is a tram going in the middle and u have to pay attention to not be hasty. We tryed some kind of turkish food and tea there, and we saw some kind of.,,,, Elastic ICe Cream ??? A kind of gum.. weird stuff.
Was cool, except the part where we missed our transportation and had to run stressed to catch the bus...
The second time, my group was argueing about which way we should come back. We tryed to to ask some taxi drivers, and one tryed to foolish us, I guess. He said that was no buses anymore, something like that...of corse to make us take the taxi.. the TAKSI eheh funny. But we took it, it was cheap like going with the bus.. we were 5 people.
He said that we would pay 10 lira, but in the end he only charged us 5 lira. Very kind :)
We have to take care about the taksis!
The seocnd time we took them, the driver said he would ask 20, but when we dropped out, we wanted to charge us more. I heard that story before, that some group of friends were charged like 40, and the taksi drivers with his friends were raging,... To avoid it we let the guy speaking turkish on his taksi and went away rapidly.
Alexander the Great
I visited the Archeological museum, that was next to the Sultan´s palace (were is Jhon the prophet and crook of Moises - hard to believe..hmmmm..), that I saw the sultan bed of my dreams that... pff.. another topic!
Going on, in the Arc. Museum there was ALexander the Great´s sarcophagus.. very interesting first old poem and the hammurabi´s code, amongst lots of Mesopotamic, Hititi, persian, babylonic art.. I saw written names of legends like Nabucodonosor and Assur. I never thought I would get even close to this kind of stuff. That´s a great feeling. That´s might be the same feeling as seeing a celebrity that you always heard of in front of you.
Basilica Cistern
Wow! That´s astonishing and .. no words are enough! It´s a kind of columns forest, standing over the water with a tenuous light rising from the bottom of every column. There are 2 head of Medusas, that none knows how it placed there, why and why one of the head is turned upside down. If I had the money, I would something in my house-castle like Basilica Cistern. Very peaceful, dark, calm...lovely.
I tried my first real Water Pipe and as I dont appreciate smoking, it was only funny experience, which a very dense smoke (I would say cloud ! ) came out of my mouth.
The turkish people is extremely social, and sometimes funny because made us laugh!
Once we were passing on the street and the guy asked us to go in his restaurant, and my friend, Lisa, said clearly "No". His answer: "Oh, You broke my heart.." in a dramatic way :)
They dont give up to invite touristis passing to come in thir restaurants, shops..They try to speak spanish to me, italian or whatever since I have dark hair and eyes. They know basic words for selling from several languages.. Good strategy since people likes to hear their own language abroad, something that is familiar to you can make you feel like home.
You can talk to everyone on the street, they are kind and very helpful. When we were looking on the map they were asking us in english, if we needed help. And it happened lots of times.. :)
But sometimes, I felt like the help were some kind of trade, since they wanted to sell something..etc. Be aware everywhere =)
I only missed the belly dance :( . I really would like to had seen the "original" stuff, since Im in love with this dance since I am child and that I had lessons (uselessly).
Yes, I agree with every turist that come back home from IStambul: it´s an amazing city. For its startling contrasts, exotic combination of colors, mosaics, textures, smells, sounds, prays, dance,musics, building, races.
When you walk on the street, you can hear the prays very loud from a speaker. A mosque prays and the another one answer, a syntony that makes you feel in another world.
