Istanbul...Constantinople

Well, here we are now after this and that in Istanbul...Constantinople.  The Greeks wish it were still called Constantinople we've learned...but, it is not.

lipton tea you can have all over the world

You can sing the song if you want, we can't find it on YouTube, it is blocked here (citing a law and code we don't know) so I can't tell you.

the little cafe/gas station
for lunch

 Anyway, Turkey is a whole different country than Greece.  Shortly after crossing the border, we entered into another pastoral setting but this time different.  Much more populated and much fewer empty half built buildings and there are people everywhere.  We drove through several towns with apartments lining hillsides and hugging the roads with the Sea of Marmara just over from the highway.  We ate at a cute little gas station on the way and had good simple food and learned that our Euros are no longer the accepted currency.  I guess we missed that news report in which we learned Turkey had not made it into the European Union yet.  I would keep this lack of knowledge to myself since I wouldn't want anyone to know how sadly behind on the news I am, but I am not alone, it seems, no one in the group (including our travel agent) knew that, so maybe you didn't either.

team pride from our guide Selçuk

We have a new tour guide, his name is Selçhuk and he cheers for Besiktas, one of the two Istanbul soccer clubs.  This is one more time I knew a little bit more about soccer.  Every time Jeff senses a lull in the conversation with a male from anywhere in the world, he whips out some soccer fact and has that guy in the palm of his hand.  Soccer...it magically brings the world together.  (I might market that line, don't anybody steal it.)  I asked our tour guide about the football club he cheers for and he brightened for a minute but lost interest in talking to me the second he realized I had no idea what else to say other than, "Tell me about your Football club."

Extensive information
regarding use of the toilet
hope I didn't get anything
wrong.

I sit in the front of the tour bus like a total grade A student mostly because I don't want to throw up again but it also means that the tour guide has his/her eye on me.  The problem with this is that a little after breakfast, during the four hours we drove this morning when our guide was really getting into the nitty gritty of Turkish/Kurdish/Ottoman history, I totally fell asleep.  I missed most of the narration.  I think I was okay by him though because when I woke up I looked over at him a little ashamed and he asked me if I was Turkish because, he said, I looked like a Turk...I totally should have gone with it since he would have then thought I fell asleep because I already knew it all.  I blew that cover though later when I asked him three questions in a row that he had already gone into in great detail.  He only tells us stuff once, so thank goodness for the internet.

Part of the fortification of old Istanbul

We arrived in Istanbul late in the afternoon.  This is one amazing city.  17 million people live here, SEVENTEEN MILLION.  That's a lot. AH-mazing.  For sure one of the coolest places I've seen so far.  It sits on the border of two continents (Europe and Asia) and is divided by the Bosporus Straights.  Like all of the other topography I've described, the city goes up up up from the water and the jamming together of apartments and beautiful mosques and palaces is breathtaking.  It is like an exotic European city.  The streets are narrow and lack organization of any kind, the city itself is a mishmash of colors, design and architecture.  We went to Topkapi Palace (visited relics, saw a huge diamond, some jewel encrusted daggers and there was so much more we couldn't get to, the crowds were huge)  and spent about an hour there but only saw the Blue Mosque and Haggia Sophia from the outside, we plan to visit there tomorrow morning.  Beautiful beautiful beautiful.  It doesn't have the feeling of a middle eastern place even though it is totally Islamic, it feels cosmopolitan and modern in one sense and ancient and reverent in another.  The call to prayer rings out over this very unique city, the reminder of where we are.

The view from the palace

The bazaar by door number 2

Finally, we were let loose in the famous Istanbul bazaar for one whole hour.   We were supposed to stay together, but I just couldn't stand it another second and bolted, telling someone I'd be back in a jiffy.  Two or three or four turns later I was completely lost and the headlines flashed through my brain for a second about a short Turkish woman who spoke like an American wandering for hours.  A pretty good movie could come of it, I think.  Then anticlimactically I found a police woman and asked her where door 1 to the Bazaar was (there are 21 entrances).  I hurried around and found a couple little tiny painted things as a memory of this place.  The man told me they were painted with cat hairs, which I bought hook, line and sinker since I've seen about a million feral cats around that would be useful for such a purpose.

This is a great city.  We are in a hotel in the Asian side, so now I've visited Asia, I guess.  I will totally check that off my bucket list, but I will come back to Istanbul, I promise.