Intense Istanbul

I got up and showered today before eating the free breakfast. The breakfast consisted of a tomato, cucumber, cheese, bread, jelly, and a hard boiled egg. I only ate the bread, jelly, cucumber, and tomato. By the way, that is a typical Turkish breakfast. I headed over to Aya Sophia first. It is a church built by emperor Justinian around 600 AD. It was changed into a mosque when the Ottomans conquered. It is huge and I loved the mosaics in it. There are only a few but they are fantastic and beautiful and just awesome. I can't wait to show you pictures. It was pretty busy even at around 10. I walked over to the Blue Mosque next. After Mecca and Medina, maybe the most famous mosque in the world. It is called the Blue Mosque because of all the Iznik (where they were, very famous kind) tiles inside. The tiles were spectacular but the people were not. It was PACKED. Only about 25% of the mosque allowed people to walk around and they really needed the whole thing. The dome were amazing and so were the tiles. It started down pouring so I waited it out under some cover in the Blue Mosque courtyard. I went over to the Basilica Cistern after that. It is a huge underground place to hold water. It was built for the palace that used to be here. There are tons of pillars and some of them have red and orange lights on the bottom. It had a very eerie feel to it. I liked it a lot. Even though there were tons of people there, it was still calm and pretty quiet inside.

I followed a walk detailed in my Eyewitness book. It went from the Bazaar district, across the Golden Horn to a neighborhood called Beyoglu. The walk started near a bunch of streets with shops lining them. Guys would call keep in my yelling out stuff in turkish. I had no idea what they were saying and thus just walked right by. They sold everything on these streets. TV remotes, cell phones, jeans, shirts, stuffed animals, fish, nuts, cheese, anything. It was crazy walking around with all these Turkish people while they shopped. Sunday is their day of shopping I guess. I followed these shops down to the Golden Horn which separates North and South European Istanbul. The Bosphorous separates European and Asian Istanbul if that makes sense. I walked across the Galata Bridge which has shops and restaurants along the bottom anda ton of guys fishing along the top. Beyoglu is on the other side. This neighborhood has always been associated with international people. I walked up the very steep hill along some narrow roads to Galata Tower. I did not ascend it. The last part of the walk is Istiklal Caddesi, a pedestrianized street with a historic tram thing running along it. The tram looked a lot like the cable cars or whatever in San Francisco. For lunch I had some of those granola bars again and I bought some ice cream (banana and strawberry) from a place. I walked along the street which was busy with people but nice. The sun came out for a while and I loved that. I went walking down a side street and a shoe shiner guy walked by and dropped a brush. I picked it up for him and handed it over. He grabbed my hand and forcibly tried to shine my shoes. If anyone has seen my shoes, they know that my shoes cannot be shined. I walked away. Later in the day, another guy did the SAME THING! I did not pick up the brush though. I hate that those guys try to exploit my niceness. I really do hate it. Oh well.

I walked back down the pedetrianized street and down the hill again to the bridge. I decided to walk along the water for a while. It was really cool looking at the Asian side of Istanbul and the Bosphorous. It was so beautiful. I went into a mosque which was really great as well. I was staring at the ceiling when one of the guys who was praying but stopped to watch me called me over. He was smiling and said, "Allah is everything." He said it a couple more times. I didn't know what to say to that so I smiled back and nodded. I continued walking along the water until I got to a port where I thought ferries went back to my part of Istanbul. Turns out they don't so I took a bus instead. I had a kebap and fries for dinner. I bought some peach-o's for dessert. Yum! I talked to an Australian girl for a while in the hostel and then finished reading NYPD Blue. I am leaving it in my hostel before I go and swapping it out for another book tomorrow. That was my day. It was very exciting and I loved all of it. Istanbul is very intense and pretty tiring but really fun too. My last day here is tomorrow and I am planning on taking a night bus to Kusadasi tomorrow night. I am going to find a place to buy my ticket first thing tomorrow. Miss everyone!

See ya!