ISTANBUL

Ok, so I know I have been back from vacation for almost a month now and am just finally posting about it. I have been busy. Really. Ok, well kind of. The real story is that the internet connection is really slow at work and I hate uploading pictures there and haven't either had the time while in Chisinau to do it or I forget my camera at home. So finally here you go.


So our trip started May 27th in Instanbul, Turkey. I met the wonderful Jason there around 9pm. I thought it would be weird to see him after 9 months but no. It was awesome! No weird akwardness. Hurray! We ended up spending two very full days in Istanbul trying to get as much in as possible before heading down the coast to smaller towns. Here is a corn cart where I got at least one corn a day. The food was amazing. I am sure you have heard of the famous doner kabobs. One meal a day we would go to the kebab stand where they had chicken packed onto a skewer roasting and waiting for customers. When you ordered your kabob they would thinly slice the meat off and put it into a flatbread/tortilla shell with veggies, chilli powder, ketchup, etc. We wold get one of those and a cob of corn and devoure them in the park or down nex to the water.

I love markets!!!! Istanbul has the huge Grand Baazar and the Spice Market. The Grand Baazar is HUGE! We wandered around it for a couple hours lost unsure if each place we passed we had been to before. Every vendor wanted to sell us something whether it was a rug, a leather jacket, a diamond ring, or a cermaic bowl. I can't believe how many people wanted to sell us rugs. What would I do with a rug? Honestly.

This is just a cool picture with the Turkey flag and the Blue Mosque in the background. Istanbul was such a cool place to walk around. There were mosques everywhere. And 5 times a day there was the call to prayers that each mosque projected very loudly across the city, which started at 5 am. The architecture in Instanbul was very interesting. Walking down the street you would see a very new modern building right next to a very old stone building or wall. And the people were all so different. You would see modern day teenagers dressed in their punk clothes walkign next to a woman totally covered in black with only her eyes showing. And then there was a mixture of the two with young teenage girls in long skirts and head scarfs but with rock t-shirts over them.

This is inside the Aya Sofia. It is a huge old mosque that has been turned into a museum. It began as a christian church and then was later changed to Islamic. Now when walking around you can see the plaster crumbling away to reveal the mosaics of the christian style church that the islamics covered up. Very cool.

Hanging out with Jason. It was HOT in Istanbul and we were able to find some shade and grass that we ould actually sit on the have a mid-day nap.

The Blue Mosque from far away.

Inside the Blue Mosque.

The Aya Sofia on the outside.

After our two days of sightseeing and craziness in Istanbul we hopped in a ten hour bus ride down the coast to Selcuk, the home of Ephesus.