Today was largely revisiting places I'd already been, but I'm not unhappy with how things worked out. The visits today were much more rushed and skipped a lot of parts I got to see when I did them on my own, but having a guide meant that I learned a lot more about the history for the things we did see. We also visited a few extra places, and I added another obelisk picture to my ever growing collection of obelisks (Rome alone has like 8 or something, of which I saw 4 or 5).
We got to spend much of the afternoon on our own so I returned to the Grand Bazaar since our hotel is nearby and wandered it more extensively. It really is a huge place - almost a self-contained indoor city within the city .
Dinner was covered by the tour and we went to a nice traditional place a 10 minute walk away. Throughout the day I made a point of getting to know everybody pretty well. They all seem like good, friendly people but there are definitely a few personality quirks that could get tiresome. I'm hoping some of the rough edges will get smoothed out with a few days of travel and getting used to the routine. We hit the road tomorrow, and supposedly the 6 of us (7 with the guide) are in a 16-seat bus, so at least there will be plenty of leg room.
That last picture reminds me of something else neat. Remember in my first post about Istanbul I talked about crossing back and forth over the big bridge near by hostel? Well, today I learned/was reminded that the Bosphorus is what divides Europe and Asia, so I could have also said "so after lunch I crossed from Europe back to Asia for an icecream" which sounds incredibly more cool.
2 comments:
I want to know about the food, "a nice traditional place"--do you mean traditional Turkish? What did you have? A little more description please, you know me and food!
"nice traditional place" was probably overly generous. In general, I've been a bit disappointed by the food. That night it was something like chicken and beef skewers with rice, hot peppers and some pretty decent naan-like flatbread. Almost all of our dinners have been hotel buffets though, and whenever we go to a "traditional" place for lunch it's basically kebabs/grilled meat that's not all that great. Two of the people in my group went to a place in Istanbul where they seal a bunch of meat and vegetables in a clay pot, let it cook in some coals and then shatter the bottom off the pot to get the cooked result out - that sounds far more interesting - but so far nothing like that.
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