last night we took the bus from bulgaria to istanbul. it was a long long bus ride, but the toughest part of it all was the passport control between bulgaria and turkey. first, we go to the bulgarian border, and everyone had to file out of the bus in the freezing cold and have their pasports stamped one at a time. then, next stop was the turkish border, and we all had to get out again. after getting a turkish visa (20 bux on the spot), we all waited in a really long line again to get our passports stamped by the turks. it seems like everyone has been watching the US elections, and the guy asked us whether bush won the election. *sigh*. but wait, the ordeal wasnt over yet. next, everyone had to pull their bags off of the bus, and open them for inspection. the inspection wasnt much of an inspection at all really… the guards just briskly walked by and peeked at our bags, without really digging into them. but, at this point, our bus was gone!! we still have no clue where our bus driver drove off to, but he was gone for hellza days. and it was FREEZING! everyone was standing outside shivering like crazy. finally, eventually the bus driver returned and we all climbed aboard. the whole process start to finish had taken *3* hours!!<\/p>\n
after sleeping the rest of the way, we arrived finally in istanbul. we ended up napping for most of today, so we still havent explored the city enough yet, but here are my first few impressiopns of istanbul: <\/p>\n
1. first off, it’s *huge*. no, i mean *really* huge. we took a metro forever, followed by a tram for a bunch of stops, and we hadnt even covered that much of the city. the city just goes on forever! from what i’ve read, there are more people living in the city of istanbul than there are in all the cities of greece put together!! <\/p>\n
2. second off, it’s way more modern than i expected. i guess i had expected it to be similar somewhat to morocco, but it’s nothing like it. modern transport everywhere, everyone is walking around wearing very fashionablle modern clothes, tons of stores selling cell phones and other high tech stuff. hardly any of the women here wear the traditional head covering at all. <\/p>\n
3. the city is super vibrant and thee is tons of hustle and bustle everywhere! <\/p>\n
4. the other thing about istanbul, is that there are soooooo many mosques. literally, there is a mosque around every corner. if i threw a stick oin any direction, i woudnt be surprised if it hit a mosque. <\/p>\n
5. despite that, it doesnt really seem like people here are very religious. wheni did hear the call to prayer, nobody that i saw even batted an eyelash. no one stopped, no one went inside the mosque, nothing. it was as if the call didnt even happen. <\/p>\n
6. the city has really really good food! the dinner caryn and i had was absolutely delicious, and all the food we’ve seen and smelled looks really really good. i think we’ll definitely be eating well here!!<\/p>\n
7. their money is ridiculously high numbered. the money they use is the turkish lira, and one dollar is equal to 1.5 *million* lira. so to take out 60 bux from the bank, i had to get out 90 million lira!! the money is especially confusing, vause you laways end up counting zeros. you dont want to mistake a 1million (6 zeros) for a 10 million (7 zeros).<\/p>\n
well, that’s all i have to say about istanbul for now. the other thing that’s been occupying my thoughts, is where we will go next. we bought a LP guidebook for the middle east today, and there is soooo much to see. they have a sample itinerary that we’re thinking of doing but that would involve 5 countries in just 7 weeks. it would be a really aggressive plan, and would mean prettyt much 2 days for most of the cities we will see. so it’s a tough call…. should we do it?? on one hand, i really want to see as much as i can see. but on the flip side, i really dont want to be constantly rushing around, and not have time enough to really get the feel of a place and absorb it. i dont want to rush from sight to sight and monument to monument, just to check them off of a list. i dont want to look back on this part of my trip later, and not be able to remember what i saw cause everything is blurred together… but at the same time, how often am i really gonna have a chnace to explore here?? i dont want to skip any out of the 5 countries recommended in the LP. *sigh*. well, it’ll definitely be a tough call.<\/p>\n
*v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
last night we took the bus from bulgaria to istanbul. it was a long long bus ride, but the toughest part of it all was the passport control between bulgaria and turkey. first, we go to the bulgarian border, and everyone had to file out of the bus in the freezing cold and have their … Continue reading “Istanbul, not constantinople”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}