Tulips in Istanbul

  What's up everybody?  This is your friendly neighborhood world travelers trying to keep up with our blog game.  We have been going non-stop for the past however many days and it is taking a toll on both of us.  After India we hopped a jet to Istanbul, Turkey.  This place is very nice with a history that is competitive with any country we have been to or even heard of.  One could visit Istanbul for a week and not see all of the sites.  The tulips here are beautiful.

After checking into our hotel, we went out in the city to start our scavenges.  But no one spoke English.  We walked around for over two hours and took the subway for another thirty minutes.  So for three hours we simply wandered around this place and the only thing we accomplished was interview a nice lady from Florida and a nice gentleman from Germany, which was one of our scavenges.  Then we started chasing tourist information signs.  One sign would say tourist information pointing in a certain direction and another sign would say tourist information pointing in the opposite direction.  As we were walking we ran into David, from another team, and he was doing the same thing.   Only difference is he had just started and was only a few hundred yards from our hotel entrance.  So in conclusion we walked and took a subway for a long time in a big circle around our hotel.  With both of our teams frustrated we decided to partner up and go and attempt some food scavenges and try some Chi- Chi. 

     So we four grabbed a taxi and headed to a section of town named Kumkapi to eat at a meyhane ( a bar with live music that serves food).  The hosts at all the restaurants were very aggressive trying to get you to come in to their particular establishment.  We finally were persuaded to have dinner at a restaurant that was pretty good.   The only problem was the bill came out to over $180.00 U.S.  Yes, we received the “American discount.”  But who could argue?  After dinner we got a taxi that was a roller coaster ride in itself.  The driver may have been intoxicated and wanted to show us how Turkish people navigate heavy traffic.  We were a little buzzed ourselves so we really were laughing at the ride as we requested for the driver to take us to a particular place for “chi chi.”   “Chi chi” is the local term for smoking tobacco out of a “hooka.”   We asked the driver if we were at the location we requested and he just pointed and said “chi-chi” and drove off.  The place was very colorfully decorated and as all places in Turkey, very clean.    A fire was blazing near the front door and the place was packed with patrons laughing of course and playing board games.  The place did not serve alcohol, but they did serve soft drinks and Turkish tea.  We took our seats and ordered a round of drinks and some apple tobacco.    It was great we laughed and had a great ending to our night.

The next morning we took the train with our new travel partners to several mosques, the underground cistern and museums in the city.   Natasha had to put on a jacket in the mosques as women are required to cover up.    We were not allowed to take pictures in several of the places but we did manage to sneak a few.  We saw the staff of Moses, yep that Moses.  It was a amazing to see how small this staff really was.  Later Bill ( the organizer) reminded me that Moses was not Charleston Heston and that he was really a little Jewish man.   We also saw the cloak of Mohammed the prophet of the Muslim religion, the casket of Alexander the Great, the world’s first peace treaty and countless other great artifacts.  Once again we saw a lot of history and things that you did even know could even be available to view. 

This is also the home of Turkish delight and it is delicious.

After a long day we ate and called it a night.  Our next stop....Madrid.