Travel Day

...literally. Sitting at Ataturk International Airport waiting on our plane to Frankfurt and onto Chicago. It's been a real fun time, and relaxing as well. Istanbul is pretty far up there on my favorite cities list. To put it into perspective, allow me to provide an allegory of sorts. Cairo is like the strict teacher who gives you an extension on a paper because it is due right after St. Patty's Day but makes you write 2 extra pages...fair, but cool. Istanbul is like the teacher who forgets about his own deadline because he was out partying to much on St. Patty's Day.

We get into Chicago at about 10:30ish Tuesday morning - so hopefully safe travels await. This is it for Izzy. Thanks for reading. Goo-lay Goo-lay (bye bye).

Grand Bazaar

Megan and I woke up with a bit of a hangover this morning...we had a pretty good night the night before. Watched Ankara put the whoop on some poor club 4-2, and drank Turkish wine to live music in a half underground bar by a window where all you could see of the people walking by where their legs. It was a fun night.

Some Americans (sigh - jk) moved into the rooms down from us at the Hostel and are seriously the most annoying people of all time. They're the types who perpetuate the idea of the ignorant American tourist...ugh. They hogged the showers for over 2 hours.

Went down to the Grand Bazaar and got all sorts of goodies...the prices were pretty decent to begin with, but having said that, I totally got shot down during t-shirt negotiations with this one merchant...Megan had to secretly go back and pay the prices the man was asking and bless her heart...for it allowed me to escape with a little bit of my pride. I rebounded with my next purchase, but I continue to need improvement in this area.

We have come to the conclusion that the finest export the U.S. has to offer is Starbucks...politics and fair trade aside, the coffee here in Istanbul outside of Starbucks is less than desired. Anyway, we sat at Starbucks and people watched on Istiklal Street (which is the equivalent to State Street in Chicago, but times 20) for an hour of so... We have fun doing this, for the Turks in Istanbul are serious about their attire...which makes people watching more fun. Google images for Istiklal Street...it's a great area to waste the day away.

Uludag.

One word - Uludag. We ventured well outside the city limits to a town called Bursa, and from there we went to Uludag to snowboard. The trip in itself was an adventure because apparently no one knows what the hell or where the hell Uludag is...a little frustrating to say the least. When we got to Bursa we took public transportation to the center of Bursa and got off the bus without a clue of what to do...about 20 minutes of walking later I look back to see Megan talking to a cabbie...I turned back to see what was going on, and she is drawing a stick figure skiing on a piece of paper trying to make her point...mission accomplished, and off to Uludag we go...at this point I'm glad Uludag is an actual place and not some figment of my imagination. About 40 minutes and 50 dollars later we arrived hoping to see skiers and snowboards a plenty, but in fact the damn place was a ghost town. Everything was closed, slopes weren't even close to being open, and all but one hotel is closed. So you're in the middle of Turkey with the sun setting and no where to stay...what do you do? We were lucky enough to get a room in this rather big hotel...in fact we were the only ones. A little creepy to say the least. Some bad intel led us to Uludag, but I'll have hours upon hours worth of stories from this place. More to come later.

Got back to Istanbul....(home sweet temporary home) and ate like pigs, and are going to hopefully watch a football game on the telly tonight...too cold for sitting outside watching it.

Uludag...don't ever go. Other than that this place is a blast...and the Turkish countryside is remarkably eye-catching.

Day 2

So day 2...tourist stuff. We took a bus to show us all the things the Istanbul tourist people feel that we need to see, and that was just fine with us. We took this double-decker bus around town accompanied by headsets...this made us look like true native Turks - no doubt. We ate some real Turkish food which was really good, but I can't remember what it consisted of at this moment in time.

There was a football game today and judging by all the car honking going on - they won. Speaking of car honking, we seriously had the most crazy taxi driver of all time take us down this really steep narrow road and literally endangered the lives of at least 8 people...including 3 little girls - the guy was insane. Hate to say it though, but it was 30 times better than any ride at any amusement park. Just crazy.

We ate spaghetti tonight - bon apetit.

Follow the link below for a few pics.


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2106515&l=d2b52&id=32800565

Day One

So it's been a long day of flying and waiting. The flight from Chicago to Frankfurt was fairly uneventful, and we were only in Germany a short amount of time before we jumped aboard Turkish Airlines flight 944 en route to Istanbul. The plane was a beautiful disaster - pink, purple, and turquoise leather upholstery...I for one loved it - but don't ask Megan about it - I am quite certain she is still wondering how we got to Istanbul being that she was sleeping the whole entire time. I woke her up to see if she wanted anything to drink and I thought she was going to eat me. I have now begun calling her "she bitch."

Istanbul is relatively European with a middle eastern flare...(gee, what a profound observation). It is a clean city - so far...and the people here carry themselves with an extreme amount of sophistication. We were kind of expecting to see people living in squalor and malnourishment...thankfully that's not the case, and instead everyone is wearing Benetton and driving BMW's.

We had a funghi pizza tonight, with turkish tea, and had a few drinks before feeling the exhaustion set in for being up for well over a day. We're tossing in the towel early and looking to explore the day away tomorrow.


Cheers

i am fond of difference.

Test...

1 2 3

I am indifferent to this font.