Turkey Day Three –Bospherous

So we woke up right at 12:30 and were on the trip at 1:00. Haha. No lunch of breakfast for us…again. We started out our day by going to a museum of the clothing and artifacts of the Ottoman Empire. This museum was pointless and we had a whole hour there. Lol. I feel bad for saying it, but it was boring. The museum was small and the artifacts were small. Eh. We ended up leaving and getting some potato chips and a soda since we hadn’t ate yet.
After the museum (?), we headed off for our actual tour for the day. We ended up on the top floor of a little ferry headed out to the Bospherous, which is a river dividing the Eastern half of Istanbul (Europe) with the Western half of Istanbul (Asia). You can go over to either side by bridge, but the Bospherous gives you a unique perspective as a lot of the larger homes and monuments of Istanbul are built RIGHT on the water’s edge. We saw three of the palaces that we’d seen the day before, but from the water. Way cool. The water here is really choppy. In most ports, we never feel out boat move, but here it does. Basically it’s because there are two seas running over one another. The two currents move in opposite directions, making the water pretty crazy. It’s not safe to swim, though you see locals trying every once in awhile. While we were on the Bospherous, we saw some of the homes that the upper class live in. There were solid wood ones, extremely long ones, and some REALLY pretty ones. The average prices of a sea-side home is around 15 to 20 million supposedly. Lol. Some day I’ll have one….maybe…. ☺
I find that the European side of Istanbul is more exciting, but the Asian side is more beautiful. It’s so GREEN. Seeing it from the ferry really solidified it. We saw some beautiful sights for sure.
After the tour, we headed back to the ship. We almost ran, but we ended up beating 160 kids to the boat. James calls it passing the sass (Semester at Sea). It involves pushing Jack off the bus and running past lots of old people and stressed out kids. Lol. It makes for a slightly embarrassed Jack, but we do get on quick.
After a quick turn around, we headed out to the public city center called Takzim Square. This is basically like the Turkish version of La Ramblas. There are shops and restaurants and street peddlers. There are clubs, and different bars. It’s all really busy and exciting.
We found this restaurant and had some delicious Turkish food. Really the first delicious food we’ve had here. It’s all ok…but very different. And as James and I have rather sensitive stomachs, we’re weary here. Anyway, the food was great and we ended up staying in the restaurant for quite awhile. It was the first real food we’d had all day, so we were ravenous. Lauren and Garrett were freaking out at the amount of food we put away. ☺
Afterwards we ended up doing a little window-shopping. James bought some really nice Nike shorts. Breathable. Haha. They were expensive. We ended up going to a club too. It was called Salsalita. It was pretty empty (Thursday night), and we ended up buying a 7.50 lira water (club prices because there was no cover). There were like 6 people there. Lol, but we danced about two dances and it was fun enough. We didn’t stay long.
We took our first Taxi today. We missed the Funicular (we thought it closed at one..it didn’t). We didn’t really know the way home, and it was late. We figured we’d rather be safe than sorry. It was five dollars. NBD.
After we got home and I showered and was feeling refreshed, I headed over to hang out with James and his roommate John. We love John. He’s hilarious, with some voice volume control issues. Hahaha. Anyway. We’re sitting there, just talking about our day when the boys start talking about kabobs and how great they are in Turkey. James starts saying things like, “Man. That sounds so good. And a coke does too, hmmm.” John starts saying, “Man. That DOES sound good, we should get one…”, and I start saying, “Bad idea guys, no good!”.
Anyway, we headed out at freaking 230 in the morning to go get a coke and some chicken Kabobs. We walked for 15 minutes, finally found a hookah bar that served them and we ended up sitting in some crazy bean bag chairs while we ate a chicken kebab. We ended up getting home at like 330. Ya. Typical boys. Lol.