Istanbul- Day 1

These pictures are of our meal at the hostel, the street our hostel is on, my meal, and the window that was blown out on the train.

Well where do I start – what a whirlwind of a trip – Istanbul was fantastic.  We started off a bit shaky though, as one of our train windows was blown out by a rock of some sort.  We weren’t sure if someone used a slingshot or just threw it, but it cracked the window just outside of our car on our trip to Istanbul.  Sadly, the train man who was in our car is responsible for the upkeep of the car, and since the broken window was under his watch, he has to pay to have it replaced.  At approximately 4 in the morning, we were woken from our sleeping car, and told that we had to get off the train to have our passports stamped.  Not only were we half awake, groggy and unsure of where we were- but we got all the way through the line, and found out that we needed a visa from a different place at the station. Ugh – so we hoofed it to the visa window – which only took Euro (I had Turkish money, Bulgarian money, Romanian money and Hungarian Forint in addition to some Euro thankfully) and two of our travel mates did not have any Euro.  I love the crap shoot that is train travel in Europe.  I felt good to have Vivvi with me because she has been in some really sketchy situations and seemed to know what to do in any situation.  We purchased our visas, and returned to the line to have our passports stamped (keep in mind that this is the third country on our trip, and EVERY passport guard has looked at the Osaka castle stamped in my passport- ugh) and then returned to the train.  It was not difficult to go back to sleep, but I had to use the bathroom which is always uncomfortable.  I do have to say that this is the train that had a hole in the floor next to the toilet, so when in motion, you had a nice experience of having your pee float back onto your legs as you hovered.  Anyways, we arrived in Istanbul about two hours late (not surprising for Eastern European trains – the day before the same train was five hours late).  It was raining so we got out the umbrellas and started the trek to the metro.  We had a little confusion as to where exactly we go since the directions to the hostel were not very clear on the internet – but Vivvi figured it out – we just head for the metro and get off at a certain stop.  Good- except the Istanbul marathon was going on, so none of the metro lines were open.  Crap.  Now we’re committed to walking to the hostel, and we don’t really know where it is.  We stopped at a couple of places, and many people in Turkey speak English, so we finally got there.  It was on a cute street that had a lot of touristy shops and bars.  There was outdoor seating at the restaurants and it was a welcoming fun environment.  We decided to crash for a bit and get dried off.  I took a nice shower and settled into our 4 person room.  Megan and I had a reservation for a smaller room than the others (I don’t know if I did it on purpose or if we chose that one)– but they signed up for the 30 person hostel room, I was not interested at all in that.  I’m not sure how we got to a 4 person room, as there were 8 person rooms also, but I wasn’t going to complain.  We met up on the top floor for lunch and some well deserved internet time.  The food was absolutely delicious – I had a meat dish on yoghurt- yummy!  We decided to try and head out to see some of the town after dropping off laundry at the Laundromat – and what a mistake that was.  We headed towards the water (the Marmara sea) and walked along the edge – and then it started pouring – I mean drenching pouring rain.  I haven’t been in rain like that for a long time.  The bad thing was that we were not entirely prepared for this downfall.  I had on leggings and my shower shoes (that are plastic) but the others were wearing their good pair of pants, or one of two pair of jeans – just not good.  We would have just turned back, but we were walking along a wall of a palace that was meant to keep people out of Istanbul, and it certainly worked.  We kept walking and walking, and it seemed to never end.  We eventually returned to the hostel, showered again and decided to stay in for the night.  And by staying in, I mean that we drank beer at the bar at the hostel.  We also had a couple of hookahs – (apple) it was interesting. Mel, our crazy awesome Australian friend- (who was also at the hostel in Sofia with us) showed us some weird ways to inhale the apple smoke and then blow it into another person’s face – different, but we tried it.  Later that evening, a man came up to me and started asking me questions.  It turns out he was an El Salvadoran who worked in Iraq, and he was here with some Iraqi co-workers.  So Megan and I decided to go talk to the Iraqis.  It was interesting – I arm wrestled with one of them for control of their government- and asked them to send me some books to learn Arabic, who knows if they actually will.  But, things went south when I found out the first guy was a Republican… I mostly just started out joking about it, but he apparently took offense.  Whatever, I wasn’t really bothered by it.  Megan stuck it out with them for a while, but I’d had my fill of Iraqi men.  The next morning, Megan had a gift (a pashmina) from the Iraqi men waiting for her at the reception desk.  CRAZY!!!  She single handedly saved the relationship between our two countries.