Last day in Istanbul

these are pictures of the beds in the train - a seatbelt was holding my bed up... sketchy at best.  They did give us sheets and a pillow though- that was nice.  

Pictures of the fireworks, me and Jake, the Blue Mosque at sunset and the Cistern (the first one is Medusa's upside down head).  

Our last day in Istanbul was a good one also.  We started off at the Basilica Cistern (basically an underground aqueduct that fed water to the Blue Mosque- I think).  It was amazing in terms of construction and the fact that it took the Ottomans years and years to figure out that it was there.  Silly Ottomans.  There were two pillars in the back of the cistern that had Medusa’s head on the base of them- supposedly showing the Roman? influence that came to the cistern.  I have included some pictures of the beautiful site. 

After the cistern we tried to go back to the bazaar to buy some more things, but it was closed as it was the Turkish independence day.  They have been an independent country for 85 years and by the flags ALL OVER THE PLACE they are very proud of this accomplishment.  After a nice lunch I separated from the group in hopes of finding some last minute things, but I was not successful.  I stopped in many shops and had several cups of apple tea with strangers as they tried to convince me to buy their wares, but they were not in the bargaining mood, so I was no longer in the purchasing mood.  I did get some pieces of art – small ones, but ones that I like.  I got some artwork of whirling dervishes and of Istanbul, and a beautiful gilded page of the Koran.  I can’t wait to put them up in my apartment here.  That evening, we had a nice dinner of pizza balloons (large pieces of dough raised to look like a balloon – they are difficult to describe, but they were fun) we prepared to watch the fireworks from the roof of our hostel and they were quite spectacular.  They have to be hands down, the best fireworks I have seen in my life – and I’ve seen a lot of fireworks. 

We loaded up our stuff and headed back to the train station.  We caught a 10pm train to Bucharest and prepared for the last long leg of our travels – 19 hours on this train.  Ugh.  We didn’t technically have a sleeper car, but we ended up with one that had 6 beds that folded down.  I ended up on the middle bunk this time, so it wasn’t as scary as the top, but there is really no way to get comfortable in a car like that – especially when you cannot sit upright for 19 hours.  Vivvi claims that she got bedsores, but I think she was just tired of being in a train as we all were.  In Bucharest, we grabbed some well deserved McDonalds and hoofed it back to our next train to Brasov.  Brasov, Romania was our last destination for this trip – and I was excited to be heading back towards Hungary.