The Final Stretch

There really is no place like home. Thanks Gavin, it's good to be back.

So I have been slow as molasses recapping this trip....I do apologize. I have not even sent out the photo album. With all the commotion that occurred upon my return, it's been tough to get some time just to recap what we did while we were away. So luckily I am sitting in a hotel room in Redmond, typing out what I think is the final wrap up of this trip. So funny, I haven't even been back a month yet but it seems like a lifetime ago. Strange how time does that.

The last day of our trip was basically a travel triathalon. I use the term "last day" loosely as the travels covered 2 days and about 4 time zones (and that's just the time zones we stopped in, who knows how many we actually crossed over.)

We started off leaving Istanbul...once again, it was a cloudy sky, and we were oh so happy to be heading home. We had our final breakfast at the Oran, said farewell to our favorite hotel worker--He told us that the weather was bad because Turkey was upset that we were leaving. All over the world we are still loved and adored! haha.

We got to the airport and we were pretty early. Surprisingly they are a lot more lax about the whole carry on liquid thing in Istanbul. They just ask you if you have something larger than 3 ounces. I said no, but then realized I had a bottle of water...however I figured there would be another check point, but there was not! YES! taking it back to the old school with some contraband bottled water.

Rachel and I tried to shop, found out that they would charge us $11 US dollars for an imported copy of People magazine--we declined. But we did stay in the magazine store for quite awhile soaking up some good old fashioned American tabloid trash. We found out that Halle Berry was pregnant and saw some pics of Britney Spears from the VMAs. Awesome.

After boarding the plane we headed to London. We get to London and shop around for a bit. Unfortunately the flight was slightly delayed. It wasn't too bad, but we did manage to squeeze in some time for the Captain.

Finally we got to leave Heathrow, but not before I hear a butchered version of my name being said in a British accent calling me to the counter. What? Um why are you calling me?? Turns out they just wanted to confirm I was on this flight. RANDOM!! The flight to JFK featured a meal of either Indian food or Mincemeat Pie. Jesus...so that for me was like asking if i wanted to cut off either my right foot or my left foot....I didn't want either! However since I was starving I chose the Indian entree called "butter chicken" it didnt taste like butter and I didnt feel so hot after eating it. For once I didnt finish my food. However other than this meal, British Airways had some pretty tasty vittles. I was impressed. They've easily become my favorite international airline.

Also on the flight, Rachel's seatmate initially was this chick who was wearing a gallon of perfume. Honestly, you are in an enclosed space...have some respect for those around you!! Luckily there was a family that wanted to sit together and so the girl moved so the mom could be close to her kids. That was great in theory until the child starts throwing a full on tantrum. Instead of the dad and mom swapping seats to get the kid to stop wailing, they just kept trying to reason with him and coo to him. Dude, you are NOT helping. Switch seats. But once everyone was settled a good flight overall.

After what seemed like forever, we arrived in NYC. Almost HOME!! However, when we got through customs, I got stopped. The official asked me if I had reported my passport lost or stolen. Como? What? Seriously? So I said no, that I had my passport with me the whole time and it hasn't been lost. Then he sent me to this other room to clear my passport with another customs officer. Rachel was already through security and waiting for our luggage. I had to ask the woman why I had been pulled aside, and she told me that a passport number similar to mine had been reported stolen. So that's why they pulled my passport aside. Randomly, this is the second time on our vacation that I have had someone tell me something about my passport. Started off in NYC when the guy said we were on the watch list, and then now this. Oh well, fortunately everything went fine and they stamped my passport and I was back on US soil. Holla.

Our night was far from over. We had to try and catch the shuttle to our hotel near JFK. Unfortunately I was disoriented and gave them the incorrect terminal number so the people were unable to find us. Mother Christ. After 20 minutes Rachel and I give up and just head to the taxi queue. We get to our hotel, and although they were meager accomodations--it was what we were used to at this point. We ordered nachos and hot wings and watched American TV. It was pretty awesome. I fell asleep to Best Week Ever and then awoke about 4 hours later in order to board our flight.

The Holiday Inn was so shifty--we needed a cab, but for some reason they sent us in a Town Car...which happened to cost more than the taxi. Whatevs....we were just trying to get home at this point.

We get to JFK and they had this scale ready for weighing. WHAT? Wouldnt you know that Rachel and were on the floor at JFK unpacking crap from our suitcases. They were going to charge 50 bucks for any luggage over 50lbs. I needed to take out about 5 lbs of crap to make the grade. So i just put it in a plastic bag and chose to have 2 carry ons. Such a pain to have to unpack though. Then they confiscated my toothpaste that i forgot to put in my 50lb luggage in security. Damn it all, can we just get home already???

Drinking some coffee at the crack of dawn on our final flight of the trip.

After getting through the forcefield of security, we got some coffee from Peet's (begrudgingly....I am not a Peet's fan, however this one was good. BUT there were like 5 workers at the kiosk with only 2 of them actually doing any work.) Fortunately the flight was good and we got home pretty early. However, they did not have a movie for our entire 5 hour flight...AND I slept not at all. It was so long. I was trying to read this book that I procured from the Hermes, but even that wasnt helping make the time go by faster.

However we finally returned to San Francisco, and claimed our luggage while we looked on at a warm welcome from my favorite hottie mayor Gavin Newsom. Thank you Gavin, now let's make out.

As for us, this concludes our Greek and Turkish adventure. I really hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I suppose I can still continue to post here, however the blog title won't be so relevant since the trip is now completed. But I am a slave to the people, so if you want me to write more, just name your topics you'd like to read about and I can write about it.

However, if not. It's been real friends. May you have safe travels yourselves.

Logging out.

--Lu

Our last day abroad, Living the good life in Istanbul

Turkey is so Bazaar. These are the lanterns that haunted my dreams only to let reality kick in and tell me that I would never use them.

So our last day in Turkey started off not too promising...It was rainy and overcast and a little chilly. We sure weren't in Greece anymore.

It was a bummer because today we were going to go to the Asian side of Istanbul as well as take a cruise on the Bosphorus. Not to mention finish up the rest of our shopping and pack to head HOME!

We got onto our tour and we picked up the Spanish ladies from yesterday. Oh no, not again...luckily they were scheduled for a Spanish speaking tour.

We also saw our friend from Georgia and his cousin on our tour.

Speaking of tours...we saw the people from our Gate 1 tour as well today. Gross. We made sure to avoid eye contact. Luckily they were on a different tour company. Thank God we didnt choose to take the tour with them. I would have pulled out all of my hair one strand at a time.

Anyway, today's tour guide was much better than yesterday's. However he was a bit of a tour nazi. He was all about his ground rules, and he actually scared me a little. However, his english was excellent and he was all about telling us historical tidbits, and you know I love that stuff. He had a really deep knowledge of the history of many of the places as well as factoids about famous people and things they have done in Istanbul. Tell me more!

We drove along and stopped at the spice bazaar first. That was actually pretty cool. They had a bunch of bins of spices that you could buy. Usually this would be all up my alley, but since my funds and time were limited, so I just took some photos and looked around. There were some pretty cool things I would have liked to buy. However they were not spices. I really wanted to get these mosaic lanterns. But I know myself. I won't use it. It will sit in it's little turkish box until god knows when. So I just admired them and went along my merry way.

after the spice mkt we went across the water and drove along this kinda richy part of Istanbul. They had all these ridiculous super clubs on the water. It was just reeking with money. It was ridiculous...and awesome. For the record if I ever return to Istanbul, I need to go baller style. None of this shady business I have been doing. Granted the hotel staff was super nice, and it was a decent place, I need to be pampered and go to fancy restaurants next time.

We arrived at the dock and got on our private boat. It was filled with people from our tour and the spanish speaking tour. So all in all probably about 40 people. Not too bad. The bosphorus cruise was really cool. We got to sail on both the European and Asian sides of the bosphorus. There were some incredible houses along the water. However a lot of them were gaudy. Very French Baroque and over the top. I need some modern simplicity in my over the top houses.

After the cruise we went back for lunch and then drove over to the Dolmabace palace. First of all, they told us that we wouldnt be getting back to our hotel until 630, so at that point Rachel and I made the decision to cut out after the palace and take the tram back to the Grand Bazaar so we could get our shopping done before the place closed. We checked out our map of the metro and then figured out that we could walk a few blocks to get to the tram from the palace.

The Palace was nice, but it was really tacky. They had all these chandeliers....like seriously, chandeliers for days. I just kept thinking of that Scarlett Johannsen SNL skit. Anyway, the one cool thing is that they had the Largest Chandelier in the World in there. No joke. The thing was ginormous. I read about it and it weighs 4.5 tons. They also have this wild staircase where all the things holding up the bannisters are Bacarat Crystal. You better get out with that. Can I put one in my pocket?? Also, they had this racket of paying 6 lira if you wanted to take photos in there. So we paid the 6 lira and I took pics of every flippin chandelier in that joint. However, the castle was warm and like yesterday I was tired, so we were glad to leave the tour and be on our own. The thing about the tours was that they were good in the morning, but then we started to get restless. it's just hard to listen to facts all day long. There's a reason I am not in school right now. My ADD kicks right after lunch.

4.5 tons of crystal ecstasy. Aww yeah.

We headed to the Grand Bazaar and it was a hot mess in there. Everyone hawking their wares while also hitting on you...it was very unnerving. Plus it was a bit crowded. Fortunately not as crowded as the metro or anything but still. And then damn Turkish ATMs only give you 50s so it's a bit ghetto to be all, i only want to pay 10 lira instead of 20. Can you break a 50? However I made it work. I got some really cool mirrored compacts as well as some handmade turkish bowls and a trivet. Also, I got some evil eyes--they have these all over Greece and Turkey--they are these colbolt blue glass circles that have what looks like an eye painted on them. They are supposed to be deflectors of negative energy. If that is the case, it is possible that I might just wear one around my neck for the rest of my days.

I still needed to get a couple of other trinkets so we headed out towards the stores near the blue mosque. (BTW I think the official name of that place is Sultanahmet Mosque, but I can't be positive) I was able to get my magnet and coin purse quota taken care of. Since neither of us wanted to eat at the hotel we went to go get something to eat on one of the well lit streets by the mosque. We ended up at this one little random place. Sadly I can't recall the name at the moment. I know I have the card, but I am too lazy to go look for it. (BTW you should all know that I am just procrastinating on packing for my week in Seattle right now. Crimony. I feel like I have been packing and unpacking for the last month! I am tired!!)

Anyway, we had this dish that was made in a clay pot and then they bring it out and break the clay pot in front of you to get all the food out. It was pretty dope. AND the food was awesome. Just the right amount of spices and the chicken was all tender. Dude it was good. I have photos. OH! It's called the Cozy Pub, I read it on the waiter's shirt in the photo. Holla.

The top photo is mid-break of the clay vase and the bottom photo is the actual food. Tasty.

After that we came back to the hotel and packed our things for our triumphant return to the US. (to NYC at least).

We both had an incredible time on our travels, but we were so happy to be heading home.

I will continue with the end of our saga upon my return from Redmond. Have a lovely week.

Turkish Delights--Our first full day in Istanbul

Rachel and I obeying the rules in the Blue Mosque.

So it's been a minute since i have been able to post on this blog and finish our stories. I guess quitting your job has that affect on the rest of your social engagements. Anyway, now that I am free from work, at least for today, I decided to hurry up and finish these posts.

Our last days on the trip were sort of a whirlwind. We still took lots of photos, but after three weeks of photo ops, we were both a little lackluster on taking a bunch of shots.

Since we were also on tour for the two full days we were in Istanbul, we really didnt have to worry about too much in terms of thinking of logistics.

On our first full day of touring we went on a city tour that had all the major mosques (or moss-kays as the tour guide's thick turkish accent made it sound)

We started off at this random restaurant which we realized that we'd be seeing a lot more of in the next few days. Truthfully I have no idea what the place was even called, but it was a little bit lame since there were these random souvenir sellers inside the restaurant. They were basically street peddlers so that was a bit annoying.

We met our tour guide and he was just wearing some crazy t-shirt that said something about not making friends in his tribe or some randomness... The thing in Turkey is that the guides dont really have uniforms or anything and some of them just look a little suspect.

Our tour group isnt too big but how come there is a group of ladies who should have been with the Spanish Speaking tour group so they are only half understanding what the guy says. I am only half understanding what he says as well since his accent is pretty hefty. Ugh.

Our first stop is the Hagia Sofia and The Blue Mosque. You know there were like 5 gazillion people up in that mix. Damn it. There's like cruise ship tours, regular tours, all hitting at the same time. It's so stupid that we have to wait in line to get into the joint. It's a good thing Rachel and I already went to this place the day before but still.

We also figured out why it wasnt smelling all footy in the mosque. They had just replaced the carpeting for Ramadaan so they had a nice new carpet in the mosque. It was really pretty carpeting too. However it could have easily been in vegas since it was all patterned. Have you ever noticed that the carpets in the vegas are always these loco patterns? Like you can never figure out where you are because the carpet and the tables all look the same throughout the entire damn casino. You have to find your way on the fringes. But I digress...

After we went to the mosque and mini-museum we drove around and headed to a carpet demonstration and the Grand Bazaar. Unfortunately because the carpet demo took so long and they were WAY out of my price range....what? did you say that welcome mat sized one was 400 Euro? Oooh i gotta go. So we haul ass to the bazaar where they tell us we have about 20 minutes to check it out. For those of you not familiar, the Grand Bazaar is kinda like Istanbul's tourist flea market. The wares are all in mini-stalls/storefronts, but there are approximately 4000 of them. Honestly, 20 minutes will not do the job. We decide before we even get there that we will need to go back for our souvenir shopping.

We get to the bazaar and it is totally overwhelming. Every single stall is crammed full of stuff. So we also need to try our hand at bargaining. I have decided that I kinda suck at bargaining. Like i can comparison shop like nobody's business, but that bargaining part just wastes my time and energies. Why don't you just tell me how cheap you will sell me something?? Anyway, we look at about 3 stalls and decide that we need to bounce out. However, we do find a couple of things that we'd like to come back and purchase. We go back to get lunch with our tour.

As usual we have a suspect lunch and we also find out that there everyone at our table only speaks Spanish. That was totally not helping our cause to convince people that we were indeed NOT Mexican. Every single person at the Grand Bazaar asked us 2 questions. 1) Como estas senoritas? and 2) are you sisters? oy vey. We don't even look alike people. Crimony.

We saw a bunch of other mosques during the rest of the tour, but I was pretty over it. The guy was hard to understand and I was getting super tired. However there were these Australian guys with their mom on the tour that were pretty hilarious. We found out they were at our Whirling Dirvish show too. So there's kids everywhere trying to sell you shit--kinda like in Mexico and the kids selling chicklets....anyway, these kids sell crap like these light up spinning tops. so they try to sell things to everyone. The one guy on our tour, although it wasnt right, i was laughing.... So this kid tries to sell the Aussie a top and the guy says no thanks, and he had his little sticker to identify him as part of our tour on his hand. He pats the kid on the back while sticking the sticker on this kid. It was so childish, but I was dying. Sorry, I am still immature. It was hilarious, but reading back, definitely a had to be there moment. Maybe it was just hot so it was funnier? I don't know.

We also met another guy on our tour who was from Georgia but was visiting Turkey with his cousin (who seriously I thought that was his GF...a little too familiar to be family...but maybe that's just me). Anyway, he was cool too. They had been vacationing with the rest of their family in Baku. Yeah I had no idea where it was either...I guess it borders Turkey. The family is from Iran, so there are only certain countries that both of them can visit together and he was military so he had issues getting into Istanbul. Whoa. So many government restrictions.

Oh and also, the rest of the mosques...smelled footy. Doesn't help that there are a ton of people with no shoes. Thinking about it makes me need to get into wide open spaces. Damn sensitive nose.

Finally our tour ended and we had about an hour to relax before we went to the "dinner show" We didn't know what to expect from this thing.

The car picks us up, and I am relieved to find out the place we are going is not the same restaurant that is the tour meeting place. We drive across town to the Taksim district (apparently the business district in Istanbul--apparently lots of places to go out too...but it looked safe and modernized. I love this place.)

So we arrive at the restaurant, and there are like 5 people there to greet us. It seemed a little odd, but we just figured they were friendly. However we walk into the restaurant to find out that we are THE FIRST PEOPLE TO ARRIVE!!! !Dude....seriously, this place is pretty big, how are we the first people here. I felt so lame. So our waiter comes over, brings us our wine and some Turkish apps--it's dark as hell so I have no idea what we are being fed, I am trying to pull the candle on our table as close as possible to my plate to get some idea what we are eating. Since we were first in to the restaurant we had prime seating next to the stage. Fortunately people started to arrive at the restaurant and it got probably around 3/4 full by the time the musicians came out. The show was totally hokey. Think Turkish Luau but not cool like a Hawaiian luau....however it was still pretty fun. Since we were so close to the action we were participants on more than one occasion.

enjoying the turkish dance party

The funniest (ok maybe it was the second funniest) thing that happened that night was that our waiter who was totally sweet asked Rachel if she needed a friend in Turkey. And if so, he wanted to be her friend. He really meant well, but I couldnt help but think that he sounded like Borat. It was like, "I like you, I want to be your friend. Do you want to be my friend?" Totally meant well, but it was pretty funny.

I think the FUNNIEST thing that happened that night was that when we got pulled up to go dance on the stage with a bunch of random people this one guy (photo below) took this as his moment to SHINE...like he was on dancing with the stars or some madness. Dude went off, he was doing like these drop kicks and all sort of belly dancing moves. He was getting his groove on. Rachel and I were dying. Rachel actually snapped him mid dance. Flippin hilarious.

shaking what your mama gave you.

After all the laughs we needed to leave. We tried to go for a walk so that we werent stuck watching more old people dance on stage, since our ride wouldnt be back for another 45 minutes. So when we attempted to leave on our own, they flipped out. We just said we were going to go outside and walk around, and the guy was all, "no. I am sorry, it is not safe" EXCUSE ME??? Whoa. Rachel and I were like this looks safer than where we are staying?! But they wouldnt budge, totally made us sit and have some turkish coffee, which tastes like crap btw, and then they called our driver. Even the driver was like, no you can't go out by yourself over there. not safe for woman. oh dear. I need to go home now. and i mean HOME HOME...take me back to my mean streets of the US. So that was day 2 in Istanbul. Good times

I am still here....

Hello Friends,

Now that I am all settled in from being gone (ok I am still a bit jetlagged, but now I am at least sleeping through the night.) I should probably attempt to finish these posts. Rachel and I have finally uploaded our photos, but with over a 1000 shots, the task of sorting them for a sharable album is a bit daunting. Don't fret...I will soon narrow it all down. In the midst of giving notice and having to fill out all my paperwork for my new job I will get right on that. :)

A couple of photos to share before I send the entire album

Some of you have asked for photos, so I will take time off the actual storytelling to include some photos. I've also added some to the posts from the last day or so.

Enjoy!

You Spin me Right Round Baby Right Round

...like a record baby, right round round round.

Still a bit jetlagged, so again, I post on the blog. at least I only woke up at 530 this morning. I didnt get up until later though.

After a quick nap we left for the whirling dirvish show at 7--because it is Ramadaan it started later, so it didnt start until 745. I need to read up on Ramadaan. I think theres a bunch of food restrictions that the peeps have to follow, but I know there's probably other stuff too. I will look up that stuff and get back to you. Anyhoo--when we got there the place was pretty full, but we were able to find chairs on the side right near the "band." The cool thing was that the performance was being held at Sirkeci Station which is where the Orient Express used to depart from back in the days of luxury train travel. The room is pretty plain, but there are some nice stained glass windows near the ceiling.

The show begins with this sufi band playing all these ancient looking instruments. There are 4 musicians and 2 dudes just hanging out in the second row. I was surprised that they even had a female musician. For some reason, I thought the dirvish order were all men...like most everything else in Turkey. Anyway, they start playing this new agey sounding music and the two dudes in the back start singing. It's all very churchy at this point, and then i realize...duh, the dirvishes are a religious order. Perhaps it would be like that one band...was it Enigma(?) that had all that churchy sounding music? Regardless...finally after like 30 minutes the dirvishes come out. The performance is really just a ceremony, and they tell you to remain silent, but you know i was bursting at the seams to talk about it while it was going on.

(as an aside, I am watching the news, and how is it that Jack Bauer got arrested for drunk driving?? Oh Keifer...don't drink and drive. Now they are talking about the Halo 3 Midnight openings....curious. Oh how I've missed my Mornings on 2 news...)

I digress...so the dirvishes emerge in these black robes but you can see their little white gowns peeking out underneath. They have this long ass ceremony...seriously can you just start the spinning. I am impatient. Finally the spinning part starts. Dude, it is weird. Fascinating but weird. And they dont just spin kind of hippie in the field like....they are full speed ahead spinning like tops. There were 5 of them all together....and they each had their own spinning technique. If I were a dirvish, I would definitely keep my eyes closed because the ones who kept their eyes open were just loco looking. They had like crazy eye when they would spin because they were spinning so fast. However they were spinning for quite awhile. It actually made ME a little bit dizzy. So I figured they would just spin and it would be done. But turned out there were actually four spinning sessions, I think each one represented the seasons. I have the pamphlet--i should really bring it out so I can get the facts right, but really...no one cares here, I know that. I am just writing this for my own narcissistic tendencies. And so I will remember what the heck we did on vacation before I attempt to do my scrapbook!

After the show was over, I totally thought there would be a meet and greet photo session....but that was not to be. They came, they spun, they left. And thats pretty much how it went.

Rachel and I got back on the Tram and then headed to our hotel for dinner at the bar. We were the other table there eating. There were some German dudes eating at the only other table that had diners. I ordered tomato soup and some fresh fruit, and it was just mediocre.

After that, we checked the Turkish "office" out. They had a brand new computer that ran Vista, but they had this monitor that was old as dust. It was a huge case with a small screen. Um if you spent the money on the new machine why didnt you get the new monitor??? Splurge a little guys. We tried to log in, but I was having issues since their "i" was some other letter and my email programs were not letting me log in properly. I don't know what was up with the I key this trip. The Hermes in Santorini had a tough time with the I as well. While we were in the office checking our mail, someone went into the adjacent room which was large and totally dark and got his pray on. I dont know if he had a prayer mat, but I did see him bowing towards mecca. Sweet!

Anywho....that's day one of Turkey in a nutshell.

Back soon to talk about days 2 and 3. They are filled with tours, friends and clay shards.

Jive Turkey

Our flight to Istanbul was at the crack of dawn...actually 8 AM but they got us there early, and I swear I think i have had more early early morning flights(either arriving or departing) on this trip then any other trip. Of the flights we took we saw the sun rise on 4 of them. we took 7 flights all together over the course of the trip but actually flew on about 9 planes. Loco I say.

Anyway, the bus picked us up and we got to the airport. One thing we noticed about Greek airports, is that the Greeks are not one for lines. If they are Greek and speak Greek, then they just go to the front....those lines are really just suggestions for them and not requirements.

We got to Istanbul, and it was way more modern than I had originally thought it would be. The airport was super nice, but as usual our Gate 1 person (Gate 1 is the tour co btw, which i would NEVER recommend even to my worst enemy--they were super lame) was dumb and didnt bother to check off people as they checked in with him so we ended up waiting at the airport about half an hour longer than necessary. Also when we loaded the bus up, we told him our hotel, but they didnt put my luggage in until the end, and how come at the first hotel stop (which was not ours) I saw them hauling away Big Red! So I fly out of the bus into the streets to pry it away from the bellman and place it back on the bus. can you people get a system in place for my trip? hellooooo. So we finally get to our hotel and as per usual it is was in a sort of sketchy location. The hotel and staff were super nice, but the hotel was in this weird part of town that was mainly textile stores, so there were all these people pulling hand trucks with these enormous bundles through the streets. They were all about manual labor in Turkey. It was pretty loco.

We checked in and figured that since we were only there for a couple of days we should book up some tours. People had been telling us that Istanbul was not safe for women to be traveling alone at night so at that point we knew we were not going to be roaming the streets.

We booked our tours, including a Whirling Dirvish show which I will write about later, and then figured we should go get our bearings and take the tram so we knew where things were.

Walking out of the hotel was a very surreal experience. I was totally scared because there are mainly men on the streets, and they were all leering at us. It didn't help that there was pure chaos with traffic so with every horn honking i was completely on edge. I was just clutching my purse like a freak and walking at a clip pace. Of course we took a wrong turn on our first foray out, but we didnt stray far, we found the metro pretty quickly, figured out how to get some tokens and then got on the tram.

The Turkish language pretty much looks like ours (for some reason, i thought it would look more arabic) but the sounds are totally different. They have silent g's and those two dots over some of the vowels, and the language when being spoken can sound really aggressive. So of course i didnt know what the hell was going on--are you fighting? are you talking to me? what is happening.

We got onto the tram after we let one pass because it was ass to elbow crowded and then took the train to the stop that the hotel guy told us the whirling dervish show was at--the show wasnt until the evening, but we wanted to make sure we knew where it was. Of course the guy told us the stop AFTER the w.d. stop and blasted all, it was a super crowded sketchy stop. I think the thing that made me the most uneasy was that there was no personal space and that you always had to know where you were at all times other wise you could get run down.

We found the dirvish spot which incidentally is held at the old train station for the Orient Express and talked to someone from the turkish tourism group, who told us he'd been waiting for us all day long. That seemed to be a theme. everyone we met there had been waiting to meet us for the day, their life, etc. Random. After we cased out the joint we got back on the tram and headed to the Blue Mosque.



We got to the mosque and you had to take off your shoes--they provide you with plastic bags as well as a scarf if your shoulders/legs are bare. That includes guys, so of course i took pics of guys that looked like they were wearing skirts. Those were all tourists of course because the actual worshippers in the mosque would know the dress code before they rolled in to the mosque.

the mosque was incredible. It was ginormous and the decor inside was super intricate. The main worship area was just for men, but in the back and upstairs in the balcony women could worship. Ugh. So sexist. Back of the bus women. Make sure you have my dinner cooked and my babies fed. Sigh.

After we went to the mosque, we paid tribute to the Istanbul Starbucks and had a cold bev and then headed back to the hotel to rest before the dirvish show.