Istanbul!

Hello again! Here a little story about Istanbul. It is really a beautiful and interesting city to visit, so I recommend you all to go there once! We left Wednesday evening with the train. We had heard stories from the other Matsi people; unfriendly boarder control, having to get on a bus… So we weren’t really looking forward to the 14-16 hours long trip. However, the trip wasn’t so bad at all. Around 4 AM we had the first passport check and later on we also had to get outside to get our visa, but fortunately we didn’t have to get on a bus and so the trip only lasted 12 hours. At 9.00 we arrived at the train station and soon we had found a suitable hotel for a good price. We were offered a special Turkish tea that Glieka and I enjoyed a lot (ahum). After everything was arranged we went to the city to visit the sights. We have been to the Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sofia and the Basilica cistern. The blue mosque is an impressive mosque where visitors can come in while Muslims pray. The Hagia Sofia used to be a church but has been transformed into a mosque and the Basilica cistern is an underground system with pillars and water. After that we took a rest in the hotel because we were all pretty tired. In the evening we only went to a restaurant and then to bed.
Friday morning we went to visit Topkapi; a palace. We spent a lot of time in the museum (the first museum in my life that I actually found rather cool!) and we thought that the whole palace had been turned into a museum. It wasn’t until we left and were wondering why we couldn’t find the things described in a book that we found out that we weren’t at the Topkapi palace yet; we were only at the museum and the palace was a few hundred meters above. However, since Topkapi is so big and since we had already spent several hours at the museum we decided to go there another time. So instead of going there, we went to the grand Bazaar. It is really big and easy to get lost there but nice to visit. We looked for souvenirs and bargained about the prices. After the Bazaar we went to the other European part of Istanbul. There we went to the Gallata tower to see the sunset. After that we ate at a Spanish restaurant (very obvious to do when you’re in Istanbul) and we went to a nice place where you can smoke water pipe. It was a really nice place with pillows on the ground where you had to sit on. I tried to smoke the water pipe but I didn’t really like it so the girls smoked the pipe.
Saturday morning we went to the Hamam. Everyone told us that the Turkish bath is absolutely amazing and a must-do when you’re in Turkey. We chose for the option of washing, scrubbing and traditional massage. It was kinda different from what I had expected but it was quite good; you do really feel clean when you’ve been there. After that we decided to go to the Asian part of Istanbul. I followed the girls coz they had a map but we didn’t really use it that well. To make a long story short; we spent two hours trying to find the right port that eventually turned out to be next to the train station which is almost next to our hotel. How blond! But anywayz, we took the boat to Asia and we sat there at a nice place to watch another sunset. After that we enjoyed a cheap meal at the McDonalds and went to bed early.
Sunday morning we got up at 8.00 (yeahyeah!). We wanted to go to on the Bosporus tour and then to Topkapi. We went to the port but got screwed and were 10 seconds to late for the boat. So we went to Topkapi where we spent 4 hours!! It’s a big palace with a treasure room, a big house for the harem, a huge kitchen where food got cooked for 5000-6000 people each day and much more. It was really impressive and beautiful. After that we enjoyed an ice scream in the sun and later went to the city to eat a kebab. However, the kebab in Holland tastes much better than in Turkey! Meanwhile, all the Dutch people seemed to have arrived. This day there were far more tourists than the day before and everywhere we went we saw Dutch and German people. At 20.00 we took the train back to Thessaloniki. This time we were on the Turkish train. The rooms were better, with even a small fridge, but the train was slower and the personnel rather annoying. 14 hours later we arrived back home, after a nice 4 day trip. Istanbul is really cool, but for girls I’d like to say; bring some boys along becoz you will get crazy of the Turkish men! If we would have asked money for each time someone asked us to be on the photo with them we would have been rich now. Fortunately, they do leave when you tell them you don’t want to go on the picture. But besides the annoying men, Istanbul is a great city.