Everything Else

I'm going to try and wrap everything up into one last post, covering the things I did in my last few weeks. There may be posts after that, though, focusing more on my feelings about Turkey and Turkish culture. For now though, here are some pictures!

I spent one days at the ginormous Istanbul Archaeology Museum. It was full of all sorts of ancient items and sarcophagi, including that of Alexander the Great:

There were so many ancient statues and columns and tablets- it was quite overwhelming. You can walk around that place for hours! Some of the statues are incredibly beautiful and well-preserved.

 

I'm very glad I set aside the time to go, as it's certainly one of the best museums I've ever been to. On that same weekend, a friend of mine from work took me on a tour of the Asian side of Istanbul. Though generally more residential than the European side, it still has some neat places to hang out and some beautiful views. The ferry over the Bosphorus gives some nice shots of the old area of the city:

We walked around the downtown Kadiköy area first, then headed over to Moda, which is full of rich people and a really pretty seaside walk:

For dinner we had some totally delicious mussels. Mussels are quite popular in Turkey and are often sold on the street. I was always far too nervous to eat shellfish from a random street vendor, so sitting down in a reputable place was a great way to try them.

Apart from those trips, I also went to the Grand Bazaar, which is one of those required places for tourists to go.

 

It was huge and hectic, and I honestly didn't enjoy it very much. I'm glad I went, just so I can say that I did, but I very much prefer the smaller-scale weekly bazaars held in neighborhoods throughout the city. 

In the Grand Bazaar, everyone is constantly barking at you (in English) and telling you ridiculous prices that have to be heavily haggled down. After about an hour of wandering the many little streets, I was more than ready to leave. 

On weekend days where I didn't want to sight-see, I would often spend some time wandering around Istiklal Street in Taksim:

And occasionally, on rainy days, I would spend the day at home, taking advantage of the variety of food you can have delivered. One day I decided to try this monstrosity:

 

That is a Mega Mac. It's a double Big Mac, and it's only available in certain countries. Yes, it's disgusting (but delicious if you like Big Macs, which I unfortunately do). 

On my last night, my wonderful host mother cooked a huge meal of all of my favorite foods. My host family was truly wonderful. I'm so glad things worked out the way they did- living with them really enhanced my stay in Turkey. I'll miss them!

That's all for now. Check back for more thoughts about my stay in general, and some links to albums when I eventually put things on Facebook.

Yedikule

I'm back in the States! I still have more adventures to talk about, though, so there will be a few more posts. This time, I'll be sharing my time at Yedikule. For those of you still in Istanbul, I highly encourage you to visit. It's an old fortress west of the old part of the city, accessible by suburban train. It's very empty and delightfully creepy.

I really didn't know what to expect with this place, since I hadn't read much about it. I was shocked by the fact that I was more or less the only person there, with almost the entire fortress unguarded. You can freely wander the towers and corridors:

The tops of the towers give excellent views:

The areas inside the towers are pretty scary, especially the unlit ones. I was greeted with many stairwells that look like this (note that it is only my flash illuminating this place):

I spent most of my time walking very hesitantly, terrified that someone would jump out at me (or a spider would attack me). This tower is where the dungeons were, though I'm not sure where exactly the prisoners would be:

After touring the towers, I went into another area of the fortress, with this little entrance:

 

I gotta say, this area really gave me the creeps. It was completely cut off from the outside world, and there was a very eerie silence. I wandered for a while through many windowless corridor, and came to this room:

I have no idea what it was, but it made me very uncomfortable and I had to leave very quickly. Perhaps it was the fact that the floor was not entirely solid and I had no idea what was underneath. Regardless, I got out of there pretty quickly, checking out some other creepy rooms on the way:

So that's Yedikule. You should visit and enjoy the creepiness.

Oxford

On our final day in England, we decided to do a day trip out to Oxford. We opted to take the train instead of a guided tour, which I think was a good choice. I wasn't expecting too much from Oxford- I just thought it would be a pretty college campus- but it ended up being amazing! It was like being in a Medieval Town. We took a walking tour through some of the many colleges that make up the University. We both geeked out at the various locations used for Harry Potter scenes (or at least the inspiration for them). Here's a bunch of pictures:

Cloisters in New College. On the right is the big tree under which Draco gets turned into a ferret:

At the tour guide's suggestion, we got lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall place called Turf Tavern. You definitely had to know where to look, since it's not really on a street:

We got some excellent and strange beers, and had some tasty English food (only slightly makes up for the generally crappy food everywhere else):

Next, we headed over to Christ Church, another college of Oxford that is also famous for it's Harry Potter stuff. The man at the entrance was this strange but awesome old guy who told us that "None of this is real. I'm not even real!" The place was gorgeous, although the lack of sunlight means that pictures didn't come out so great:

The Great Hall, upon which the Hogwarts Great Hall is based:

After that, we trekked back to London and our hostel. We contemplated seeing the new HP film, but the 12 GBP (about $19) price discouraged us. Instead, we had a nice big Indian meal (something London does very well) and called it a night at a reasonable hour. We stayed in a dorm-style room for our final night, but I went to bed before the roommates got back from partying and whatnot.

In the morning, I started my journey back to Istanbul, once again traveling through Bulgaria. Everything went remarkably well- I got into Varna on time and spent a really nice couple of hours in a nearby mall and fancy restaurant. Everything was so cheap! Compared to London, almost everywhere is cheap. I got back to Istanbul safely (no passport problems this time!) and went back to my semi-normal life in Turkey.

Also, I updated my last post with some pub crawl pictures supplied by Bryan. Take a look!

London

We woke up bright and early the following day to catch the Eurostar back to London. We went to the hostel (Hillspring Lodge), with a quick stop for some fish and chips:

 It was...very fried. Not really good or bad, just kind of there. Bryan enjoyed it more than I did.

This was Bryan's first experience with a hostel, and he was quite nervous. However, we were staying in a pretty upscale one, and we were able to get a private room (rather than a dorm) for the first two nights. It was a very nice place- cheaper than hotels and actually had many amenities that hotels in London don't (free breakfast!).

We had a pretty lazy day and killed time until the evening, when we decided to do a pub crawl around Camden Town. I had never done anything like this before, and it was actually pretty fun. Lots of drinking, of course. Too many Jaegerbombs, which I had previously thought was mostly a New Jersey/New York thing. We met some cool folks from all over the world and got to go to some pretty neat places. I didn't bring my camera, so no pictures for that.

EDIT: Some pictures from Bryan! Here is the epic set-up of Jaegerbombs, with our pub crawl guide (the guy with the mullet):

And here is our pub crawl group, toward the end of the long night:

We spent the following day doing our London sight-seeing. We once again took one of those hop-on hop-off buses (despite my protests), which let us see the whole city. We started off at Marble Arch:

Trafalgar Square:

Royal Courts of Justice:

St. Paul's Cathedral:

Tower Bridge:

Big Ben:

London Eye at sunset:

Skyline:

In the evening we decided to do a walking tour around the old part of London, focusing on Jack the Ripper and other creepy things. We started off near the Tower of London, which looks awesome at night:

 

All Hallows Church:

 

The tour was pretty neat. Unfortunately, WWII destroyed most of the old part of the city, so it's mainly new buildings for businesses and whatnot. It was still cool to hear all of the stories of what took place there. and see some of what's left.

Obviously I have many more pictures than I have posted here. They will eventually be uploaded to Facebook, and I'll put a link to the album here. Also, I have much higher quality versions of all photos, if anyone wants them.

Next (and final!) post: day-trip to Oxford

Paris

Sorry about the delays in posting! Work has been unusually busy lately. I only have two more weeks in Turkey! Time has really flown by. I'm scrambling to get all my sight-seeing done in time.

So, we started our day in Paris by getting a nice brunch, complete with delicious croissants. Then we set off to try to find a pick-up point for one of those hop-on/hop-off buses. We figured it would be the best way to see the whole city in such a short amount of time. After much wandering (and buying of winter gear, because it was freakin' cold!), we found the stop and started on the big loop around Paris. The city was gorgeous! My pictures will not do it justice, especially since the crappy weather makes it look very gray.

Notre Dame:

 

Arc de Triomphe:

Of course, we had to get off and take the obligatory Eiffel Tower pictures:

After completing the loop, we decided to take a walk down the famous Champs-Elysees. We grabbed some hot crepes and strolled through a cute Christmas market that was being set up. Had we been there just a few days later, everything would have been lit up. C'est la vie. We reached the end of the street and decided to go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for a view of the city at night. After way too many stairs, we were greeted with some truly beautiful views:

Champs-Elysees:

 

We were freezing by this point, so we decided to head back toward the hotel neighborhood and find some French food for dinner. We chose a place with escargot on the menu. We had no idea what anything else was, and the waiters didn't speak English. We ordered some escargot and randomly chose a couple of dishes.

 

Everything was delicious! The escargot certainly was a strange texture and color, but tasted good. I ordered some steak tartare, which I had completely forgotten was raw beef until it arrived. It was really good, and I didn't even get sick. We of course had plenty of wine to go with everything. 

Next: Bryan's first hostel experience, pub crawling, and London sight-seeing.

London to Paris

My airport shuttle dropped me off around Baker Street, a bustling area that looked more or less how I imagined London would look: lots of pretty, pointy buildings and double-decker buses.

 

Rather than taking the tube for two stops, I decided to walk to King's Cross/St. Pancras Station. The weather was very cold, but actually quite nice. The area (right along Regent's Park) was beautiful. London makes me wish I knew more about architecture. St. Pancras itself is a gorgeous building:

Bryan and I had planned to meet up at Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross, partly because we are huge geeks and partly because we needed some exact spot to meet at. Unfortunately, construction meant that the Platform (not a real train platform, just a little tourist spot) had been moved from its logical position between platforms 9 and 10. I found it by asking station employees, and waited nervously for Bryan to show up. We had agreed that if I didn't make my connections (which seemed very possible given the craziness of my plan) he should get on the Eurostar to Paris anyway, and I would get on the next one and hopefully be able to use my ticket. We didn't have a plan for what to do if he missed it. I decided to go to St. Pancras and look for him, which was fortunately successful. After some airport-level security, we boarded our train to Paris. 

The train was quite nice, and took only 2.5 hours to make it there. By the time we arrived in Paris, it was almost 9pm and we were quite exhausted from almost 24 hours of traveling (for my part, at least). All we wanted to do was get to the hotel and collapse, which led us to make the biggest mistake of our trip. We debated taking the subway, but decided a taxi would be easier with our luggage and our lack of knowledge of the subway system. A friendly man waved us over to his taxi and asked us where we wanted to go. We gave him the address, and loaded our stuff into the car. He was quite nice, chatting with us about how much he loved Obama (most Europeans do, actually). After a fairly short journey, we arrived at the hotel and he told us the fare: 70 euros. Naturally, I flipped out at him and told him that there was no way in hell we would pay that much money for a cab ride. At the very most it should be 20 euros. He pulled out a sheet of paper and showed that he was a flat-rate taxi rather than a metered taxi. I told him that he had clearly tried to cheat us, since he knew what a short distance we were going, but he stood by his claims and would not budge on the price. I told him we didn't have that much (a lie), and he said he would take us to an ATM to get it. After long negotiations and eventually breaking into tears (again, my response when angry), we paid the fare. Our luggage was in the back of the car, so there was no way we could just give him less money and attempt to get out of there. We felt like incredibly dumb tourists- this was one of those things you read about and shake your head at, but it's not supposed to actually happen to you. Never let your guard down, folks, even when you're exhausted. Cab drivers are looking to cheat people in that situation.

The hotel itself (Hotel du Nord et de l'Est) was actually quite nice. It wasn't in a very touristy area, but still had plenty of stuff nearby. It's near the Place de la Republique:

 

We went out to find some food and had no luck finding places with English menus, so we settled at a fancy pizza joint. Parisians seem to love pizza, though it's quite different from the typical pizza in the states. We ordered a 4-cheese (including brie and goat cheese) and a smoked salmon pizza, both of which were absolutely amazing. I'm still reminiscing about how good they were. We also had a lot of wine, since wine in Paris is cheaper than soda or water.

Next: sight-seeing in Paris, eating French food (including escargot!)