Istanbul and I
I have been quite behind on updating as you can see. Sorry about that. I will play catch up the next little while with mostly photos. Stories to come when I can sit down and let the mind wander and flow.
A friend of a friend was visiting for the past week. He is currently traveling Europe and stopped in Istanbul to see the sights. We took him for a boat tour of the Bosphorus which I have never done before either
I will do a text post soon.
A year ago today I left for Istanbul : )
I had two weeks off between semesters. I was planning to go to Egypt since about November but the revolution came so I ended up going to Amsterdam. Here are the pics. Stories to come.
Where there’s smoke…
I was on my balcony Sunday taking down my laundry when I looked up and saw black smoke. I was on my way out soon so I left my laundry, grabbed my camera and headed towards the smoke to see what was happening. I was shocked to find the Haydarpasa Terminal was on fire. One of the oldest…if not the oldest…train station in Turkey. Built to connect Istanbul and Baghdad. Apparently they were doing repairs and something went wrong.
So as I may have mentioned I was on holiday this week.
My friend Aysegul and I both had time off so we wanted to go somewhere. We tried a few ideas but all the buses were booked up, last minute planning vs. everyone who probably had their plans a month ago. So we finally decided on Yalova. We took the train from Kadikoy to Pendik then grabbed a ferry to Yalova. The ferry was also very full, we got a later one than we thought we would. Yalova is not very far, the ferry was about 40-50 minutes and apparently it used to be a part of Istanbul, you can see Istanbul from Yalova.
The photos show a short recap of the trip. The view of Yalova from the ferry. We then took the bus up to the hills where we stayed outside of the city (see the video as well) at a nice quiet resort complete with pool and Hamam (Turkish Bath). Not too much to say, a relaxing time away from the city and it helped to refresh the batteries. Back to school on Monday.
