Istanbul III: Hoşça Kalın

I've spent a week procrastinating on posting the last of my Istanbul photos. I'm still not prepared to admit to myself that the trip is over and that I'm back to my regularly scheduled programming. (I guess it's lucky that my next adventure to St. Louis, Missouri is in t-minus seven days.)

Alex posted another entry on his blog, this time featuring a video detailing just how difficult it is to make Turkish coffee. Check that out here.

HAGIA SOPHIA

BASILICA CISTERN

Alex and I have a pre-established penchant for creepy underground tunnels (thank you, Edinburgh) so when we found out Istanbul has a cistern complete with giant medusa head columns, we were excited. I only took a couple pictures thanks to the dim lighting, but I'm pretty psyched on how this one turned out.

GALATA KULESI

Galata Tower sticks out of the Beyoğlu skyline and the view from the top is amazing.

This polaroid was the both the last shot in the pack and the last photo I took in Istanbul, which felt fitting. It was an amazing adventure and I really can't wait for the next one.

Istanbul II: Kaleidoscope Sky

While I indulge my wanderlust with photographs, my partner-in-blogging expresses his with words. Alex posted a piece earlier today (which was tonight for him since he's one of them crazy time travelers) about our adventure over on his site. To tie his post to mine, we're going to start things off with a photo of a cat. Why? Read his piece here to find out.

TAKSIM, ETC.

My friend sent me a buzzfeed article before I left that listed the top coffee shops in the world because luckily for us (and our caffeine addictions) one of them was in the Taksim neighborhood. If anyone is ever in the area, Kronotrop certainly lived up to its hype.

SULTAN AHMED (BLUE) MOSQUE

I had to cover my head before going into the mosques so I bought a scarf of my own. I never did get the hang of keeping it in place.

I've never seen something quite like the mosque's ceiling. It was a kaleidoscope of tiles and I was terrified I wouldn't get any pictures that could accurately portray just how expansive and amazing it was.

KADAKÖY

Istanbul is a unique city in the fact that it is split in half by the Bosphorus and because of this, it rests on two continents. Alex and I took a ferry across to the Asian side because, hey, why not?

We saw a minimum of five kids who played accordion for lira.

Next time, Hagia Sophia, Galata Tower, and Basilica Cistern! That'll be up sometime this weekend.

PS: If anyone ever wanted their head to look like Nemo, I know the place for you.

Istanbul I: Banks of the Bosphorus

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm addicted to traveling and I'm lucky enough to have people in my life who feel the same. I met Alex in Scotland, he currently lives in Beijing, and he was just crazy enough to meet up with me for a week of adventure in Istanbul, Turkey.

After an exhausting twenty hours of travel, we both made it to Atatürk Havalimanı (airport) in one piece. Like the stubborn folk we are, we decided to find our way to our hotel via the subway system despite speaking no Turkish. Adventure, initiated.

Beyoğlu

I found a Polaroid camera at a yard sale a few weeks ago and decided to test it out. Not thrilled with the colored frames but you take what you can get on short notice.

Alex learned that the Turkish word for shave is "sakal".

Eminönü Yeni Camii

One the second day, we went to the New Mosque. In the courtyard, there were little stands set up where you could buy bird feed for the pigeon population.

More pictures to follow tomorrow!

And shoutout to the awesome dude I met in Logan airport while waiting at the gate. Ben made the ensuing five hour layover in JFK really fun. Thanks for the nerdy conversation and good luck in Singapore!