Off the main artery pedestrian street Istkital, there are little side streets with hidden gem restaurants and bars, and tucked away cafes where you can escape the madness. It's funny... The Turks are crazy drivers, and counting the number of times I've been bumped into, they are crazy pedestrians too. It's kind of hard when walking with our bags, because we are constantly having to bob and weave through the crowd. Sometimes you have to just take a deep breath and know that you will eventually get to where you are going, and accept that everywhere you go, there will be a crowd.
Another thing that blew my mind was New Year's Eve. In Turkey, they celebrate NYE as a big blow out event, kind of like a Christmas/NYE hybrid. There are Santa hats, Christmas Trees, Christmas songs playing in stores, holiday lights strung around the streets, holiday sales.. It's like Christmas all over again, but for New Year's. I'm not sure if Christmas itself is a big thing here as it is a mostly Muslim country, but they definitely integrate some of our traditions into their New Year's.
The main dish on NYE is none other than a Turkey (how fitting!) and side dishes, but I doubt they have mashed potato or cranberry sauce or anything like that. The "mezze" I have had so far would be a perfect accompaniment to the bird... All I know is our host and new friend Umut said he stuffed himself New Years with his mother's turkey at their family dinner.
People here also exchange gifts on New Year's, like our Christmas.. There have been tons of people out shopping and taking advantage of the New Year's sales.. All I want to buy is some cool stuff from the Bazaar, I have no interest in shopping in the main stores here.. We have H&M, too, after all. It is so European here, yet so ethnic and diverse at the same time.. I love it.
Our New Year's Eve was pretty low key, although had we wanted to, we could have partied until 6 AM... Pretty much all of the bars/clubs/restaurants were open until then. The big thing here during NYE are the street parties dotted around the city.. There was Taksim Square, which resembes Times Square festivities, or other areas around where you could catch a free concert and fireworks. There were SO many people out, and everywhere was packed. We opted to go out for dinner and then head to the Bosphorous shore to watch the fireworks over the water...
There were a lot of people sending up these Chinese lanterns into the sky... everytime one went up, the whole crowd cheered. There must have been thousands floating up before the clock struck midnight.
Pretty lit up mosque on our way to the Bosphorous
You can't really see, but, this group of people were wearing light up Santa hats...I heard "Feliz Navidad" at some point during the festivities, sung by a local. It made me giggle.
Happy New Year!Our low-key celebration was smart decision due to the events that occurred after the fireworks...
I don't know what it was, but, over the course of 48 hours we both developed some kind of stomach ailment, that affected first Paul and then myself... So needless to say our NYE festivities were halted just an hour or so after we entered 2014. No bueno. It was okay though, my family had booked us a hotel room for our Christmas present, so we had a nice room to recover in... and not have to worry about disturbing others with our agony.. I am assuming we had a little taste of the global stomach bug that's circulating around right now. Luckily Umut was kind enough to help me when I called and told him I needed to visit the pharmacy for dear Paul.... It would have been hard to do with by no-Turkish speaking self. And now we have meds in case we get Delhi Belly or whatever. Here's hoping we avoid that...
After our hotel camping for a whole day, we emerged today feeling a bit better and ready to see more of the city. We were able to do so by accident, because we got lost thanks to our booking.com directions for the hostel we are crashing at for 2 days before Steve arrives and we become tourists. We walked around for like 2 hours through sketchy and non sketchy places, trying to find a place that should have taken us 20 minutes to get to.. NOT FUN. I thought our wanderings through industrial parks in Brno would have taught me to make sure the directions looked legit, but alas.... third time is the charm.. I WILL have transfers lined up in Mumbai or know exactly how to get where we are going from now on....no matter what google maps (which got us lost in Brno) or a Booking.com-style site says. It also didn't help that the streets didn't have visible street signs or the map had no street names on the non-major streets. Live and learn... the place we are staying with Steve is literally down the street, so, I am hoping we don't get lost between here and there. I think we will be okay.. our track record has been good so far despite those 2 hiccups.
We plopped our bags down and went out to walk down on the water during the daytime, close to the Galatas brige. we walked past a cool university that looked like a nice place to get an education, and a really pretty mosque.. The architecture is amazing. I can't wait to go to see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia...that will be out of this world.
Wouldn't mind doing a master's here.. pictures don't really do it justice.
The police have a cool logo.... dolphins that mean business.. Seriously though if you saw the heat they were packing on NYE, you would not mess with them.. Big machine guns strapped across their chest at the ready. No messing around.
Tomorrow we will be going to visit Dolmanace Palace, which dates back to the 18th century and used to house the Sultans and their families, and acted as an administrative center for the Ottoman Empire.. There's also Araturk's death bed in there. He had a comforter that looked like a giant Turkish flag, from pictures I have seen. All I know is when we walked by on NYE the building looked gorgeous, and I can't wait to see the inside. We also have bought a yoga package at Cihangir yoga, so we will be prepping for our ashram experience and doing lots of yoga everyday! The rest of the cool touristy things can wait until we have our travel buddy with us.. At least now we have had our time as "locals" and are well acquainted with central Istanbul and will know where to go... I still want to head over to the "Asian side" across the water, so I can be on 2 continents in the same day. Istanbul so cool, it had to spread itself across 2 continents! If anyone is interested in running over 2 continents, the Eurasia marathon takes place here yearly. Just FYI.
A little less than a week left here, and still so much to see! Excited for the Bazaar, authentic Turkish Bath experience, and all the mosques. More pictures and stuff to come. HAPPY NEW YEAR! :) :)
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