Wow, I am so sorry that I haven't been able to write in so long. We have been having many guests and I haven't had time. So, I spent a week in Turkey's biggest city: Istanbul. It was so amazing when we arrived just to drive into the city and see things that have been around for almost 2,000 years.
On the first day, we went to this incredible Church turned Mosque called The Hagia Sophia. The pantheon had nothing on this thing; it was truly beautiful and the architecture was very interesting. There was one large dome that was surrounded by smaller and half-domes. It was truly remarkable. Afterwards, we went to this underground Cistern filled partly with water, which was the image on Bing a couple weeks ago. The Cistern was my favorite; it looked so haunting the way that it was so dark and fish were swimming under and around you. They actually have a restaurant down there, so my dad Jeff and I had a cup of tea and relaxed for a little while. For dinner, we went to this Turkish Fish Restaurant which was really good. It was so much fun because we were talking to the people around us. We spoke to this one fellow who was Canadian but his wife was from Turkmenistan. He was meeting her Mom and Sister for the first time. They spoke Russian so I got to use my little Russian I learned from Jesse K's class to talk to them. Then the wife asked us if we wanted to ask any questions because this was our chance to ask something to someone from Turkmenistan. My dad and I asked them if it was better under communism or better how it is today. They said they preferred Communism because everyone had a job, a car, good health benefits and good retirement. As a follow up, we then asked them "but isn't it better locally since you get to be closer to your government as opposed to it being in Moscow?" Their response was "No, we had a Turkmenistan Representative who went to Moscow and got us everything that we needed." It was a great conversation that ended up lasting over a four hour dinner, but it was definitely worth it.
On the second day, we walked to the Blue Mosque, which is a really famous mosque across the street from our hotel. It was really beautiful, but sometimes we weren't able to come in if they were doing the call of the prayer. The call of the prayer is a call they do for Islamic people to pray. The call happens five times a day and is an arabic poem about Allah. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. After we went to the Blue Mosque, we went to The Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a giant area where you buy and sell things. It goes on for ever and I bought a soccer jersey since we had bought nice seats to the biggest Turkish Football game of the year. After, we walked around there for a while, we went by a Hamam, which is A Turkish Bath. We contemplated going but my dad wasn't feeling well so we decided not to and never went back, sadly. Later that night, we stopped at a place and listened to Turkish music while smoking Hookah and Drinking Tea, which are customs there.
On the Third day, we went to this enormous palace called the Topkapi Palace. It was place where the Sultans stayed. We went into this room where sultans would keep the virgins; it was filled with gold and every room was beautiful. After that, we stopped at a cafe and drank more tea on the Bosphorus straits, which was really cool. We then walked back to our hotel but not before stopping for the best pastry in the world known as Baclava; we also got Donor Kebabs. Once, we got to our hotel we rested before we had to wait in a 3 hour line for tickets to the game. After we got our tickets, we went straight to the stadium. The game broke the world record for loudest Indoor sporting event. It was really loud, and the people around us treated us like we were turkish. We danced and cheered with them. We waved flags with them and took pictures with them. When the Home team scored; this one man head butted me so hard, I fell over. It was so incredibly insane and Amazing.
The next day, I woke up sick from the Kebab, which was no fun so I stayed in all day which was disappointing because it was my last day in Istanbul.
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