Here are some of the pictures from our first day in Istanbul, Turkey.
This is looking out our balcony doors into the town square.
Our hotel was on a back alley - it was a neat little community.
As we drove from the airport to the hotel we tried hard to get pictures of the hill where we would be staying for the next 3 nights. Some thing I learned about Istanbul was that it is built on 7 hills just like Rome.... pretty neat history behind Istanbul, Turkey.
We went out exploring the city on our second day and it was so much fun. We tried to get a taxi but none would stop for us. It just seemed like the locals got there first even if we were talking to the taxi driver the local would just jump into the taxi and off they went... It was pretty frustrating but then we decided who cares and we started walking to another area where there weren't so many people waiting for a taxi. Off we went but the farther we walked the more we got lost.
One funny story: We kept asking the locals for directions to the nearest taxi stand and it never failed that they would look to dwayne and begin talking Turkish but then Grace Lyn whipped out her handy dandy language book and began asking " where taxi stand?" it sounded good and immediately the person began to tell us but it was in Turkish.. .HA! we all were like, I think I understand... it's up the hill that way.. How you ask did we understand? Well, inevitably they pointed...... :)
So here we are mimicking all those we asked... Where is Taxi Stand?
We did find a taxi in a very unexpected way. A young man saw our laughter and thought he might be able to help us. We were just deciding that we could walk back to the hotel - when this young man said, I can take you to your hotel. We were like you have TAXI... in slow broken english that was more like,
You taxi? - as our hands are mimicking driving a car.
his reply: Yes - right here. It was a small, very small van... kind of like the mian bao che in china. So we all looked at eachother and laughed and said, WHY NOT?
We climb in - all 7 of us it was a hoot.....
It was a great memory of our first real adventure in Istanbul-
Here is the shop that was just around the corner. I loved the look of it. As you can tell- it looks pretty cool!
