Stoked that I got to Skype with Jason for awhile this morning, both our video worked this time so it was nice to catch up! After I showered in the toilet (the shower, toilet and sink are all in one!) and met my parents upstairs for the free breakfast on the roof. They had met some Czech travelers and they left shortly after I got there. I swear my mother could make friends with a telephone pole.
We had to check out by 10:30 so we swiftly packed our things and stored them in the underground storage room. Our airport shuttle didn’t leave until 2:35 so we had a few hours to explore.
We took the trolley over the bridge in to the newer part of Istanbul. What is neat is that this part is actually considered on the continent of Asia, while the part we stayed in is in Europe. There were a ton of cruise ships in the port and I couldn’t help but wonder if Christina and Frank stopped here on their cruise!
We hiked up some crazy stairs/hills to a large tower overlooking the city. On the way there I stopped to admire all the graffiti that is truly art. I saw some reminiscent of Banksy although I doubt it was him. I still need to watch that movie (ahem, Jason!)
Anyways, we made it to the tower and paid the $7 (in USD no less) to get up there. Thanks goodness for an elevator, that thing was huge! We read that it was built in the 500’s but burned down many years later. It was recently rebuilt to replicate the original (save the elevator and electricity of course). They put a nightclub up on the top floor too which seems pretty cool! We walked around the small outside and took photos of the views and spied on the houses below.
After we decided to walk towards the Taksim square which is comprable to the Champs Eleysse in Paris. Hoity toity. After many wrong turns and lots of cobblestone streets later we found it! It was a large shopping street with a ton of people! I had to stop in to Sephora to see if they had my lipstick color, which they did not. There were also a ton of other American stores and a few fast food places. We bypassed those.
We spent a little time trying to figure out the metro system to take us back to the hostel and ended up in an underground funicular to the trolley! So cool! I’ve been on plenty of funiculars but never underground. Istanbul definitely gets a win for their public transit system!
We got back to the hostel with 40 TL (Turkish Lira; $1=1.5TL), just enough for lunch on the roof. I had a cheeseburger that tasted like lamb. Oh well. Our shuttle arrived right on time and we made it to our flight with hours to spare.
Mom and I wandered around the airport, all through duty free and sampled all the Turkish delight samples. I had 10TL left to spend so we splurged on Burger King soft serve. It was so tasty! The airport is interesting because you go through a security check just to walk in the door and then not again until you board the plane. There were a ton of Ethiopians on our flight so it was fun listening to them speak Amharic.
The flight was okay, I slept for about 2 hours and then got some work done. Mom got her own row and slept almost the whole flight. They served us dinner and gave us little comfort packs of socks, earplugs and an eye mask. Gotta love Turkish Airlines!
We arrived in Ethiopia just after midnight and got through customs somewhat quickly. I’ll finish up with Ethiopia Day 2 in my next blog!
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