Hi everyone! I’m back with my blog post collection about my five days in the city of Istanbul. To start off, the day before we left we went to an African hotel where we said bye to Aaron and slept the night. We woke up early in the morning and drove to the airport, where we flew to Johannesburg and the strangest thing happened. We were about to land when the pilot suddenly it took off and circled the airport for two minutes before landing! Apparently, it had something to do with air control, but it was kind of an uneasy feeling. We waited for two hours and then we flew for ten hours to get to Istanbul. On the plane, I watched Thor: Ragnarok(my second favorite Marvel film) and got about three quarters done of Goosebumps 2 because it was so terrible. After we landed, we drove to our apartment after Ronit flew back to Israel and we immediately slept for six hours before touring the rest of the day. After we woke up, we started to tour the city and we saw just how epic all the life was and how marvelous the architecture was. All the buildings were very elegant and the pretzels they were selling there were fantastic. We also had Turkish Delight, which is probably my favorite foreign treat this trip, and there were cats everywhere! They were so cute and we even petted them! As we were walking down the streets we saw the roots of what would be a GAY RIGHTS RIOT WHERE TWENTY PEOPLE WOULD BE ARRESTED LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER! There were police everywhere and I could tell that something edgy was about to occur. Nonetheless, we had a pita sandwich with chicken for dinner and our first day here was awesome.
Today, we spent the entire day touring the streets of Istanbul! We woke up in the morning and then we walked around the big city. We entered a bunch of mosques that were very well detailed and we entered the biggest one called the Blue Mosque. There were elegant carpets everywhere that had very fabulous designs and the interior was gigantic! I like the oval design of the inside and the outside because they are usually so colorful and after that, we got a shawarma lunch again like yesterday. We also went to a very big spice market that had so many things inside of it. There were very tasty dates and other fruits there and it was a very nice environment with everyone going there to do their own things. We had shawarma for dinner and then we concluded our epic day here in Istanbul. Also, I forgot to mention that there are a LOT of cats here! They roam around the streets with no problems at all and then they come up in our faces and want us to pet them. They were just like my cat Bruno and it made me miss him.
The next day we did a lot of the stuff we did yesterday, but with extra coolness. We first went to the Basilica Cistern, which had elegant columns with Medusa heads at their bottoms. It felt like we were about to go on an amusement park ride because of the moist and dark atmosphere and our tour guide was very friendly also. Once we finished up on there, we went back to the Spice Market for other foods and we ended up getting some. After that though, we had shawarma for dinner and we got some more Turkish Delight for dessert. The day seems to pass by very fast here and we are having so much fun here. Also, today marks the FINAL MONTH OF THIS TRIP. In almost four weeks, our trip will be OVER, which I find both exciting and scary at the same time.
On our last day here in Istanbul, we got up at 10:00 am and then we went shopping at a mall. There wasn’t much to see there, but they were playing some cool movies there like X-Men: Dark Phoenix. I heard it was a terrible movie, but I want to see it just so I can see how bad it is. We then went down a square and bought some more Turkish Delight to snack on later. After that, we rested for a few hours and then we walked for an hour until we reached a small theater where we watched a traditional dance that people do in the Arabic culture. Not to sound mean, but it was really boring and I fell asleep almost halfway there. They were just spinning the whole time and it was really boring to look at after a while. After we left, we went back home and went to sleep.