Dear all,
Thankyou so much for all the birthday wishes. I had a really nice day, woke earlyish and dan had carried some pressies from home to turkey. So it was nice to open some presents in the morning, thankyou mum,dad,grandma & granpa,the barings,millots and the bassos. Also thankyou for the cards I received from the battens,grandma and pa,lauren,oma and di and the smiths. It was really nice. Spent the morning at the Hagia Sophia, an amazing building that is now world heritage. It was built as a Church and then converted to a mosque and now a museum and there is a quirky mix of chirstian and islamic relics. There were some beautiful mosaics along side huge islamic scriptures. My neck got sore looking up at the amazing building.
Came back to the hostel and spoke to home,and i was so good and only cried once. I am a confessed cry baby and cant help it sometimes, but it was still really nice to talk to home and see them on skype.
The weather has been amazing,blue sky and the sun actually has some warmth behind it. So yesterday we wandered along over the bridge and watched the fisherman.They eat Alot of fish in istanbul because they live on the water. Anyway, went to Galata Tower and had an amazing view over the city. Istanbul has a population of 11 million and the city is massive.Spent the night at the hostel with a few beers and a mix of aussies, turkish, americans and new zealanders.
Today we organised with another aussie and two german guys to catch the ferry up the Bosphorus and towards the entrance into the Black sea.We had to wake the germans because they had a big night,and they were pretty sick looking for the walk to the ferry, pretty brave i thought because i would never be able to handle a rocking boat with a bad stomach. The ferry left at 10.30 am and because the weather was gorgeous we sat outside on the ferry and i had my feet dangling over the edge. It would have been a perfect day without anything else, the sun was amazing and I realised how much i really had missed a warm sun. Even the breeze on the boat was warm..was such a nice day.
The cruise was lovely, there are amazing houses all along the river,a naval base and several mosques and towers from when there were lookouts along the bosphorus during WW1 and WW2.We got to Anadolu Kavagi and there was a massive tower on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus and the other direction looks directly down into the black sea. Looking towards the black sea the entrance is bordered on one side by the european continent and the asian continent, which was amazing see the point where they are separate.
The ferry was just as relaxing on the way back, along with a cup of turkish tea and one stop on the way home an old man jumped on the ferry and was selling yoghurt which id famous from that town. It was yummy yoghurt and was the real stuff with a skin on the top. dan bought me a birthday present on our way back to the hostel. There was a little shop with a really nice turkish man who owned it and made leather goods. We were talking to him another day as we walked past and said we would come back today and have a look around his shop. Dan bought me a cute little leather bag, thats going to be perfect for travelling around.
Right now were at the hostel and had soup, eggplant stew type and cold yoghurt pasta..which was a little weird.Tomorrow were planning on visiting the underground cistern and having a last wander around istanbu, and then the hostel has a pub crawl organised which we will tag along with til 2am-ish and then we will make our way home to glasgow on a flight at 5am.. I really have loved istanbul and it tops my list of favourite cities (even greece!), i definately at some point want to come back to turkey and travel around the country more.
love to all, love jess and dan xoxox
i just tried to upload some photos but its telling me to contact the web master??????????????????????sorry,i will try again tomoz.
