We had great seats and the flight took 8 hours. They served us dinner and breakfast and we
arrived in London almost right on time.
After getting through Customs, we met up with our friends from New York,
Jeff and Vera who had been in London for a couple of day.
The 4 hour flight to Istanbul was uneventful and we had
2-across exit seats with lots of leg room.
I think that we slept most of the way.
Going through Customs was a breeze, but we had to wait a
little bit for our car as there was a mix-up on times, but it was no big deal.
Then came the cab ride at rush hour –it took us 2 hours to
get to the hotel!
After checking in, we took a cab to this major pedestrian
street called Istikal Ave and it was fun.
It is a mile long closed off street with nothing but tons of
people, places to eat and places to shop in.
We found a wonderful little restaurant on a side street and
ordered most of the fish plates that was on the menu. The best was the main course of Mediterranean
Sea Bass – wow was it delicious.
After eating, we continued to walk around until taking a cab
back and crashing for the night.
We are 8 hour earlier so we woke up to the news that the
Cubs had lost the first game of the series with the Cardinals – oh well there
is always next . . . .
In the morning, we went to the Executive Lounge to eat and
had a great (free) breakfast before meeting Jeff and Vera at 9:45am to a taxi
ride to our first major event of the day, a boat ride on the Bosporus, which is
the huge waterway that separates Europe from Asia and the two sides of
Turkey. We had to wait for the right boat
so we ate right on the Bosporus from a boat that was cooking fresh fish and serving
it on a great roll, right on the docks.
I walked to the tour boat eating the sandwich. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun on
the boat trip which took 1 ½ hours.
Then we took a hop on – hop – off bus tour of the city and
it was very neat, taking us also to the Asia side of Istanbul. We found out that Istanbul is the 2nd
largest city in population within the city limits in the world behind Shanghai.
Then it was back to the hotel for a quick nap before going out for the evening.
The streets were absolutely jammed and we knew we never make
the Dance Theater we were scheduled to go to so we took the subway and made it
in plenty of time.
We went to see “The SEMA Ceremony which is a spiritual journey
of Dervishes Whirling for Divine Love” and in a 550 year building. It is
actually a religious dance still apparently practiced by some today. No way to describe the dance that we saw
unless you go to their website.
Then we took the ferry to the Asian side to look for a place
to eat and finding nothing close to the ferry stop, we went back over to the European
side and had a fish dinner at a restaurant under a major bridge. It wasn’t as good as last night, but it was
fine.
Then it was back to the hotel and we sat in the lounge
sipping a little wine before going to be after midnight.
It has been a fun start to our vacation.
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| First Course |
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| Main Course - Sea Base |
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| The view from one of our windows |
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| A mansion on the river |
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| A fish sandwich right from a river barge |
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| Barb with the fish sandwich |
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| A beautiful Mosque - one of many |
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