Okay ... I am in frickin TURKEY!! How cool is that?!? It is gorgeous. Period.

So we get off the plane and buy a visa that lasts for 90 days (meaning that I could come back here before coming home because it won’t have expired yet ... too bad it’s extremely expensive to get here ...). Our tour guide is really cool! His name is Gazi and he is So informative about the city and country he lives in. I don’t think I know a quarter of the information about Chappaqua like he knows about Turkey/Istanbul! Here is some of the information he gave us:
- Turkey has, about, 70 million inhabitants
- Turkey is 10 times SMALLER than Australia, but Australia only has 20 million inhabitants
- Turkey is two times larger than Japan, but Japan has 120 million inhabitants
Just with those two figures ... how weird yet amazing is that?!

Istanbul is one of those one of a kind cities that STILL has his medieval wall up and remaining, so I can use it for my Copenhagen: History and Contemporary Urban Issues class assignment. BUT .... I don’t know if it is European enough for my class .... darn. After seeing the walls, we see one or two fabulous and magnificent looking palaces. We also see night clubs, restaurants, people having picnics, flowers, palm trees .... have I mentioned that this is at 7:30/8 pm, it is dark out and it is WARM?!!

We walk up to this grand tower (Galata Tower) and see our hotel is next to it. And it is, seriously, at least 4 stars!! The rooms are INCREDIBLE! Comfy beds, NICE bathroom, bathtub, BATHROBES, complimentary water bottle each day as well as coffee/tea, SLIPPERS, nice TV, etc. It was perfection and seriously close to heaven! I have this REALLY nice and great roomie – Vicki – who has the SAME birthday as me (but different year) and is in the psychology department at DIS and really cool! We then walk to the restaurant.

We walk down the main street, which has a lot of stores, clubs, restaurants, etc. It is also where the trolley runs during the day. We then walk into the restaurant, which is really nice. We get, around, 6 dishes to share among four people as appetizers, get to choose from five main course dishes (lamb, lamb, lamb, lamb or ... do you want lamb?), and get to choose a dessert out of ten choices! For appetizers, there were too amny to remember. Mostly vegetarian dishes. The dodma (stuffed things, like grape leaves stuffed with rice) was SO fresh and tasty ... so good! For dinner I chose lamb encased in mashed potatoes with a paprika sauce ... mmmmmm ... but sort of heavy, so I could only eat half. Then, for dessert, 7 of us shared, but I only had bites from five of them. One was this fruit (a mix of apple and pear .... ayva I think it is called) dipped/soaked in honey, with pistachios and hazelnuts on top. Another was the same, but with pumpkin (did not have this one). Turkish rice pudding. A pudding made from one of the ingredients in gum (ehhh). Bread with the two kinds of smushed nuts on top (YUM!). A pudding with beans, oats, nuts, raisins, etc (did NOT have this one, partially due to the beans ... yuck). And a pastry dish that was like cheese in the middle with shredded, flakey goodness around it (like a latke ... but not potatoes), soaked in honey and with the nuts. (this was my FAVORITE!)

When we returned to the hotel, roomie and I went to the terrace of the hotel and saw the spectacular sights! On one side, not one but FOUR palaces ... or mosques. The other side was more residential looking, besides the tower. We are just in LOVE with this city!!

Istanbul is sometimes called the second Rome. It also has seven hills (we are on one ... yesh) and was actually made the capital of the Roman Empire during Constantine’s Reign (picked OVER Rome!)!

Personally, I feel that although it ahs a few similarities to Rome, that while Rome followed with the super powers of Europe for modernization, through the ages, Turkey/Istanbul has stuck to her culture and ways ... so there is a MUCH different feel here compared to Rome.