Merhaba Istanbul

A city on my wanna go list is definitely Istanbul. And I went, with KLM, unfortunately having a stay-over of 9.5 hours, in which I had to sleep as well.... But this couldn't stop me, I needed to see at least one thing of Istanbul to give me the feeling that I had been to Istanbul ;-)

After the check-in in our hotel, I was about to meet 2 other colleagues within half an hour, so I rushed upstairs, changed my clothes and.... watched the rest of the half an hour in front of my hotelwindow!!! Airplanes were practising for the Red Bull Air Race that weekend. Wow! I was lucky :-D

Our cockpit crew had given a small note with directions to our purser to make sure that we could find the train to go into Istanbul, as we didn't want to take a taxi and be that touristic. But again this was a prove that men and women make completely different maps and directions.... We had no clue what they meant with cross the street diagonally (to where: to the left or to the right??), and also saying 'after 200m turn right' is rather difficult when there are so many roads going to the right... So we just trusted on ourselves and took a completely different way and of course we made it to the trainstation... The trainride was fun! Even the ones in Thailand were in better condition than this one. I asked an old Turkisch man next to me where we just boarded, because we forgot to check this and needed to get back by train that evening as well. Luckily he spoke German and wanted to help us with our disembarking station as well, unfortunately his directions were not so good either. After every stop he said that it would be the next one.... Very helpfull!

Anyway, to cut it short, we made it, of course we did! I definitely wanted to see the Blue Mosque and so I did. The interiour of this Mosque is very impressive! Everywhere stained glass around you, paintings on the ceilings and walls.... So pretty!
Of course we had to wear a scarf around our heads, but hey, it made me feel at home again ;-)

After the Mosque we went into town where we ran into some of our clients. They advised us where to go for the best food and so I ate delicious Turkish food. Lamb kebab of course, some filled aubergine, mmmm! Unfortunately after this it was already time to head 'home' again, the wake up call was due at 2 am dutch time... The view from my room over the Bosporus, with the pretty lights on the other side and a bright full moon was just wonderful.

Well, even after 3 hours of sleep, I was still happy that I took the time to see something of Istanbul. It definitely made me want to come back again and spend some more time.