Alright you guys, I know I tag along on a ton of Ryan's business trips. This is basically my life. Some of them are to some not so exciting places: Cleveland, Boise, Detroit....
Yawn
Yawn
Yawn - oh, no offense Cleveland, Boise, or Detroit.
However, a few weeks ago, we had the wonderful opportunity to visit Istanbul for the second time in two years!
Here is a quick run down of the peeps-
There was a total of 6 people going:
Two attorneys (Ryan and Ross)
Plus their girlfriends (Danielle and Me)
and two court reporters (Janet and Jerri)
So we totally had limited time there. We literally left Chicago on a Wednesday and I was back to work the following Tuesday. With the 11 hour flight and the time difference... this left us with about 4 days to sight see.
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| 11 hour flight - ugh |
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| Look who is sleepy |
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| These two slept the whole way |
So what did we do?
Here is the breakdown:
Day 1-(Thurs)
Arrived at 5pm, customs, taxi, yada yada yada...
Basically arrived to hotel (The Grand Hyatt in Taksim) and found our free bottles of vino and had a mini party in our humongo hotel suite (bigger than our current townhouse). I won't mention the cranky European neighbor that knocked on our door to yell at us. Lets just say we had a few cocktails and the music was pretty loud. My apologies to the neighbors.
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| club lounge pre-party |
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| Turkish wine = headache |
Day 2-(Fri)
Nothing like a Turkish headache to start the morning. How much wine did we drink??
This was our first Real Day to see the city. Time to guzzle some agua and pop a few excedrin. No time for headaches on vacay.
Eventually we figured out there was a train close to the hotel (after a long walk down a hill). So we boarded the train to Sultanahmet for the cheap price of $4TL per person... this is roughly $2 USD each, not bad at all!
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| here is the train |
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| Ross and Danielle on train |
Here is what we saw:
Blue Mosque
Hagia Sophia
The grand bazaar
Lets talk about the Grand Bazaar....
This place is one of the oldest and largest shopping destinations in the entire world!! It has 22 entrances and is basically a maze of shops in which visitors can haggle and barter for ceramics, leather, spices, tea, scarves, etc. They say anywhere from 250,000-400,000 people walk through the bazaar on any given day!
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| inside the bazaar |
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| difficult decisions on vacation |
The minute you simply look at an item... the negotiating process begins. Get ready to haggle!
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| shop til you drop |
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| Ceramics galore |
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| Turkish Deiight |
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| ross and danielle out by the "not free" WC |
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spices!!
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And then there is the Blue Mosque. Words cannot describe this structure and my pics certainly do not do it justice.
Now this is an active mosque that was built in 1609. By active, I mean they still pray there 5 times a day. This also means we were unable to go inside (at that moment), but standing outside this structure was amazing in itself. Remember, we have been to Istanbul before, so we have already seen this structure and we were still in awe of its beauty!
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| Our favorite shop |
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| Buying perfume |
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| negotiating |
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| another mosque |
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| Istiklal Street |
For our last night in Istanbul... we decide to do a group dinner on Istaklal street.
Apparently over 3 million people per day are said to visit this street. It is a 1.4 km long street filled with boutiques, restaurants, bars, and galleries. This is where the nightlife is!
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| 360 lounge |
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| biggest wine list ever |
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| Janet and Jerri post dinner drinks |
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| Octopus every day |
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| Our final night |
And here are just a few other pics from the trip:
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| Tea Options |
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| Chestnuts and corn |
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| people on the street |
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| one of our group dinners |
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| walking up to the Galata tower |
11 hours later we find ourselves back to reality in Chicago.
Would I go back??
In a heartbeat.
