Istanbul March 25-29

We arrive in Istanbul on the night of my birthday after flying from Bangkok to London and onto Turkey. We make our way to Sultanhamet, the old city and into the pension we booked on the internet and sleep deeply after travelling for 30 hours to get here. The next morning we find another pension that has a private bathroom and free internet for the same price. We walk the old city for the morning past ancient mosques, bazzars and buildings. We visit an underground cistern that holds enough water to have supported the city during ancient sieges and observe a call to prayer and prayer service inside the Blue Mosque, and have dinner with Mike who we met at the airport.

The next morning we take an early morning walk along the Bosphorus River which splits Istanbuyl into 3, 2 sides in the European continent and 1 in Asia. We walk back through the modern part of the new city, buy groceries for the next few days and explore the 1000 year oldBazaar. The next day is spent in travel agents researching our time in Turkey, especially our next stop, Goreme in Cappadocia http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=cappadocia which we decide to just catch a bus to rather than buy a tour.

We spend our last day exploring the Dohlmabace Palace http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=dolmabahce+palace&spell=1 which is an amazing mix of Eastern and European. That night we catch our overnight bus to Goreme to see the solar eclipse in the middle of incredible natural structures.

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