Istanbul

 Man, I seriously don't even know where to start. At all. This was such an incredible trip and probably one of the cooler experiences I've had in life. It was a total whirlwind and we did so incredibly much. Kristina and I met up with Candy and Amy at the airport around 5 pm on thursday and were going straight until we left (stupid early) monday morning.

I think that we saw too much to honestly try and explain it all so I will go with general feelings and impressions of Istanbul. Other than that, I took wayyy too many pictures, so I put too many on here as well, but Istanbul was too beautiful to not.

I guess to start off with general impressions I was most amazed at the hospitality there. I assume a large part of that was the fact that we spent a lot of time with locals, and therefore weren't just annoying toursits.

The first day we spent walking around the old part of Istanbul and saw the Haiga Sophia/Blue Mosque/Cisterns/Grand Bazaar. All along the way we would stop in at shops where Amy had friends, and literally everywhere we went we were offered Tea or Turkish coffee. Naturally, it is considered rude to not accept their hospitality, so over the course of the day we had something like 5 teas and 2 coffees. Though they were all super super good. Turkish coffee is intense, but right up my alley. Though I definitely ended up drinking coffee grinds 80% of the time.

 Beyond the hospitality of the shop keepers, all of Amy's friends were ridiculous. They literally wouldn't let us pay for things. Sometimes we could slip some money in here and there, but most of the time they took care of it. They were so so generous and were insistent upon doing so. We were their guests and they wanted to take care of everything. Its a super big change. The amount they took care of us was incredible. Whenever we would walk places they would always kind of protect us with an arm or what not. It was a really interesting experience. But I am so thankful to all of them for taking such incredible care of us.

The weather was beautiful most of the time we were there (minus a freakish down pour while we were waiting to get into the Topkapi palace) and the views were incredible everywhere we went. Istanbul is known as the city with 7 hills, so it really lends itself to incredible views. Not to mention I could never get bored of having views of water.

Now this may be my ignorance, and probably is, but I had absolutely no clue how huge Istanbul is. Its a city of approx. 16 million people and seemed to keep going on for ever. It's hard to judge it, but on the map it really just looks like a dot. It actually wraps around the Marmara sea, so when you are standing on one side of the sea you can point to the other side, and it's still Istanbul. I typically have a really good sense of direction but I was all types of turned around.

Additionally, Istanbul is the only city on both the continents of Europe and Asia. Amy lived on the Asian part, so I can now say I've been to Asia, which is pretty cool.

 The 3 ish days we had there were absolutely incredible and I really do want to go back, but for much longer, and not just to Istanbul.

We went to this funny little place called Miniaturk that had miniatures of all the famous monuments in Turkey (including the airport...). It was pretty cool to see all the places we had seen in real life, but I was absolutely shocked at how many incredible sights there are in Turkey in general. I really feel like I need to go back and spend a month just driving around and exploring.

It was so cool to be in an entirely different society. I loved my time there, but question if I could ever live there on my own. Amy is pretty damn impressive to have done so. Its a beautiful place, but it does sound like it could be really unsafe. It was crazy the comments that Amy would make in passing that are shocking to us, but normal life to her.

She talked about how they bring out the riot squads for the football (soccer) games because fans are so intense and insane, they literally kill each other.

Culturally, it was so different. Especially due to the Islamic religion. One night Erhan took us into a mosque at one of the prayer times and explained everything to us while the prayer was going on and it was all so interesting. It's incredible to learn more about something that I really don't know much about. I barely know anything about christianity, let alone Islam.

Overall, it was an incredible trip and experience in general and I really can't thank Amy and Erhan for showing us around. They really made the trip all that it was.